Choice, Feedback, and Time — Three Essentials For Learning At Any Age

By Mike Simpson

Today, Head of Middle School Tim Steffen reflects on what ingredients all students need in order to do their best work — choice, feedback, and time.  To learn more about the Middle School, be sure to check out our Middle School Curriculum Guide or contact us on our Admissions page.

When I decided to enter the field of education, my mom hugged me and said, “I’ve been praying for years that you’d be a teacher!” I asked her why she never told me this. Her reply:  “Because you had to figure it out on your own.” That was my mom. She never told me what to do with my life, but somehow her prayers were answered.

It took me a while to find my way to where I am today. Before that, I had what most would call “various jobs and occupations”, but I never felt fulfilled. Something was missing. I didn’t feel like I had a vocation. I was happy, having fun in what I was doing, but what was I offering the world? I started a film company in college and produced local TV commercials, after graduation I opened a café, then I moved to New York City to work for a video production studio. I eventually ended up at Verizon, working with the production team to film commercials and corporate videos. 

Again, I wasn’t unhappy with my work, but what was the point? I still hadn’t found my vocation.

I left corporate television and freelanced as a writer for various non-profits, writing grant proposals, raising money. I was also a development director for a non-profit dance studio in Times Square. During that time, I saw a friend at a party who was a teacher. When I mentioned that because I mostly wrote at night, I had more free time during the day than I’d ever had, she said, “You should substitute teach for my school.” That was Grace Church School, two blocks from my apartment in the East Village.

When I walked into the Grace Church kindergarten classroom for the first time and the teacher asked me to do a read-aloud of a picture book, something inside me said, “This is where you belong.” From then on, I substituted as much as possible. They hired me the following school year as a kindergarten teacher, and the next year I was teaching second grade. I’ve never looked back. I had finally found my vocation.

Vocation. It’s from the Latin word vocare, which means “to call”. A vocation is a calling. And anyone who is a dedicated teacher knows that teaching must be a calling, not a job. I was fulfilled, knowing that every day I went to school I was nurturing young minds with warmth, humor, and learning experiences that were meaningful.

When I attended graduate school at Bank Street College of Education, I learned something that would become the foundation of my educational philosophy – that children, in order to find engagement and do their best work, need three things:  choice, feedback, and time.

Choice

At first, I thought that choice was a free-for-all. It’s not. Students have to be able to write an essay, a personal narrative, learn algebra, the periodic table, understand the context of historical events, but within their studies, students should have opportunities to make choices, perhaps on topics or issues, or for how they’ll formulate and present the culmination of their studies.

Feedback

Before coming to Stone, I was a former staff developer and instructor for Teachers College at Columbia University. The biggest challenge for teachers whom I taught and coached was giving quick, meaningful feedback to students. We all need feedback. I need it, too. I want to hear what I’m doing well and what I need to work on. Students crave feedback, but students in middle and high school won’t always let you know they do. They want that one-to-one time with a teacher, a mentor, who relates to them and has one or two tips to improve the work that is within their abilities but also challenges them. The best work I did with superintendents, principals, and teachers was to get them to understand the importance of time for meetings with students to offer feedback. Once they did that, student performance and engagement improved.

Time

Students need time to do the work that we expect them to do. Another challenge in coaching teachers was getting them to shorten their lessons into mini-lessons so that students had more time to practice what they’d been taught. Direct instruction is essential, and there is often time for more traditional lectures to frontload content, but I found that if students didn’t have the time in class to do the work, get feedback from the teacher, then much was lost. When teachers made an effort to teach one skill per day, give students time to practice that skill, the results were transformative.

Choice. Feedback. Time. These are three essentials to me for learning at any age.

Lastly, Joy is the overarching essential of my educational philosophy. In an article in The Atlantic, Susan Engel writes, “You can force a child to stay in his or her seat, fill out a worksheet, or practice division. But you can’t force a person to think carefully, enjoy books, digest complex information, or develop a taste for learning. To make that happen, you have to help the child find pleasure in learning – to see school as a source of joy.”

What is joy? I believe that joy comes from choice, feedback, and time, but it also comes from work that matters. Students’ time is best used when the work they’re doing is important to them personally. It happens when faculty align their assignments and assessment to real-world outcomes, and with expectations for students to do the best work of their lives. It should be challenging and complex work. And from that comes joy.

Stone is a school that is a source of joy for students, like my mom was a source of joy for me and many others. 

Stone is a school that is a source of joy for students, like my mom was a source of joy for me and many others.

Looking back, she actually gave me choice, feedback, and time. She was my greatest teacher.