Reflection Can Improve Your Teaching

Joel of So You Can Teach? talks about how blogging helps him become a better teacher and his number one reason is for self reflection. I feel that self reflection should be a major tool in our teaching toolbox. When I was working towards my National Board Certification, this played a big part of the process and I realized this helped me become a much better teacher. Reflection made me thing about what I was doing and why was I doing it. By linking it to a standard or having a concrete reason for asking students to do something made me be more accountable. It made me really focus on having a strong reason for my actions and my students’ actions. If I couldn’t come up with a valid reason (backed up by research or data), then I shouldn’t be wasting anyone’s time doing whatever I was doing. I needed to make sure my instruction was valid and relevant. I liked to think that I was a good teacher and didn’t just do things that were considered busy work but this made me more aware of my actions. Once I got into the habit of this reflection, I noticed that it became more natural when planning my lessons. My reflection also helped me catch glitches or problems before I actually taught the lesson which again helped me become a better teacher. By being a better teacher, my students were more successful.