Like Driving a Car: Some steps to self-evaluation
Building on the misunderstood activity; a concept that I often forget that all my students may not have practice or a lot of experience with is the skill of being able to objectively look at themselves and others to provide opportunities for improvement without being judgemental. My students have several assignments that require self and/or peer evaluation and easily 25% of them repeatedly give themselves much higher grades than they should based on the criteria of the assignment and evaluation templates.
They will have to complete employee evaluations on the job and what is becoming more common in the field is self-evaluation. But personal and professional growth can not be maximized if the individual is unable to be object and honest about themselves and those around them while still being encouraging and non-judgemental.
To learn to give objective and honest evaluations each student needs to know:
- How to describe what happened without added flourishes
- How to recognize the difference between what they want and what they deserve
- Being honest but with kindness is a key factor
- That not mentioning the actions or behaviours that are not desired does not help the person make changes and grow
- It is important to remember that a person’s behaviours are not the person; “bad” behaviour does not equal “bad” person
- Self-evaluation is always about change and not judgement
- That there is always room for improvement
- Just because something use to work or how it’s always been done, doesn’t mean it’s still the best way and that’s okay.
The attached Word document continues from the misunderstanding illustrations to provide a visual aid to help my students understand how to earn an A for their self-evaluations.
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