Ask Alex: Scaffolding Vulnerability for Peer Feedback
This is my occasional feature called Ask Alex, in which I answer questions on trauma-informed teaching, SEL or anything else! Send me a question at alex@unconditionallearning.org or on Twitter!
Our question for today comes from Lorraine, who writes:
I’m coaching ultimate for the 7th year this spring at a local public high school. Ultimate is a sport known as being inclusive to many abilities, and many traditionally non-athletes find a home in the sport. I’ve coached teams that have had a fun mix of jocks, theater types, band geeks (aka me!), and someone always brings a tagalong friend that sticks around the whole season. Since I coach JV, it’s easy to get everyone play time. I like to think that I help foster an environment where kids can respect each others’ differences, and share the common goals of improving their skills, having fun, and winning games. (The teacher in me wants it to be more than just winning, but…they’re teenage boys, and that seems to always be their goal.)
This year, I want to challenge myself to facilitate more player-led feedback. On my tight, safe, college team, we had appreciation circles at the end of every tournament, offering the person to our left a piece of positive and a piece of constructive feedback. I think this may be possible for my kids, but how can I scaffold it? Any tips or other ideas?
This is a great question that on first glance, might not have anything to do with trauma-informed teaching. But if I could shout anything from the rooftops, it would be: trauma-informed practices benefit all students! This situation reminds me about the importance of intentionality: she could just blast right in, ask the students to give feedback to one another, and let the chips fall where they may. Instead, she’s seeking to approach this with intention: how can I best support this group of students to expand their focus beyond winning, and develop a community of players who give and receive feedback? So thanks, Lorraine, for this question and your dedication to your team!
Creating the Environment for Feedback
The trauma-informed connection here is about vulnerability and safety. Trauma disrupts both a sense of safety in general and a sense of safety in relationship. Often, traumatic experiences are tied up in ruptured relationships, either as a cause or effect of the trauma. Trauma-affected kids struggle with relationships for a plethora of reasons: developmental gaps, broken trust with adults and peers, negative self-concept, and more.
With all of these relational challenges, feedback can be dicey from both sides. On the receiving end, if we don’t trust our relationship with the feedback-giver, we might feel like critical feedback is a dismissal of our worth as people. And if we don’t truly believe that we are worthy to begin with, positive feedback is just noise and we can write it off.
On the giving end, if we don’t believe that our views have value, it can feel paralyzing to come up with feedback. Who am I to tell anyone else what to do, when I’m struggling with my own stuff?
All of this means that safety and trust are pre-requisites to feedback – as Lorraine knew from her “safe, tight” college team. It’s probably not news to many, but we might remind ourselves that just because our team (or class) trusts one another to complete a task – like winning a game – it doesn’t automatically extend to emotional trust and vulnerability.
Scaffolding Vulnerability
Perhaps because of our question-asker, I’m thinking of a metaphor here connected to the Vermont outdoors: the swimming hole. For those of you not familiar, the swimming hole is often a calm spot in a river, lined with slippery rocks. The current can be dangerous or calm depending on recent rainfall, and it can be hard to predict the depth of the water.
Building vulnerability is like picking our way across the slippery rocks. Am I going to fall? What is that squishy thing my foot just touched? Where is it deep enough to jump?Why is the water so cold? Is this safe? Is this safe? Is this safe?
If you’ve been to this river a hundred times, you might leap right in, knowing that the rocks give way to a sandy expanse beneath you. You trust that the initial cold shock of the water will wear off and feel refreshing. You can accurately assess whether the currents feel faster than normal, and pull yourself out if need be.
Your JV team might be at a state where they’re exploring the terrain of vulnerability for the first time. You might start there: ask about the type of feedback they are expected to give in school, and what their previous experience with it has been. Get a sense of whether they are expert swimmers or newbies.
Then, work from there:
Start with building the habit of sitting in a circle and talking. Whether you do this in a formal restorative-circle way or an informal sports-team-huddle way, get the players comfortable with this time spent as a group
Build group trust by making sure each player is seen and heard. Again, the tools of restorative practices are helpful here but you can also do something as simple as a rose and thorn. (You could do a variation where players give their rose and thorn of the game- this practices reflection on the game and vulnerability of one’s own areas for improvement, without the added emotional risk of directing this reflection at others)
Begin with whole-team feedback and then zoom in on smaller groups. Start by asking players to come up with something the whole group did well and that the whole group could work on next time (you probably already do something like this). When this feels comfortable, put players into smaller groups (maybe by position) and ask each group to give another group feedback. When this has become routine, they may be ready to move to individual level.
Don’t forget to explicitly teach the skill. Have a discussion about what makes feedback helpful and what makes it hurtful. Create sentence stems that players can use (“You helped our team by ____,” “Next time I wonder if you could try ________.”)
Reflect, reflect, reflect. Give students time to think about how feedback feels. Build the self-awareness at the same time as the skill practice.
Give it time. Just like picking our way across the slippery rocks, sometimes it just takes multiple visits, practice, and the confidence that the last 10 times we did this, it worked out OK. Building trust is slow – don’t worry too much if you don’t get there this season. There’s always next time.
The Big Picture
“Resilience” is the new buzzword connected to trauma-informed education, and I can understand why: it feels like the antidote to trauma, the protective factor that will help kids bounce back.
I sometimes feel that the focus on resilience feels too intangible. What does it actually look like? How do we help kids build it, rather than just insisting that they need it?
Lorraine’s scenario is a great example of how and when we might help build resilience. As she moves through this process with intention, her students are going to practice building trust, maintaining relationships, and handling critical feedback with grace. Those are essential social-emotional skills that foster resilience.
Thanks for this question, and I’d love to hear in the comments about other ideas to develop a safe and supportive culture of feedback!
P.S. If you’re interested in the connections between coaching and educational equity, especially connected to Ultimate, I highly recommend following Chris Lehmann!
