Course 2019-20. I’d say I did a good job, but how can I prove it?

In September 2019 the Chinese language lessons I give to my secondary school students started, like any other school year, in the classroom. Now we are ending the course in June 2020, but in a virtual classroom due to the pandemic which hit us in March.

Once the quarantine began, my lessons started on the internet and became the new “normal”. This was new to me in many realms, so I started having self-doubt about EVERYTHING.  For example, was I doing the “right” thing? Was I focused on the “right” topics? Was I connecting with my students through a virtual classroom? Were they on the same page I was? The most important part was making sure I was “reaching” my students and they were understanding the goals… This self-doubt was surfacing more and more and it was haunting me like a monster under the bed!  😳 I had an internal battle with myself.

Two weeks ago, I decided to create a survey to receive some of my students’ feedback to determine my success as a teacher during this academic year. The survey was also used to allow the students to conduct self-evaluation indirectly. In my opinion, we should always learn something from every new scenario we could end in some times. Our opportunity to learn had arrived.

Last Sunday, the 14th of June, I wrote a short report about the results of the survey and letter of appreciation, and I shared with my students the overall results. The reason to write that report was that it’s my belief that it’s not only beneficial for the teacher, but also beneficial for all the students to see how their evaluation compares to other classmates. Even though the results were positive, please know that I believe it’s just as important to share even if the results happened to be negative, or less favourable. It’s not about the quality (good or bad) of the feedback they gave me, but it’s the feedback itself.

Today, I want to share it here with my peers to try and get the 360 degrees feedback so I can improve my teaching techniques as well as share best practices with you.

(Note that the survey is half translated into English. The reason why is just because while translating each question, the form interpreted I was changing the questionnaire… The data remained in the answers but didn’t transfer back to the new «translated» questions, so I quit translating for the benefit of the survey itself.)