SBI Feedback: The Fastest Way to Make It Less Personal

Renata Salas

Welcome to the show everybody! I'm Renata Salas, here with Colin Whitfield. And Colin, I need to start with a confession: last night at about 10:00 PM, I was grading eighth-grade persuasive essays, and on at least four different drafts, I wrote the exact same two words: "be specific." [sighs] And as soon as I wrote it, I knew it was utterly useless.

Colin Whitfield

Useless, but [chuckles] entirely understandable, Renata. The "be specific" paradox is real. We tell students to be specific because their writing is vague, but our feedback telling them to fix it is... well, equally vague. It's like telling a lost driver to "just navigate better." They don't know where the turn is.

Renata Salas

Exactly! They just look at "be specific" and think, "If I knew how to do that, Renata, I would have done it the first time!" [laughs] But I was reading Larry Ferlazzo’s Education Week column from June 18th, 2026, and he highlighted a model that completely reframes this. It's called SBI -- Situation, Behavior, Impact.

Colin Whitfield

Ah, yes, SBI. That actually comes out of the Center for Creative Leadership, from their "Feedback That Works" curriculum. It was designed to close the gap between what we intend to communicate and the actual psychological impact on the receiver. It's all about separating objective description from subjective interpretation.

Renata Salas

Right, and Ferlazzo shared this perfect three-part example of how a teacher would actually say it: "In your third paragraph..." that's the Situation. "You restated your thesis instead of advancing it..." that's the Behavior. "And the reader loses your argument's momentum." That is the Impact.

Colin Whitfield

[thoughtfully] Look at how clean that is. "The reader loses your argument's momentum." That isn't a moral judgment on the student's work ethic; it's a structural cause-and-effect. But Renata, I have to ask: this comes from the Center for Creative Leadership. That's a corporate executive training ground. Why on earth does a framework built for Fortune 500 boardrooms translate so perfectly to a seventh-grade English classroom?

Renata Salas

Because whether you're a thirty-five-year-old VP or a twelve-year-old middle schooler, being corrected makes your defenses go straight up. [chuckles] Our brains are wired to protect our egos. When you strip away the judgment and just show the mechanics of what happened, the defensiveness evaporates.

Colin Whitfield

Right, so let's look at the mechanics of this four-line script, because there is a very strict sequence here. It's Situation, Behavior, Impact, and then -- this is the classroom secret sauce -- you add a fourth line: Intent. But let's start with Situation. The absolute rule here is that the situation cannot be "in general" or "during class." It has to be a single, tiny, observable point in time.

Renata Salas

Yes! Like "during the lab transition at 10:15," or "in your second body paragraph." If you can't point your finger at a specific clock time or a specific line of text, you haven't defined the Situation.

Colin Whitfield

Exactly. And then you move to Behavior, and this is where we have to do some serious self-editing as teachers. If your draft feedback contains the words "lazy," "rude," or "careless," you've failed the Behavior line. You have to replace those adjectives with what you literally saw or heard. Instead of "you were rude to your partner," it's "you cut Marcus off twice before he finished his sentence."

Renata Salas

Oof. [chuckles] "You cut Marcus off twice." That is so much harder to argue with than "you're being rude." Because if you tell a kid they're being rude, they immediately say, "No I wasn't!" But if you say "you cut him off twice," they're like... "Oh. Yeah, I did."

Colin Whitfield

Quite. It's data, not drama. And then you deliver the Impact, which has to be concrete and audience-specific. If it's writing, the impact is "the reader loses the thread." If it's group work, it's "Marcus stopped participating for the rest of the period." You're showing them the ripple effect of the behavior.

Renata Salas

And then you close with that fourth step: the Intent question. "What was your goal there?" or "What were you hoping would happen?" I had to use this last week with a student, Leo. During a group project, he grabbed the marker out of another student's hand. Old me would have said, "Leo, stop being bossy and share."

Colin Whitfield

[chuckles] And what did new, SBI-method Renata say?

Renata Salas

[warmly] I took him aside and said: "When we started the poster design, you pulled the blue marker out of Sarah's hand. The impact was that Sarah sat back and didn't write anything else for the rest of the group work. What was your intent?" And Colin, he looked at me and said, "She was spelling the word wrong, and I was nervous we'd lose points, and I didn't know how to tell her."

Colin Whitfield

Fascinating. [reflective] So the behavior wasn't "bossiness" at all -- it was anxiety about spelling. But without that Intent question, you would have punished the "bossiness," he would have felt misunderstood and resentful, and the actual problem -- the spelling anxiety -- would have stayed completely unaddressed.

Renata Salas

Exactly. It changed everything. So, for teachers listening who want to try this tomorrow, we have a challenge. Don't try to rewrite your entire grading system overnight. Just pick one student conference, or even just one written comment on a single draft, and apply the SBI test.

Colin Whitfield

Yes, let's make it a diagnostic test. If you look at your written comment and you can't point to a specific, physical moment, your Situation line is too vague. If your Behavior line has a judgment word like "careless" or "unfocused," it needs a rewrite. And if your Impact line just says "this is bad" or "fix this," you haven't actually named the effect on the reader or the classroom.

Renata Salas

And look, if you are staring at forty essays and your brain is too fried to write these out, use AI as your partner. Open up your LLM of choice and type: "Rewrite this teacher comment using the Situation-Behavior-Impact feedback structure." Put in your messy, tired note, and let the model do the heavy lifting of separating the behavior from the judgment.

Colin Whitfield

That is a brilliant, practical use of AI. It's using technology to scale empathy, really. [pauses] But it leaves us with a lingering question, doesn't it? If we start using SBI to lower defensiveness and make intent and impact visible... what actually changes first in your classroom? Is it the student's response, your own tone as a teacher, or the sheer speed at which feedback actually gets acted on?

Renata Salas

[thoughtfully] That is the question to take into tomorrow morning. Let us know what changes first in your room. I'm Renata Salas.

Colin Whitfield

And I'm Colin Whitfield. Until next time.