Does feedback get easier over time?

[Snowflakewater]

I found that before teaching when I was in another progression targets would always be from us. In that we would decide how we develop.

Whereas I’ve been finding feedback from others hard to take sometimes. My lead practitioner was in on the observation and so was the mentor. The LP said upon my feedback a couple of weeks ago “your mentor was definitely more critical in Their feedback than me”

I did then wonder at that point why my mentor was quite so harsh. He’s my replacement mentor since my last one left and we get on very well in general. He’s a pretty new teacher himself, and not done this role before. I had about the same number of WWW’s as EBI’s.

I just feel it’s hard when you get along with someone very well, it’s difficult to seperate the feedback. My LP only had 3 points for each. Although she did say “often new mentors are very in depth with feedback”

So I am wondering if that could be why he was rather critical? I think overall the new profession for me along with constant development can be quite hard.

Teaching is quite hard.
My job as a mentor is to make my mentees the very best they can be. Sometimes that requires a lot of targets.
It might also be how they're phrased. If you've got a behaviour issue, for example, I might write "work on strategies for dealing with low level disruption". I might also split that into several more areas, depending on how much support I thought was needed.
As an ECT, how you want to develop is not really the most important thing. That will come later.

tbh I think that being a mentor is something that teachers are not really trained for. I remember doing a joint observation with a university mentor for a student. She was much less critical than I would have been and I realised afterwards that I was comparing the student with how I would have approached something. You don't have to be like him or have the same style. It is important to make sure you are looking at the teaching outcome for students. I recently did some training on carrying out learning walks and it did make me re-evaluate some of my judgements. It is also the case that you will gain experience and change and develop your approach. Again, I think some teachers have unreasonable expectations of students in some respects. Anyway, my recommendation is to smile and nod. Take the feedback on board if you can. Also remember that most people's lessons do not go perfectly.

Well I think for me I feel like my mentor is a perfectionist so the feedback was so so long. I was a bit hurt when the LP said it’s quite critical, literally they had abiuy 3 points for each whereas my mentor had a fair few for both areas.

It was even harder to take considering I do get on with them well.

It was even harder to take considering I do get on with them
Getting on with your mentor should not mean they can't be critical of you. I mentored a very dear friend: when she needed to be told that things needed to be improved, that was my job.

Yeah I guess, I think taking feedback can be difficult especially when you can’t emulate someone else’s teaching methods which is what I did find was coming through in the feedback. A lot of it was similar to what they would do with theirs.

But I do see yours point how I see them personally needs to be separate. It’s something I need to work on anyway to be honest.