Feedback and Confidence

When I was a student, I asked one of my English teachers how I got a C+ on an essay, while my friend had gotten an A, even though we had made the same argument and backed it up with quotes from the book, like she had asked us to do.  Both of us had followed the assignment exactly.  My English teacher shook her head.  "But Emily," she told me, "You can't write like Sonali.  She's a much better writer than you are.  Hence the difference in grades."

Yes, that is a direct quote.  No, I never will forget it.  Yes, that was the ONLY feedback she would give me on that essay.

That was tenth grade.  Many other English teachers, influenced by my tenth grade one (she was the department chair...and a toxic voice in the department), gave me similar feedback.  And thus, I have never had any confidence in my own writing. I wasn't too confident before that, but believe me, that quote tore down any last remaining shreds of it!

As such, my love of writing fiction went unused, and anything I did write was a secret between me and my hard drive.

Recently, though, I had an idea for a fiction project, which I bounced off a friend of mine.  This time, the feedback I received was: "What a great idea!"  We planned it together, and then I took off writing.

And I started thinking:  Why would a teacher tear down a student like my English teacher had done?  Isn't there a better way to give feedback?  And I realized that, the more *constructive* feedback I give my own students, the more confidence they have, even if I'm giving them feedback on something they got wrong.

That's where the idea of constructive feedback comes in.  Posing the right questions for the students to answer, guiding them, perhaps giving them an idea of where to look for an answer, rather than giving them the answer.

This seems obvious to me, I guess, and probably to you as well, but giving students the kind of minimal feedback, like my English teacher gave me, breeds lack of confidence, and lack of confidence breeds dependence.  I thought about this more as I read Justin's post yesterday.  The dependence leads to a complacency--one where students learn that they will *never* be able to do something, so why even try?

I am willing to bet that we have all had an experience with learned helplessness.  We've probably learned it at some point as well!  How do we break that cycle? What are we going to do with our students, and perhaps ourselves, who have learned this helplessness so well?