Friday was the last day for many of my PreAP Precal seniors (senior finals start Tuesday but 98% of them are exempt) so I had the students do a SurveyMonkey about the class. I was actually debating whether I should do it this year or not–this year has been a real struggle for me and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear negative feedback, but I went ahead and did it anyway and I’m glad I did.
(Sidenote: I like SurveyMonkey because it’s free, easy to use, and makes pretty charts and such for you. I also like the fact that you can look at an individual response and I will admit I deleted two responses because sometimes teenagers are jerks. One word of warning: you can only have 100 responses per survey unless you pay for it.)
Here are some of my favorite responses with my response to the responses in parentheses.
What are some things you feel you’ve learned really well?
how to apply concepts rather than simply plug a number into an equationĀ (Insert 1,000 heart emojis here š
One thing I would like Mrs Craig to know is…
you always dress better than so many people (it’s nice to know my sartorial efforts are appreciated)
I’m glad we stopped doing the folder notecards, they just became a chore to completeĀ (I noticed the same thing, which is why I stopped, but I’d like some way for students to reflect/organize the material in the chapter other than the graphic organizers I give them. Suggestions welcome.)
…you have more attention given to kids who automatically understand the workĀ (Whoa. That is a very observant and deep insight. Definitely something I need to work on next year. I go into triage mode sometimes: should IĀ help 5 people who are missing 10% of what they need orĀ 1 person who is missing 50%? I wish our study hall was set up so that I could just give a pass to a student that said “Looks like you need some one-on-one help. This is your pass to come to my study hall today.” Maybe I’ll make some of those for next year! Suggestions welcome for this as well.)
she’s so passionate about math that you can tell she actually loves being a math teacher (I do!)
OneĀ major takeaway from this question is that studentsĀ super-puffy-heart-love the study guide videos. From all the other comments I get through the year about them, they are well worth the investment of time and money. Now thinking if I should start doing mini lesson videos for kids that are absent or need to listen to something again? Or–wait for it–start a document that has links to Mrs-Craig-Recommended Videos for each topic? Hm, that seems doable. And crowd-sourceable. Tweet me if you’re interested in maybe collaborating on this over the summer. š
I had about five responses (out of 50) that had the general idea that I am intimidating to ask for help. This has always been an issue I’ve struggled to work on, and I thought I was doing better–I like going around on my creeper stool and helping students as they work through a study guide. But maybe I need to work on helping during discovery or group activities more–I’ve been trying to “be less helpful” but maybe that is not helpful? These were probably also students in the 16% of replies that said they feel worse about math than before Precal.
On the other hand, 57% of them said they feel better about math than before Precal (25% no change) and there were also about 10 comments that said something about great positive attitude/ being helpful/ making them like math more so at least I know I’ve reached some students this year, which makes all the other stress and work worth it. Right?