Teachers tend to be both helpers and problem solvers. In fact, if a random group of teachers were polled, my guess is that those might be the two most common traits found, as to be called to the classroom generally means you like to both help others and tackle major problems.
And being helpful and a problem-solver are generally positive traits for educators to have, but there is one moment where these mostly positive traits can become liabilities: when we sit down with students to give them feedback, either in person or on the page.
As I’ve discussed before, I’ve observed that when teachers give students feedback, they almost instantly enter let’s-fix-it! mode. Considering the sheer number of students we often have, this doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, but as Daniel Coyle shares in his book The Culture Code, there is a simple experiment out of the Harvard Business School that shows that maybe there is a slightly better mode to enter first, if only for four or five seconds, before entering fix-it mode. Here is how he introduces it:
Continue reading “I’m So Sorry About the Rain: How to Significantly Improve Relationships With Students in Four Seconds”
