Compliment Sandwich

Oh how I love the feedback sandwich- compliment, 2-3 most important areas for improvement, followed by compliment.  This week I felt beat down as a parent because of imbalanced sandwiches.  Some were missing the bread all together.  Others had way too much meat. We all have areas of improvement and to hear an unprioritized laundry list is just too much.  Beat down.

My first reaction was wanting to crawl in a hole (adulting is hard!), then anger (come on!), then action (let's try to fix it all), and now (hopefully) calmer rational planning.  Of this laundry list of my kids' faults (ranging from Jackson's poorly written book summaries to Matthew's unwillingness to walk quietly in a line because he wants to say hi to everyone), we have to prioritize what is most important and what we need to do to improve. 

I guess a positive about this experience is that it is making me more sensitive to giving feedback in my classroom, to students and parents.  Only hearing the negative and/or too much negative beats us down.  I am recommitted to the compliment sandwich!