In 2005, I co-wrote an article on feedback with a professor and it was published in Education Canada. It was about a year after I graduated from OISE/UT. At that point in time, that was my 1st and only published work. And it was a big deal. Interestingly, even after 20 years, I am still writing about feedback.
Providing feedback is an essential skill that all teachers need to possess. If we cannot provide immediate and constructive feedback to our students, we cannot help them improve on the essential skills they need to succeed. Professionally speaking, I provide feedback all the time. Personally, I seem to struggle with it.
Anyways, this time around, I felt that quietly writing about my feelings here is not going to change anything at work. So, I sent a note to Michael, and I was very diplomatic. I simply let him know that we have our students for an entire school day that goes from 8:30 am to 3:10 pm. That’s a lot of time. The prep teachers spend about 30-40 minutes, and we are always there to support them … so, we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves! Since he mentioned our names together, I talked about us as a team.
However, what I really wanted to tell him was to never mention my name with his name in a single sentence ever again!
When you work with someone as closely as Michael and I do, and especially when kids with special needs are involved, we must get along for the greater good. I can’t mess it up for the kids … I must put this feeling of resentment behind me.
Then again, why am I giving importance to something said by someone who has known me all of 6 weeks?! What's wrong with me?!
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