TEFL/TESOL Resource Center
Mold Negative Feedback Into More Constructive Ones
We have mentioned in my earlier write-ups that these days teachers' duties do not end with delivering lectures in the classroom and checking their answer sheets. Their duties involve counseling students and helping them to encounter any challenge. Besides, their most important job is to communicate with parents and let them know how their children are progressing academically.
If you're an English teacher and teach EFL courses online you must conduct parent-teachers meetings virtually to share your feedback regarding students. Giving feedback to parents might seem quite easy but in reality, the deal is quite the opposite. Not always do teachers have everything positive to talk about students because all students do not come from the same socio-economical background.
However, having a 120 hours TEFL course online certification will not only guide you with the best teaching methodologies but also provide parents with constructive feedback. Teaching English as a foreign language requires a huge amount of patience and teachers must be sensitive enough to deal with students. Classroom management is a very important skill and TEFL training or an online TEFL course will help you to give positive feedback and negative feedback to parents.
CONFUSED ABOUT HOW TO SHARE NEGATIVE FEEDBACK WITH PARENTS? MARK THESE WORDS!
FEEDBACK SANDWICH: The first that you should aim for is to gain the confidence of parents. If parents get the vibe that you're confused with the progress of students, they'll become more nervous. Thus, while sharing any feedback you have to use the sandwich mechanism. In this method, an ESL teacher must begin with sharing positive feedback with the parents and will gradually march towards the drawbacks.
For example, your student is a hard-working guy and is quite dedicated towards his/her education but his improvement rate is slow. Therefore, you should begin with the fact regarding his dedication level and his sheer interest in the learning process and then state the fact that his progress rate is a bit slow. Then again you can add that it is not at all recommended to lose hope in him/her as the potential the student has got is pretty enough.
GET CONVENIENT WITH PARENTS: You should always build a good rapport with parents so that the conversation between both of you will be smooth and you always do not have to answer diplomatically to them. That does not mean that you can speak very crudely with them. You might come across different types of parents where some will be attentive towards their children while others might not be.
It is quite obvious that interacting with parents who all remain busy will not be frequent but once in a month, you must have a virtual meeting with them. On the other hand, parents who are easily available at virtual meets must be communicated on a regular basis.
FOCUS ON POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES: A student can very much be indulged in studies and has the potential to learn English quite fastly but maybe his/her social skills are not so good. He/she may be a bit shy or introverted and does not know how to communicate to his fellow classmates over social media. While having a conversation with his/her parents your prime responsibility being a TEFL teacher will be to first mention the superb academic progress.
You can then come to the point that his/her social skills are quite poor and those must be worked on. Parents must be given a notion that their kids are quite efficient and intelligent. Thus in order to get them more social, certain approaches must be applied so that their communication game starts accelerating.
Giving feedback to parents thus will become easier if you follow these tips. An online TEFL teacher knows how to execute the lesson plans at the correct time using appropriate methods. At the same time, you must know how to communicate with their parents as well so that your students can shine better!