This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 2 30 of the cult of pedagogy podcast.

In this episode, we'll learn about a type of surveying that gathers better quality information than the traditional survey.

It's called Symantic Pulse Surveying and it has the

potential to really give your school climate a boost. We have a lot of conversations about what should be done to make schools better.

In these conversations, I hear a lot of ideas and I have a lot of ideas.

But I think there's one practice that should be done by any school that wants to improve and it's simple

and free. Ask the people who are directly affected. The students and teachers in your

building are the best sources of data on how things are going in your school.

When they feel heard, when they believe that their input matters, the climate of your school

just gets better.

And one of the simplest and most effective ways to make that happen is with a survey.

I've been a big advocate of surveys for a long time.

I have advised teachers to regularly seek feedback from students and I've urged principals to get feedback from their teachers.

The kinds of surveys I recommended were pretty much what you'd expect.

Some multiple choice questions and a lot of Lickert scale items where you have to choose an item

from say 1 to 5 or a word on a scale that ranges from always to sometimes to never.

I also recommended including some open-ended questions to make room for topics that weren't covered

elsewhere.

But earlier this year I saw a different kind of survey that intrigued me. I was wandering through the

Expo Hall at the South by Southwest EDU conference in Austin, Texas, and I walked up to this

booth where a few iPads were mounted on stands.

On one of them was the question, how are you doing?

...