Going Public

 I hate public restrooms. They're exposed and awkward and generally unpleasant. On a recent trip through the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, however, I noticed that patrons were asked to hit a quick button to provide feedback on the airport restroom. After fairly intense deliberation about the germs on that button, I hit the smiley face to indicate this wasn't the worst public restroom I had experienced, washed my hands again, and departed feeling productive.

While there are many connections we can make between public restrooms and education these days, the more productive emphasis is on what it means to go public with our practices so we can receive feedback. It's time to embrace that exposed, awkward, and generally unpleasant process that can create a monumental shift for students and teachers.

In the book Principals Who Learn, St. Louis Area administrator Barbara Kohm wrote about the vital importance of making our work in education public. She states, "exposing work to public scrutiny is difficult at first but well worth the courage it requires. In classrooms and schools where making work public is routine, learning accelerates -- often dramatically" (105). If we know that inviting feedback is so powerful, why don't we do it more often? For the same reason we avoid the student restroom and instead traverse the building to use our special key and go to the private teacher restroom. It's less exposed and awkward and generally unpleasant.

It's time to open our classroom doors, uncover student work, and channel our latent social media influencer personas. It's time to go public.

Two areas in education where we need to openly invite feedback:

1. Turn some classroom feedback over to students so work is public and feedback is frequent

Peer editing is a simple way to take ownership of feedback from the teacher and move it to the students. Whether it is an essay or a lab report, we can use strategies such as Facing History's gallery walk or Catlin Tucker's revision stations to allow students to provide feedback to each other while the teacher conferences with small groups or individuals. Students can print work without names and hang it around the room so peers can provide feedback on accuracy or impact. Making work public in this way affords a level of accountability for the students and allows the teacher time for more intense feedback with smaller groups. As long as students have been coached on providing effective feedback, either of these strategies should yield success.

Similar to gallery walks or stations, teachers can use an author's chair as a feedback strategy. While this tool is known as an elementary reading and writing strategy, it has powerful potential in secondary classrooms, as well. What if it were a mathematician's chair and each day a student sat in the front and discussed how they solved a problem and then took questions? How about an artist's chair where one student discusses their process and receives feedback on their latest work? Similarly, the Block Party Protocol has been used as a pre-reading strategy but could be so much more. In this protocol, students continually form various groups of three to discuss a question, quote, or problem in their work until they have socialized with several groups and can go back to their desks to design an independent answer. No matter the strategy, the more we make work public, the more students learn from each other.

2. Open our classrooms and make them public so colleagues can give each other feedback

It is difficult to expose what we do in the classroom to potential scrutiny. Teachers are passionate about their curriculum and their students. However, most of us agree that we learn more from our colleagues than from any professional development. Let's use that understanding to be brave and invite peers in to observe. With movements like Robert Kaplinsky's #ObserveMe in 2016, the power of peer observation in education became clear. Simply post a sign that you are willing to be observed with slips of paper for feedback and open the door to share practices and receive reactions.

An even simpler strategy is the pineapple chart discussed on the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. The pineapple is a universal symbol of hospitality, thus the chart represents teachers who will welcome others into their classroom home. When a school keeps a weekly pineapple chart up, teachers can go into any of the classrooms posted on the chart, sit out of the way, and watch the lesson. The strategy is so informal that a teacher is welcome to sit and grade or do other work while watching. The emphasis is simply on opening up our classroom doors and letting others know what we are doing. When teachers observe other teachers, collaboration, creativity, and efficacy increase.

While I may never enjoy the idea of restroom practices being public, I certainly see the value in flushing out the siloed privacy of our classrooms. We are at a pivotal moment in education, and it is time to bring the genius of the classroom out into the public.