Feedback

During the 4 years I worked after college and before PC, I always had feedback sessions at my places of employment.  For those unfamiliar with this term, it's a time for an employer and employee to give each other an honest assessment of the other's work and suggestions about how to improve in the future.  When done correctly, each person walks away feeling good about their accomplishments to date and excited about continuing to grow their skills and abilities.  When done poorly, both parties can feel hurt and resentful. 

Now that my 4 computer classes are about half-way through, I decided to distribute a feedback questionnaire to my students to learn their likes and dislikes, what they were most looking forward to learning in the remaining classes, suggestions for the future, and even common grammatical Russian mistakes they've heard me make.

[Amusing sidenote: Turns out the Russian word for "folder" is only one letter removed from the word for "ass."  So from time to time when I've asked people to open a particular folder on the computer, well... you can figure it out.]

While virtually all the forms were complimentary and there were some good suggestions that I've since incorporated into our classes, it seemed there was a  general lack of understanding about the purpose of the questionnaire.  Many of the answers were word for word copies from their classmates and most answers were only vague generalities like, "I like everything."  And while it could be possible that everyone really does like every class just as much as every other class - I mean lets not forget the stud-meister whose teaching these babies - I think it's more likely that they just didn't want to be so direct in criticisms.

This is a running theme in Moldovan culture - there's a lot of indirect, non-confrontational maneuvering around the main point.  And there's a lot of confrontation and yelling for no good reason that fails to resolve a lot of issues.  Ironically (to an American), it's the indirect offenses that are often more hurtful than the yelling matches, which people seem to shrug off as if it were simply a typical conversation.

But I digress... let's get back to feedback.  So my Russian tutor is helping me translate some of the answers on these feedback forms when she asks me, "What exactly is feedback?"  She said that this word appeared a few years ago in Moldova and every time she go to a seminar people ask for feedback this and feedback that, but none of her peers in the audience really know what it is.

I explained the concept and with an example of what if all the teachers could give feedback to the principal and vice-versa?  People could explain what problems they had and more importantly offer solutions - of course all in a way so as to not offend the feedbackee.  She really liked the idea, and so did I.  So I think sometime I'm going to give a seminar at one of the schools (and maybe some other organizations) about giving and getting feedback, and hopefully that will make the school run a little better.

And of course, in the next set of computer classes, I will explain in greater detail how feedback works.