Exemplary Feedback

The following three emails were sent on November 21 at 7:51 AM, 8:09 AM, and 8:16 AM, respectively. The assignment in question is this one:

SWOT Analysis

My response is essential reading for any student using the makerspace. It covers, among other things, the value and universality of the skills and traits of grade abatement. It highlights the kind of feedback used in this space, too.

Student’s Email: 7:51 AM

Mr Eure,

I want to be completely honest and open. I am absolutely BAFFLED by this SWOT Analysis. I have no idea what my strengths are, I don’t know how to organize this information, I don’t know what questions to answer because the article that was given is mostly work related and it confuses me.

Even if I could come up with my strengths, I don’t know how to word them properly. I don’t exactly understand how I can explain my own strengths and weaknesses, I think sometimes my weaknesses are that I do not use my strengths to the full extent that I can. Why I do that? I don’t have the answer to that. What strengths am I limiting myself in using? I also don’t have the answer to that.

Every website I look up only further confuses me, and they are all ad-ridden and barely load. I am truly baffled, that is the only word I can use to describe my current state. I really don’t understand this at all. I think one of my weaknesses is SWOT analyzing.

Thank you for reading in advance,

[Anonymous]

My Reply: 8:09 AM

One of your strengths is amenability, which includes asking for help like you have here. You’re also self-aware enough to admit when you’re confused or lost — a real strength, especially when so many folks feel pressure to be perfect all the time.

To adapt a SWOT analysis to academics — to student life — you need to think about school as a company. Its products are the students themselves. More specifically, it’s about work to produce that student. Your job is to make yourself.

Think of strengths and weaknesses in terms of GAP skills and traits. Those are universal. They apply to everything — so much so that we were able to draw analogies yesterday, using those universal skills and traits, between our work and everything from soccer to waitressing to playing in a band. Use that language. Look at your amenability, assiduousness, self-efficacy, etc., and recognize that you absolutely have strengths from that list.

Then recognize that strengths and weaknesses are elements you control. That’s the distinction that works best for me: a strength can be honed, and a weakness can be mitigated. We control those, at least to a certain extent. Opportunities, on the other hand, are of our control. So are threats. All we can do is prepare for them, taking advantage of opportunities and navigating threats.

In our class, you have the opportunity to write me like you have here, and you’ll get immediate feedback. That’s outside of your control; if I don’t check my email, or if I never invite you to work interstitially in the first place, you can’t force it to happen. But you can take advantage of the opportunity that is there. Similarly, you can’t do anything about this holiday break. For five days (since today, Wednesday, isn’t a full day of school), you don’t have face-to-face time with your peers and me in this makerspace. That’s a threat to continuity, momentum, and the best kind of feedback, which is always given in person. You can’t change the calendar. But you can reach out, as you have, for interstitial help.

Which brings me to your most obvious strength: critical thinking and metacognition. Look at the set of universal skills and traits, which pair those and frame them in terms of “problem-solving in an authentic context.” It also says that “you strive to make that thinking as transparent as possible.” That’s what you’ve done by sending an email: You’ve made your thinking transparent, asked the kinds of questions that lead to helpful feedback, and opened yourself up to further critical thinking and metacognition. That’s a real strength! It is, in fact, the most important strength to have, when you feel lost or confused. It’s easy to dodge responsibility — out of embarrassment or frustration or fear — and blame others. It’s much harder to do what you’ve done, which is to communicate effectively in writing in order to get help.

And just look at that last sentence: You’ve demonstrated strength in effective communication, writing (especially the idea of “mak[ing] thinking clear”), amenability, and self-awareness. All through a single email.

If it’s okay with you, I’m going to take your name off of your email and use it, alongside my response, as an example for all students. That, too, gets at a strength: collegiality and empathy. You have strength in both, and this would be another way for you to demonstrate, as anonymously as you choose, the “[e]mpathy [that] animates and facilitates the collaborative environments that drive innovation.” That, too, is from the list of universal skills and traits.

Thank you for reaching out,

Mr. Eure

Student’s Reply: 8:16 AM

Thank you very much for your timely response!

This helps a lot, especially with comparing a school to a company. That makes the questions on the link you provided in the instructional post make much more sense. I would be okay with you using the email as an example, I always find that others student’s emails and your responses help me understand things more clearly and I would want to be able to provide the same for my peers.