Isn't it funny that no matter how many nice things people have to say about you, it's the criticism that sticks? I've heard that you should try to say 4-5 good things or strengths about someone to every 1 criticism. Today I read through some teacher evaluations from BYU-I where I work as an online instructor. Usually, I've had pretty good reviews, and maybe one more negative one (out of 40+ students, I'd call that good!). Last semester just seemed weird to me. I had several students just stop working the last few weeks of the semester... I don't know what was going on with most of them. But just overall I had this bimodal thing going on all semester... I had a bunch of A students and then this bump of C students... it was weird. So I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised that the evaluations were going to be less than glowing this go around even though I don't think I did anything very much different. The problem with negative criticism at the end of a course evaluation is that I have no time to fix anything - it's over! I can't make something less confusing for that student because they're gone now! I can do some generic stuff to improve, I guess... but they don't give very helpful suggestions even... just things like, "I hated this class!"
But then I forget that the vast majority of my students really like my style and my class. It's really hard to remember that I can't please everyone, and not to take it too personally.
I'd like to think that I'm the type of person who can take some critique and learn from it, and not make all sorts of justifications. But in the end, I can only do what I know how to do, and what I've heard good things about.
This whole idea also makes me think about my interactions with my kids (and my students). Do I try to make sure that I give a lot of positive feedback before I insert a negative? Does that negative comment come from a place of trying to love/help, or is it just the first thing that pops into my head to say?
Question to the void... How do you keep critiques from making you feel horrible? How do you know which things really do need to be addressed, and which they just need to deal with because it's hard, but good for them in the end?!
Ok done...
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