Mirror Mirror on the wall, who's the greatest teacher of all?

Reflection

Every day we do see our reflection in the mirror as we are getting ready to start a new day. But do we reflect upon our actions and responsibilities in the same manner as we reflect upon our physical reflection?  As teachers, daily reflections upon our actions and teachings are crucial for the success of our students and us as educators.

A teacher’s job is to open up the mind of a student, to allow them to learn and then flourish with the learning process to explore even more.  Learning never ends, even for adults.  We are lifelong learners and teachers especially need to recognize this. 

            At Mount Saint Mary College, I have implemented lessons to students that have been successful and others not as much. I then sit back and painfully reflect upon what went wrong. Some people see this as failure; I see this as opportunity just as Henry Ford says, "Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." I think about what did not flow smoothly, was I not clear enough in my directions or was the task uninteresting. I take into account the actions of the students; were they not motivated to do the activity, were they talking and not paying attention or were they finding the lesson too difficult to comprehend. This immediate reflection will help me become a better educator. I can then tailor future lessons and make them fit into the classroom better. According to John Dewey (2014), "We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience" (p.1). According to Dewey key concepts include:

• “Learning from direct experience can be more effective if coupled with reflection-that is, the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.
• Reflecting on what has been learned makes experience more productive.
• Reflection builds one's confidence in the ability to achieve a goal (i.e., self-efficacy), which in turn translates into higher rates of learning” (2014, p. 1).

            A teacher, who recognizes that reflection is part of the everyday job, will learn how to become a master teacher for most of their students. A carpenter can build 1,000 coffee tables but if the legs are weak, he will have 1,000 useless coffee tables. A teacher can keep teaching to the students but if done ineffectively, the students are not learning; they will be like the ineffective coffee tables. A true educator needs to refine lessons even as they are being taught.  Each educator starts out with lesson plans. We have the goal for the lesson and the path to follow. However; unlike an ordinary road, we cannot just follow the map and get to our destination. We could experience roadblocks, hazards and traffic to slow us down. Our students are these variables. Each child learns differently and lessons need to be adjusted accordingly. Some students need a visual approach while others need an auditory approach. A teacher needs to reflect upon the lesson being taught and learn to stop and reteach whenever the moment arises.  Once a lesson is complete, a teacher needs a checkpoint and needs to ask, “Did my students understand the lesson at hand?” Through this reflection, an educator can then either proceed or turn around to clarify things until full understanding is attained.

           Just as Walt Disney stated, “Whenever I go on a ride, I'm always thinking of what's wrong with the thing and how it can be improved”, teachers need to think along these same thoughts.

§   How can I improve my instruction?  

§  How can I get more student engagement?

§  How can I promote higher-level thinking?

§  How can I continue to have my students ask me more questions?

§  How can I be the best teacher to every type of learner?

            Reflection can be done in many ways. Educators need to learn how to modify lessons as they are teaching them.  Reflections here are done on the spot, an educator sees the reactions of the students and either reteaches a concept or continues on. Lessons can be modified as the teacher is teaching.  An educator can work on daily reflections. “How did the day go and did I achieve my goals for the day?” These daily reflections can then be answered with a follow up from the students the next day to see what true understanding of the prior day’s lesson was. Unit reflections can be obtained after an assessment was given. “How did my students do on the assessment? Did they gain a true understanding of the lesson goals? What did they understand easily and what area did they have the most difficulty with? Did I spend adequate time for the students to digest the material and did they have enough practice to master it correctly?"

           

Teachers can also collaborate together and reflect.  How did your lessons go and compare them to mine.  Collaboration can help identify weaknesses and strengths of lessons.  Collaboration and reflection allows different points of view and opinions.  This can be a great tool for an educator.  I reflect upon my schoolwork with my peers and gain more insightful ways of tackling tasks. Peer reflection can be very helpful if done in a non-competitive manner.  

Robert Meehan, one of the nation’s leading voices for teaching states, "When we strive to become better teachers than we are, everyone in our classroom becomes better too" (Teacher Appreciation, 2000, p.4). Reflection however is a true process. An educator has to spend time to think of the lesson taught and list good key points and areas that need improvement. These areas for improvement then need to be addressed either using a different style of teaching, addressing different motivators, or just starting over from scratch to teach for full effectiveness. This process takes work. If our initial way did not work, we as educators have to turn around and take a different path.  These paths are sometimes not as well known and can be harder to do. Once we recognize the weakness in a lesson and believe we have another method, an educator must then implement this new method and again reflect to see if this way was more productive. We always have to reflect and modify. Even as we believe our teaching style has become mastery, an educator needs to remember the audience from year to year does change. As environment change and students change, so must teaching styles.  Teaching methods that worked well decades ago may not be effective now for the current time and the current student. "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow"(Dewey, 2015, p.1). Teachers need to be able to reflect upon this and continually modify plans. A good educator, constantly reflect; even those teachers who have been teaching for decades.  

I personally self-reflection on my work throughout the semester. You can see from previous blog post that I self-reflected on my direct, inquiry, and cooperative lessons I taught with Lindsay on the causes of the American Revolution. This helped me realize what worked and what I should change for next time or how to approach it differently. In my Distributed Learning technology class, I am creating an eClass on Summer Reading. I am learning how to use this software, however I also learned throughout the semester how important it is to self-reflect. Dr. Lazarevic had each student provide constructive feedback to each other using wiki. I had to create a YouTube video of my self-reflection based on the eClass I am creating. Although it took time to self-reflect, once I finished the video I added more information, files, videos, resources, etc. to my eClass. I went back to the video to see what else I mentioned that I should fix or include. This video motivated me and I felt accomplished after adding more detail and resources to my eClass. 

This self-reflecting was very beneficial for me because I had a before image and after image. I still have to work on finalizing my eClass, however I have come a long way since I made that self-reflection video above. Reflecting can help everyone achieve more and use mistakes as a learning experience. In the future when I begin to teach, I may try something that does not work for my students, however I am challenging myself to try it because I want challenge my students to enhance their learning. I can only learn from experience because if I do not try it, I will not know if it works or not. Reflecting will allow me to achieve my future goals in my teaching career. 

Thank you for reading,

Works Cited

Bernstein, K. (2013, July 11). The Reflective Practice of Teaching - Whole Child Education. Retrieved April 5, 2015, from http://www.wholechildeducation.org/blog/the-reflective-practice-of-teaching

Best, T. (2015). "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." Retrieved April 5, 2015, from http://pioneer.teamcfa.org/staff_pages/tony_best/view/33653/if_we_teach_today_as_we_taught_yesterday_we_rob_our_children_of_tomorrow

Bosi, N. (2015, March 28). Nicole's Self Reflection. Retrieved April 5, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKdt1cwPvXw

Clements, M. (n.d.). The Importance of Reflection in Education. Retrieved April 5, 2015, from http://www.edunators.com/index.php/becoming-the-edunator/step-5-reflecting-for-learning/the-importance-of-reflection-in-education

Henry Ford. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved April 5, 2015, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henryford121339.html

Kelly, M. (n.d.). The Importance of Teacher Reflection. Retrieved April 5, 2015, from http://712educators.about.com/od/teacherresources/a/Importance-Of-Teacher-Reflection.htm

Stefano, G. D., Gino, F., Pisano, G., & Staats, B. (2014, April 11). Learning By Thinking: How Reflection Improves Performance. Retrieved April 5, 2015, from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7498.html

Teacher Appreciation Quotes And Sayings. (2000). Retrieved April 5, 2015, from http://www.allinspiration.com/a/teacher-appreciation-quotes-and-sayings/4/

Walt Disney. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved April 5, 2015, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waltdisney131639.html