Being a Learner

As a student, I was never presented with genuine opportunities for feedback until I began college. In high school, a few of my teachers would give us brief feedback forms to complete at the end of the school year. These forms were presented to us more as a formality than a useful class tool. They were something we did at the end of one of the last days of school, and then they were never mentioned to us again. While they most likely helped the teacher plan their next school year, the feedback forms were never considered as productive spaces for students.

At Bryn Mawr College, my experience with feedback has been very different. While we are required to complete end of year evaluations for every class, I have had several professors who implement mid-semester feedback into their courses. Whereas the evaluations feel more like clerical requirements for administration, the mid-semester feedback is productive and reassuring. Any professor that has requested mid-semester feedback has been dedicated to reviewing suggestions and concerns, creating class discussions around them, and implementing changes into the remainder of the course. This attention to student input makes me, as a student, feel more valued in my classes. I know that the instructor is dedicated to working with students to create a class that is most fitting to us. Feeling that support and encouragement for expression has made it easier for me to feel more comfortable in the classroom.

In reflecting on my experiences, or lack thereof, with student feedback, I realize how different my time in school would have been had I been granted opportunities to express my thoughts on my teachers and their strategies/ pedagogies. Alison Cook-Sather writes, “education [is] the only provider of essential social services that does not consult its user population about their needs” (2009, 4). This statement sparked in me the realization that I had been obstructed from true participation in my own education. A teacher’s duty is to find the ways in which they can most effectively support students, and so in theory their “bosses” should be their students. All too often, school hierarchies and state requirements prevent teachers from using their students as resources, and thus students are prevented from feeling they have ownership over their own learning. When I am a teacher, my ultimate goal will always be to ensure that students know that they have the right to voicing their opinions and needs.