Teaching Students to Accept Criticism
by Pat Hensley
I really don’t think we teach our students how to accept criticism and learn from it. Most teens get
defensive and shut down, but learning from criticism can be a positive experience if we choose for that to
happen.
When I was trying to get my students into the work place, one of the items on their evaluations was a
question about accepting criticism. This was a pretty broad statement. By accepting criticism from an
employer, I wanted them to listen without becoming defensive, listen without giving excuses, listen to find
out what they needed to do differently, and then actually do things differently to make the boss happy. I
think I was expecting too much out of my students without actually teaching them all of those steps
separately. A student isn’t born knowing these steps and needs to be taught them. This is such an important
skill to learn in order to keep a job.
One of my biggest challenges was teaching my students with autism to accept criticism. They usually saw
things in black or white and there was no gray area. It was really hard for them to understand that
sometimes they had to act differently in various situations. One of my students worked in a medical records
office where he filed all of the medical folders. He was exactly on time to work, took his lunch time at the
allotted time and returned back to work promptly. When it was time to leave at the end of the day, he left
exactly when it was time to leave. He was such an excellent worker and was doing a great job. I was
approached by the employer about one little problem, though. Apparently he had learned that doctors were
supposed to update the records by a certain time (I guess it was office policy), and some of them didn’t do
that, so my student scolded doctors who didn’t follow this rule. We had to have a conference to explain to
my student that he did not have the authority to scold the doctors. Of course, my student argued that the
“rule” needed to be followed and had trouble accepting this criticism. We finally compromised by agreeing
that following rules was important, but there was also a rule that you could scold only people who work
under you and not people that you work for. This seemed to click with my student, and he was able to move
on.
I think it is important to teach students different coping skills so that they can handle criticism they receive.
Many times they take criticism as a personal attack, and sometimes they need to learn to step back from the
words and look at the big picture. They need to stop thinking that criticism means they are bad people and
look for the behaviors that this criticism is addressing. It is alright to admit that criticism hurts our feelings
because that is normal, but we need to move past the hurt feelings in order to learn from them.
My students always learned best if I could come up with a procedure or steps for them to follow. So here
are the steps that I think helped them.
If you are criticized:
1. Listen without interrupting. Keep an open mind and really listen without thinking about why you did
what you did. Do not take what ^H\