Few educators would argue that they don’t benefit from refining their skills and practices. Whether it’s through professional development programs, mentorship, or informal collaborations with peers, continuous learning is critical not only for an educator’s growth but also for their students’ skills and learning (Venista & Brown, 2023).
A key aspect of this ongoing development is feedback. No matter the learning environment or the specific role of an educator, the goal of receiving feedback is to enhance instructional practices and improve student outcomes. Better teaching makes for better learning experiences; better leadership makes for better work environments.
Equally important is the opportunity for staff to provide their input on those programs designed to support their work with students. Educators – including substitute teachers – value having a say in school programming that tangibly benefits their school community. Guest staff play a vital role in a district or school’s continuous improvement efforts. But what are the most effective ways to collect feedback from transient team members, and why does their input matter?
Let’s take a look.
Feedback is either direct or indirect. Direct input focuses on improving a specific need, skill, or challenge, and is often highly targeted, pinpointing exactly where and how to make changes. Indirect feedback is less precise and usually less prescriptive for how to make improvements but allows the recipient to build their skills by independently addressing highlighted areas.
Imagine a teacher reviewing a student’s writing assignment. This educator will likely offer direct feedback by making precise changes to sentence structure, word spelling, and punctuation. They may also add indirect input by leaving notes about unclear passages or opportunities for improving the flow of content.
Both types of feedback are powerful and necessary to improve any form of school programming.
Common Types of Feedback Loops
Whether staff are aware or not, they already engage in some form of feedback as part of their roles within a school or district. Here are a few ways that educators may experience feedback:
Another type of feedback involves quantitative metrics like student, classroom, and school academic performance data. But remember, many factors beyond instructional practices influence these data.
Take student academic performance, for instance. While teaching methodologies impact achievement, so too do students’ physical or mental health, circumstances at home, their school’s culture, and so on. When examining performance data as part of feedback loops, avoid overemphasizing any individual metric over other sources.
Substitute Feedback Matters, Too
Feedback given to and collected from full-time staff is important, but there is also great value in creating input loops with more transient team members.
But why spend resources and time gathering insights from substitutes?
At their core, feedback loops are not just about improving practice or driving program outcomes. They are necessary communication strategies that cultivate trust — between students and their teachers, among instructional staff, or across the entire school community.
Further, substitutes bring unique, outside viewpoints to an organization. Fresh perspectives can surface new insights and opportunities for improvement in school programming.
Last, feedback loops contribute to a sense of belonging among educators, including substitute staff. Asking for their input sends the message to guest staff that they are just as much a part of a teaching community as their full-time colleagues.
Creating space for substitutes to contribute to the schools they support ensures districts attract and retain these critical team players, ultimately improving absence coverage.
As with collecting any feedback, you’ll want to consider:
Let’s unpack these considerations in greater detail and explore practical ways to build effective feedback loops with substitute staff.
1. Define What You and Your Substitutes Gain from Feedback Loops
Start by defining how you envision the ideal substitute experience. You can ask yourself questions like:
By clarifying your organization’s vision for substitute teaching, you can isolate how feedback loops contribute toward enacting it. This exercise will also help you identify the kind of input you need to collect and how frequently to gather it.
Both quantitative and qualitative data help measure if programs are moving toward or away from your vision. With Red Rover, district administrators gain access to comprehensive metrics to help guide planning and improvements to substitute and absence management. You can leverage predesigned reports, such as our popular Substitute Pool Health report, or dig directly into data to create your own. These metrics perfectly complement substitute feedback collected through other methods.
2. Pinpoint How and Where Feedback Loops Weave into Programming
With your vision in mind, identify what key questions you need to answer through these feedback loops. For example, if retaining current substitute staff is your priority, ask guest teachers to share their top three reasons why they accept assignments at your schools — and the most common detractors dissuade them.
The nature of your questions will also guide when and how to collect this information. Smaller organizations may prefer a “high touch” strategy, leaning into one-on-one and in-person conversations or comment boxes to source substitutes’ feedback. Larger organizations often streamline this process using digital survey tools to collect a representative sample.
Whatever method your team employs, communicate frequently with guest staff about how they can share feedback!
Your guiding questions also inform how you’ll analyze the data you gather. Imagine your team creates a survey for gathering substitute feedback about a new training program offered. Open-ended survey questions are great for getting a sense of substitutes’ overall experience and leave room for additional insights to filter through. However, they are also challenging to analyze at scale and aren’t as helpful for quickly isolating patterns as other types are, like multiple-choice questions. It’s up to you to decide which survey question types best fit.
There are no right or wrong ways to gather substitute feedback. What’s more important is matching the purpose and future use of this feedback with the kind of data you need.
3. “Beta Test” for More Detailed, Specific Input
Sometimes, education leaders need highly targeted feedback to improve a specific program or process designed for the substitute experience. Jamie West, Non-Instructional Recruitment Partner at Lake County Schools, advocates for educators to adopt “beta testing” strategies in such cases.
During her AASPA webinar about substitute professional development, West shared how she carefully selected five substitute managers across campuses to give ongoing input as her team iterated upon a new “substitute boot camp” program:
Here are a few ways you can weave targeted beta testing into substitute feedback loops:
4. ALWAYS Close Your Feedback Loops
By definition, a feedback loop is — well, a loop! Meaning, it is a continuous cycle of information flow and communication.
The first half of this loop concentrates on gathering feedback from substitutes and sharing it among key stakeholders. As you design your feedback loops, clarify who in your organization needs to see it beyond the HR team. For example:
The second half of the loop requires sharing back with substitute staff — effectively closing the circuit. No matter the size of its impact, showing how guest staff’s feedback factored into program changes is essential to retain their trust and maintain positive relationships with them.
Here are a few tips as you prepare ways to close these feedback loops:
Sometimes feedback received can feel uncomfortable or create tension, but it’s a critical part of the improvement process. When educators lean into these tough moments, it cultivates greater trust with staff and often identifies the real root of that tension. Explore the power of stepping into discomfort when crafting feedback loops.
5. Integrate Full-Time and Substitute Staff Feedback for Cross-Pollination
Collecting and analyzing feedback from both full-time and assignment-based roles can reveal when training is needed across your entire organization. Better still, you may discover ways to cross-pollinate knowledge and skills among all staff based on shared opportunities for growth.
For instance, consider creating an optional training open to all staff about in-demand topics like trauma-informed teaching. Or, encourage campuses to form casual learning communities with a mix of substitutes and full-time staff who are interested in practical classroom management skills.
The possibilities for cross-pollination are endless. By collectively acting on input from all staff, you’ll foster a sense of community among teachers, regardless of their roles.
Anytime you ask someone to give input, you are also asking for their time, attention, and energy. Creating a delightful, streamlined, and easy substitute management experience makes these kinds of requests much easier.
Join forces with Red Rover to ensure your K-12 workforce management systems are seamless for everyone. Learn more about our solutions for everything from absence management to hiring (and beyond).