At TfT, we try to invite and welcome feedback. As always, the warm feedback feels great and the cool feedback requires some deeper reflection. One point we regularly hear is that the TfT examples we share during workshops or in the Bulletin can be intimidating.
While the examples and stories are meant to inspire and to model what the TfT core and essential practices can look like in their fullness, sometimes they result in a feeling of “I can never do that” or “My work is inferior.”
Perhaps you can relate?
As a TfT team, we often grapple with this feedback. “How should we respond?” Whereas we know that sharing examples of good work helps people develop clearer targets for implementation (very helpful), we don’t want to discourage (not helpful).
Within this grapple, I often defer to this passage from Ron Berger in An Ethic of Excellence. Whereas he is writing specifically about students and their work, I think the same can be said about educators and their TfT work:
I want my students to carry around pictures in their head of quality work. . . . If I want my students specifically to write a strong essay or design a strong experiment, I need to show them what a great essay or experiment looks like. We need to admire models, find inspiration in them, and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. We need to figure out together what it is that makes this work strong.
Within TfT, we don’t always get this balance right—of setting the bar high but also making it reachable. But Berger articulates what we are aiming for: inspiration through excellent models. If we can embrace these challenges as teachers, we can authentically invite our students into this way of being as well.
Thank you—always—for your feedback; it sharpens us and TfT. And thank you to the many TfT teachers who embrace vulnerability and growth by sharing their work with us all.
