Eloquent Feedback from the Source

Perspectives from the Classroom is a quarterly blog featuring innovative, creative, and inspiring perspectives on teaching and learning from our exceptional faculty and staff. Below are stories from teachers who exhibit best practices in Ignatian Pedagogy and the Science of Teaching and Learning; highlighting strategies that they use that have had a positive impact on academics.

Center for Ignatian Pedagogy

"Eloquent Feedback from the Source:
Students Giving Feedback to Themselves"

by Adam Green, Theology

If you are like me, leaving a conversation wishing it had gone differently is painfully common. Usually, the only feedback we get after a conversation is our own, sometimes unfair, conscience. Receiving quality feedback from a conversation is immensely helpful for all future conversations.

Conversing is hard. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to share your personal thoughts and feelings can be daunting. Sharing insights about your beliefs and then grounding it in your own lived-experience can transform the daunting into dismay…especially for a teenage boy. And yet, a key tenant of Jesuit education dating back to its nascent stages in the 16th century is eloquentia perfecta.

How ought Ignatian educators strive to instill a perfect eloquence in its students in the 21st century, especially when insights are often limited to TikTok sound bytes, discussions of faith can be taboo, and even adult world leaders seem unable to elucidate eloquently?

One way I have tried to help my students unpack the connections between their lives and their faith is through Graded Class Discussions. Oftentimes, the most valuable part of these assessments is not the Discussions themselves, but the debriefing conversations afterwards. These conversations are essentially Socratic seminars, except that the entire class is earning the same grade. The rubric for these discussions, which remains the same throughout the semester, so that they become used to the rhythm and expectations, require the class as a whole to do things like cite course readings, stay on topic, incorporate lived experiences, include all members of the class, and pose ‘devil’s advocate’ perspectives. Because the students are working together as a team they tend to encourage each other, build on each others’ insights, and back each other up, usually assuming the best in each others’ statements. Conversely, when two students begin speaking simultaneously, they most often defer to one another and resist the urge to talk over one another or ‘get the last word.’ As a teacher, I allow myself to sit back, breathe deep, and resist the urge to get involved. I am more than happy to listen, let them shine, and award points as liberally as our God grants us forgiveness.

After the discussion ends, I always ask them, “So, how did that go from your perspective?” Their analysis of themselves is nearly without fail, honest, constructively critical, and on point with my own assessment of them. The opportunity to reflect on their conversation helps them to see where they succeeded and where they will need to improve in the next unit. The debrief allows them to not only to do a bit of metacognition about the original prompt, but also helps them realize when they were good conversants and when they could have listened to one another closer or shared a bit more than they did.

We do one discussion each unit. In most courses, these discussions outnumber the tests they take. Inevitably, each student ends the semester as a much better conversation partner than when they began. Each in their own context, the introverts become more willing to share, the extroverts become more willing to listen, these students grow in eloquence because of the feedback they give to themselves through the debrief conversations. And as their teacher, I am able to do less explaining and more affirming. Akin to a Spiritual Director who remembers that God is the true director working with a retreatant in the Spiritual Exercises, I am able to reduce my own efforts and allow them to shine.

Admissions Test for Class of 2029

Eloquent Feedback from the Source

"Eloquent Feedback from the Source: Students Giving Feedback to Themselves"

"Eloquent Feedback from the Source:
Students Giving Feedback to Themselves"