Paige Ellis' Class Blog Post sounds an awful lot like something I would have asked Dr. Strange myself. I completely agree with Paige, I do not want to hurt anyone's feelings with my comments. But sometimes I do believe that there are things that people need to hear whether their feelings are hurt or not. The tutorial and the humorous video did make a good point at saying that there is a way to critique and still be polite. Nobody wants to be a "Mean Margaret". Therefore, we all need to know the proper way to review something that includes being critical and still being appropriate.
A very important step I noticed in the links is that, you should compliment a person first before you start critiquing their work. It's always important to remember that you are taking apart someone else's work and you need to be gentle with that process. There is always something positive to say about someone's effort. Something interesting I found in the links is the different variations of "reviewers". The reason this is so interesting to me is because I have seen all these different examples in my own personal experience throughout school. I have also found myself being all of these different examples all the way from being mean to being too nice or not caring at all. One thing this blog assignment has made me realize is that I need to reevaluate how I review my peers now because we are all going to be educators one day and we need to make sure we're on the right path.
"But sometimes I do believe that there are things that people need to hear whether their feelings are hurt or not." Correct. If a player runs the play the wrong way and it results in a loss of yardage and a down the coach will not refrain from a critique just because the player's feelings may be hurt. Nor should we. We are educational coaches!
ReplyDelete"...you need to be gentle with that process." Gentle? Suggest that to Coach Sabin or Coach Jones.
I can see exactly how you "found yourself being all of these different examples all the way from being mean to being too nice or not caring at all". When I saw the video myself, I couldn't believe just how easy it was to identify with each and everyone of the differing stereotypes. Now knowing that children have the tenacity to be some very harsh critics, I can help guide them into being better critics of one another as well as themselves.There are things that do need to be said as your words entail, however there is a way to be a "Mean Margaret" without having to act so much on the mean part but more constructively.
ReplyDelete