As performed on
The Partners in Paradise Radio Show
KKZZ1590 AM "The Connection"
Ventura | Oxnard | Camarillo | Santa Barbara
Saturday mornings 9-10am
Call in: 805-639-0008
By Kat Kehres Knecht
My elementary school experience was a family affair. It not only included my two older sisters, the very sisters who were high academic achievers, the very two who grew up to have degrees in science and math, those sisters who went before me in every grade, high achievers and teachers’ pets.
It also included my mother who had gone to this school in her youth…not just the brick and mortar same school, but she too had gone before me in the class room having been taught by the same teacher as the one I had to endure in second grade.
My mother – the straight A type personality, overachieving mother, Marguerite, who loved nothing more than school, who loved it so much that she herself was a teacher. Oh, yes, she was a teacher in this very school. Are you getting the picture here?
Fill in this picture with the often spoken and unspoken comments of “Well, being a Kehres girl I would expect” or “I expect more from Marguerite’s daughter”. Or my personal favorite, “When I had your sister in this class” and add a pinch of “I was talking to your mother over lunch today and she said…”
Now, picture me as a little 8-year-old girl who is better at using her imagination than learning hard facts, loves to socialize and is not so great at paying attention to details, sitting in a little country school surrounded by the ghosts of her family.
And add in one more element to make things just a little interesting. My third grade teacher was a relative as well, my second cousin Miss Burgess. Miss Burgess was from the branch of the family that leans heavily towards our German origins as well as our mid-western surroundings and she had a “make ‘em wrong until they do right” attitude about teaching.
As a relative she was merely a cranky annoyance. As a teacher she was downright scary. I never knew when she was going to throw some personal threat my way or have the expectation that I not only had to behave well but that I had to behave well above my natural capabilities.
It was in this atmosphere that I had my first conscious experience of public feedback. We were working on spelling one day in the middle of the school year. Spelling was a subject that I always excelled in because I was a master memorizer, but memorizing was also the tool I used to compensate for my lack of any natural spelling ability.
Miss Burgess caught me off guard in mid-conversation with my seatmate. She called on me to stand up and spell the word "beautiful" to the class. I felt my heart beating fast, my palms going all sweaty as I stood up by my little wooden desk and realized that my mind had gone blank.
There was nothing there. Beautiful. I knew it started with a “B” and then there was this whole bunch of vowels. She was getting impatient at this point thinking I was being obstinate, so I decided to wing it and guessed that “e” was the next letter.
I don’t remember what I choose next. All I know is it was the wrong letter. She was getting livid now demanding that I spell it right. The unspoken expectation of living up to the accomplishments of my sisters and my mother not to mention her family heritage.
Oh shoot, any chance I would have had to retrieve anything close to the right spelling evaporated in that moment. Not only blank but double blank. I could only fail from here on out. I guessed twice more, each time Miss Burgesses voice got angrier and angrier, as if my bad showing was a personal affront to her, our blood relationship fueling her ire.
The next thing I knew she was calling me up to the front of the room and telling me to bend over. My heart beats a bit fast even now as I recall the feeling. I have a sense memory of a shame and humiliation that reddened my cheeks in that moment, as I felt the physical blow of the wooden paddle coming down on my backside with 30 pairs of eyes upon me.
To this day I hesitate every time I write the word “beautiful.”
Now, even my 8-year-old humiliated self knew that this was not a good way to give feedback. Not the way to help me learn spelling words. Not the way to instill a joy of learning in me. I knew this was about the teacher and not me. I was humiliated all right but I was also angry and rightfully so.
Despite that experience, I have a love of learning and have spent most of my life in formal, informal, and just plain made up learning environments. I have rarely gone a year without taking on something new to master. So I have learned a lot about feedback, what works for me and what is harmful.
I have come a long way since that day back in third grade. I have worked through many fears around being a beginner and revealing myself as incompetent. Just as importantly I have learned to embrace my own unique style of learning, my own way of taking in information and my own way of delivering a message.
This was put to the test recently when I was once again a student learning a new skill, this time I was learning the skill of reading a story well.
On the second day of the class we were asked to bring in an object that represented something we considered a success in our lives and present it to the class.
As I began my talk, I felt nervous about what I was going to reveal about myself. A nervousness that let me know I was doing something brand new, taking one more step out into the unknown. I read my essay, told my story of success. I stumbled a few times along the way and noticed that at times I connected with the class and sometimes a feeling of shyness disrupted the flow. When it was over the teacher asked the class to give feedback.
The feedback was varied. Some students really liked my story and were excited to find out more. The teacher gave me some great new tools to use when telling a story. One student didn’t get it at all and let me know.
I was a little perplexed at first about how to take in and use all of the feedback. It was important to me to learn this new craft. It was also important to stay true to myself.
How could I do both?
On this day I also received two responses from people who had received and read a book proposal – the very first book proposal I had ever written.
Again I got a mixed review. One response was overwhelmingly positive the other was, well, not so much. They both had valuable information so I decided to take this opportunity to learn about how feedback works for me.
I am still in the exploration of this question but here are the nuggets of gold that I have gathered so far.
- I can choose how I want to use feedback.
- I can choose what is important and what is not.
- It is my responsibility to filter the opinions of others through my own knowing of myself.
- It is important to give feedback from a place of caring about the person standing in front of me rather than thinking about how I might look or sound.
- I learn best when feedback is given in a positive way.
- I can hold it all lightly no matter how serious the feedback is.
Which reminds me, I also confirmed that:
Miss Burgess was really a rotten teacher and my new teacher is very good.
Come join Kat and Curtis Knecht on:
The Partners in Paradise Radio Show
KKZZ1590 AM "The Connection"
Ventura | Oxnard | Camarillo | Santa Barbara
Saturday mornings 9-10am
Call in: 805-639-0008
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