BECOMING A REFLECTIVE TEACHING PRACTITIONER

As Maggie Gallagher says: "of all the hard jobs around, one of the hardest is being a good teacher", teaching has countless challenges. Teachers endeavor to have a great impact on their students and leverage learning by trying different techniques and strategies, making or downloading worksheets, asking for ideas, etc.  During their career, they need to reflect on their efforts and work. This reflection is highly recommended to find out what works best and what needs improvements. This reflection keeps their results improving cumulatively.

There are three considerable benefits from becoming a reflective teaching practitioner; improve performance, teacher's confidence, and self-esteem and being a reference.

As teachers do their routine chores, they encounter certain challenges that call for solutions. These challenges may include law academic achievements, misbehavior, reinforcements, and so on. By reflecting on them, teachers can find out the reasons behind that. Therefore, they reach decisions which help to solve these difficulties or at least they find a way around them. Another benefit from reflecting is to keep self-esteem high. Since teachers continue dealing with problems they face every day and are able to go over most of these challenges, they build strong confidence. This growing confidence serves as an immune system against some disappointments and challenges. The third benefit of being reflective teaching practitioner is to build an experienced skilled character by accumulating achievements and resolving problems. Day by day, that teacher builds a long list of valuable techniques and skills that serve best in teaching.

Recording your lesson, ask someone to watch and use some questionnaire are examples of tools for applying reflection on teaching.

Recording your lesson gives an opportunity for deep reflection. It shows some blind spots. It is a chance to take time and ponder over a teacher's performance. In addition, it makes him more aware of some slips and confirms good things he has achieved. The second tool is to ask someone to observe. When asking a colleague, a supervisor or anyone to watch you. It shows you another point of view. They may suggest different ideas and you certainly benefit from their experience. In addition, they may show you certain strong points in your style and strategies that have been overlooked. The third tool is applying a questionnaire. Using a questionnaire which can be filled out by a colleague, students or a teacher can evaluate himself (self-evaluation) highlights points of strength and weakness.  One advantage of using questionnaire is that the points you evaluate against usually are adopted from a reliable source. Therefore, you do not have to decide or think of what should be included. They are already there. Furthermore, it is simpler than other methods which take time and need the help of others.

Practicing reflection on teaching paves the way for more success in a teacher's journey. It an ongoing process. Year after year, the practitioner uncovers the precious benefits.