As you submit assignments, the limbic system of your brain may skitter to life and wonder when you’ll “know how [you] did.” That part of you, conditioned by years of formal schooling, will want a number. It might recognize grade abatement as an attempt to eliminate the toxic stamp of grades on each assignment, but it won’t immediately understand how we can upend the traditional feedback model entirely.
Your assignment is to learn how we can do that — how, why, and to what extent. First, though, you should recognize that all of this is intended to teach you slowly and over time. You must interact with these instructional posts and documents like you would if assigned annotations. If you let them teach you, you won’t just learn how to do the next assignment; you’ll learn why this all matters, how to be curious about a great many things, how to write, etc..
You must, therefore, recognize that these instructional posts and documents are written explicitly to teach you. They define new vocabulary, link to related readings, and clarify ideas. They are usually structured as a lecture would be, but they are made difficult enough to require effort to parse and process1. They deliberately and explicitly demonstrate style that you can emulate in your own writing. In other words, just interacting with these instructional pieces will help you get better at reading, thinking, and writing.
See the link in the first paragraph? That explains the “lizard brain” in each of us, which is thought to control certain behaviors and habits of mind. In a course built around metacognition, that’s a helpful article to have. I’m using it to underscore how embedded your need for numbers and grades is, and to suggest that most forms of feedback are just capitulations to that need.
Every element of this class works like that first paragraph. Nothing is meant to be read quickly or discarded after reading. It is all written to teach you, and if you operate with that in mind, you will feel your brain’s neuroplasticity activated constantly2.
Consider a Google Classroom assignment that sometimes accompanies this post. Here is that assignment in draft form:
Click to enlarge.
The second paragraph gives you a strange phrase (“ramiform reading”), and then it defines the concept in terms of these instructional pieces. You do not need to memorize “ramiform.” When that word is used, it will likely make sense in context. What matters here is that you are being told that ideas and texts connect — that there is always more to read and more to do to increase your knowledge and understanding.
Put more simply, a Google Classroom assignment like that one is teaching you something, too. It isn’t just a set of directions and deadlines. Here’s the end of the assignment:
Click to embiggen.
There’s much to learn there, and it’s designed to be unpacked. The prompt is simple, and the focus is on two verbs: You should “write a response that describes and/or analyzes your relationship to feedback. So you should think about what description would entail, versus what analysis would entail. You would ask questions about both. You might collaborate with me or a few peers on what is most meaningful about both. At that point, you are learning about two types of writing that function as part of all significant writing, from poetry to essays.
Even the bottom of an assignment like this is meant to teach you a little more about the class itself: Most deadlines are set after a class period during which we would work together. If you prepare in advance, that sort of period can be used for discussion and revision, which gives you license to help other students with their work, which creates evidence of galvanizing your peers and adding value to the learning environment — the two most important criteria for earning GAP scores of 8 and 9.
With all that in mind, let’s get back to feedback on what you create.
How Feedback Should Work
Start with this instructional post, which is part of every course’s syllabus and opening-day materials:
Bookmark it, because you should return to it as more information is given to you, as you complete more assignments, and as you become more familiar with how this course functions. It will take time to read it deeply. You can pretty quickly move through a first read of it, however, which will give you a clear(er) picture of how much is happening under the hood of this curriculum.
Embedded in that “Mongering” post is this essay:
This one of those branches I mentioned before, and it’s important enough to be pulled out, centralized, and even assigned formally. It explains how feedback works and why it actively improves learning and student achievement. Bookmark that, too, and pay attention to any of its ramiform links. The more you put together an intricate, interconnected picture of what we’re doing, the more powerful your choices and actions become.
Finally, there’s this post:
Read this one very, very carefully, especially its early warning.
Remember that a shift like this takes time. It should take time, because you are changing your own paradigm for learning. Take that time, and you will break through the initial barrier, which is almost always that you are simply not accustomed to reading this much, this closely. You have to build up muscles that have atrophied over time. Fortunately, you have the freedom to struggle and strain and even fail in here, so long as you keep trying.
As often as you can, you should analyze your relationship to feedback, especially in English or writing-based classes. You must begin to use the course correctly to get something out of the feedback you receive, and that starts with a lot of background reading, face-to-face discussion, and practice.
Ask questions and leave comments below. I’ll respond as often as I can.
There’s a word worth knowing. And here’s a footnote to draw your attention to it. Again, there’s a purpose behind each decision made here. ↩
Want to know what neuroplasticity is? Google the word. That’s one of the biggest reasons to shift to this format: You can learn almost anything, if you just look up the words and ideas you encounter. Open a tab. Google “neuroplasticity.” Our course depends on this aspect of your brain. ↩
I was just browsing through the site and I think this page clarified a lot about the course. The part that said these readings are like lectures and lessons was sort of an “aha” moment. We should be consistently reading and responding to these posts and using them to jumpstart the rest of the class/day/week.
I agree with Victor about how the posts direct our work in class and how missing the point of these posts could derail your sense of direction in our course. Additionally, I’ve observed that this isn’t the first iteration of the idea Victor describes. Rereading it with more understanding than when I read it the first time, I’m beginning to see the connection to feedback as well. Not only do the posts provide feedback in what we should be working on; they also provide feedback in terms of the successes Mr. Eure has observed amongst us so far, especially because the posts address what has happened so far and what needs to happen next. When I was fulfilling my self-evaluation required by the Q1A GAP form, I was a bit stuck on the second question, which asked us to evaluate our relationship with feedback. My first response was yes, I’ve had discussions with my peers and Mr. Eure, I’ve had conversations about how different readings and responsive writings went, etc., but I wondered if that was enough to substantiate a higher GAP score. And I’ve come to realize that a big part of that feedback score is how we engage with the posts, because the posts are a crucial part of the feedback loop as well, and this is ultimately how I was able to justify my GAP score.