I know I haven’t posted a lot this year. I actually have tons to post on because I’m writing a lot of Algebra 2 material, but because I’m doing that work, I haven’t been able to carve out the time to post about it. Blerg.
But today I wanted to write a short but sweet post. Every so often, I ask for feedback from my classes. I’ll create a google form and ask how things are going, if kids’ pronouns have changed, how long their nightly work takes, and other thing I’m curious about. Sometimes I have kids reflect about their own work or their groupwork.
But last year, I started occasionally including this question:
I love that it gives kids a chance to think about who has helped them out. I don’t make it a required question. Only about 1/2 or 1/3 of my kids filled that question out this time. But I really loved the short bits I did get to see. I learned who might have been studying together for tests, or who worked super patiently with another person who might have been struggling, or whatever. And kids got to have a moment where they got to be grateful for someone else.
What was nice is that I actually asked for this survey a week before parent-teacher conferences, so I was able to share with parents who came some shoutouts about their kids (if they got any). Parents really appreciated hearing that their kid received praise from another kid (and why).
And today, I sent short emails to any kid who got a shoutout…
Hi Stu,
Stu2 wrote:
PS. Once, I had a bulletin board in my room that I had reserved for “shoutouts” or “notices of gratitude.” Where kids could post index cards with shoutouts for other students. I wanted it to be public and for it to “grow.” I would occasionally build in time for students to reflect and add to the bulletin board. That was years ago. It didn’t really take off, which means I didn’t roll it out and implement it well. But what I’m doing with this google form is really nice because it isn’t intensive or involve much planning!
PPS. If you’re at my school and want advice on how to do something like this, feel free to ask. I’m happy to brainstorm with you. I just don’t want everyone doing this which then will take away the “specialness” of when I do it!
Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere 
Thank you for your work on this blog. Very insightful commentary. Confused about the pps on this entry – how would multiple people at the same school doing this take away from the specialness of it? Might it create a culture of looking for the allies and helpers and glorifying that, glorifying the work of leveraging the power of learning together as opposed to individually? Or is the school such that individual efforts of teachers and glorifying that individually is more important to the institution than making this a larger institutional shared practice? Or was it a tongue in cheek pps.