How to Give Novice Teachers Mindful, Learning-Focused Feedback

If you’re a teacher mentor, this scenario might be familiar: You sit down with a novice after a lesson observation, prepared to deliver a classic compliment sandwich. Compliment, “bad news,” then compliment.

You open by praising how well the teacher’s class handled its “do now” routine, with nearly every student responding to the bell ringer right away. Notes in hand, you continue, “I see you only had a handful of students actually involved in your class discussion; why do you think that was?”

Before you can add your planned second compliment about how efficiently students turned in their exit tickets, the novice’s shoulders drop. They mutter something about how the class was “just quiet today.” Then they pose the question that mentors hear frequently: “So what should I have done?”

This debrief conversation was a missed opportunity. Even wrapped in compliments, a question that presumes failure and expects a right answer still lands the same way. Whether you’re a teacher mentor, an administrator, or an instructional coach—and whether the person across the table is a teacher candidate, a first-year hire, or new to the school—the words you choose in post-observation conversations shape far more than the next five minutes. They shape whether a novice learns to think like a teacher or simply learns to wait for the answer.

Focus on the Learning

For veteran educators, part of our job is staying mindful about the language of learning-focused conversations. These conversations are designed to build on a teacher’s own capacity to reflect, not just to deliver a verdict. Laura Lipton and Bruce Wellman developed five specific, learnable language tools in their book Mentoring Matters—tools we could call the “five Ps.”

• Positive presuppositions: Embed the assumption that the teacher is acting with good intentions into the question itself. Withhold judgment and frame dialogue around growth, agency, and solutions, rather than deficiency.
• Pause: After a teacher speaks, the coach should deliberately take a beat before responding. This creates space for real thinking instead of a rushed reaction.
• Paraphrase: Reflect back what a teacher said, in the coach’s own words, so they know they’ve been heard. This often helps the teacher hear their own thinking more clearly.
• Probe: Invite a teacher deeper into their own reasoning rather than supplying a coach’s perspective.
• Plurals: This is perhaps the simplest and most overlooked tool. Swap singular framing (“What’s the reason?”) for plural framing (“What might be some of the reasons?”). Signal that there isn’t one right answer to try and guess.

Look again at the initial scenario I described. Both positive presuppositions and plurals were violated by the teacher mentor, invalidating the purpose of the compliment sandwich. The word “only” to describe student participation is a negative evaluation smuggled in before a question is even posed. “Why do you think that was?” asks for a single explanation as opposed to opening up a range of possibilities.

A more learning-focused version might sound like this: “What’s one of the things that stood out to you from the class discussion?” Then pause. Or, “What might be a couple of things influencing how many students jumped in?” The shift changes everything about who’s doing the thinking and about whether the teacher leaves defensive or curious.

Keep the Data Neutral

There’s a companion move worth naming here, one Michael Grinder describes in his work on nonverbal communication and classroom management: going “third point.” Instead of an observer delivering data directly (“I counted five of your 25 students verbally participating”), the observer places the data between both parties and lets the teacher interpret it first.

In practice, this might mean charting a discussion during the observation, then setting that chart on the table and asking, “I mapped today’s discussion. What do you notice?” The data becomes a neutral third party rather than the coach’s judgment, which preserves the relationship and ensures that the teacher is doing the analysis.

Incorporate a ‘Permission’ Tool, Too

Learning-focused language works beautifully when a teacher has options in mind and simply needs help surfacing them. But novice teachers often don’t have a bank of alternative strategies to draw from, and no amount of probing will surface an idea that just isn’t there. This is where a sixth “P” earns its place: permission.

A coach might ask, “Would you like to hear about a couple of moves I’ve seen other effective teachers use in this kind of situation?” The answer is almost always yes. The coach then briefly describes two or three options, drawn from other teachers’ practice or from research, and closes with, “Knowing your students best, which of these makes the most sense to try?” The teacher still makes the choice, and stays invested in it, but no longer has to invent a solution from nothing.

Notice, too, the framing: “I’ve seen other effective teachers do this” or “I’m familiar with a couple of high-leverage strategies.” Not “Well, what I’d do is…” The first framing keeps the conversation anchored to a wider body of practice, while the second quietly shifts the goal toward mimicking what the mentor would do. A mentor’s value isn’t in supplying the “right” answer, but in expanding what a novice can even consider as an option.

Leave Room for More Than One Stance

Coaching language isn’t the only tool available in a debrief. Mentoring conversations can move across a spectrum of three stances: coaching, collaborating, and consulting.

Sometimes, a direct consulting stance is necessary. A mentor shares information that a teacher may need but simply doesn’t have yet. For example, if a teacher is curious about what sort of grading approach would work well with their students, a mentor might suggest a recent title they trust. Sometimes, collaborating fits best, like when a mentor and teacher sit down together to build a lesson plan that incorporates ideas surfaced in the debrief. And there’s coaching, too.

All three stances can appear within a single conversation. Moving between them is a skill in itself. But coaching that’s built on the “five Ps,” is willing to go “third point,” and is grounded in permission-based options, should be a mentor’s default. As with any language, we get more fluent the more we practice it. Coaching is the stance most likely to leave a novice not just with an answer for tomorrow, but with the reflective habits that will serve them for the rest of their career.