Critical Reflection

It has been yet another great couple of days at Colegio Roosevelt! I am starting to get used to the routine of fifth grade and have been able to step in and help the students as they work on their fiction stories in class. They are all so creative and have been writing impressive stories with lots of detail and dialogue. In math, they have been learning how to multiply fractions and decimals and love doing challenge problems. Mr. P likes to pose questions that have multiple answers and allow the students to struggle through it.

Yesterday, I was able to go into first grade where they made slime. The kids were so excited to think like scientists and were amazed when the two liquids turned into slime. They then learned that it was a solid and had to share why they knew that. It was a great learning experience for them and they had a lot of fun doing it!

Today, the students in Mr. P’s class all gave me advice on how to be a good teacher. On a notecard, they each put a lot of thought into their answers and gave me concrete examples like, “remember how you thought your teacher should have acted, and act that way” and “ make mistakes, but remember to apologize when you need it”. They gave detailed answers that I know they genuinely meant and it meant a lot to me to hear it right from the students. Mr. P also gave me great advice like, “be gentle on yourself your first few years, you are learning and teaching is hard. Remember the teacher you are now is not the teacher you will be in five years”. Mr. P has stressed this a lot to me during my time at Roosevelt and I think it is important to remember. Right now, everything seems great and I feel like I am ready to go out and teach well, however, I do have to realize that I am going to be challenged and that it is not always going to be easy.

In the afternoon, we went back to El Augustino where we played soccer with the kids again. They were having a practice and they let us join for the day. We practiced passing the ball, heading the ball and played a game with them. They were very understanding of how bad I was, but still managed to pass me the ball! They were also practicing English because they learn it in school. We were learning from each other and had fun while doing so!

As I write this blog post, I am engaging in critical reflection. It could improve teaching and learning because both the teachers and the students could reflect on what they know and how they know it. As a teacher, critical reflection can improve teaching when one is able to look back after a lesson and recognize strengths and weaknesses of the lesson. It is easy to focus on the negatives, however, when reflecting, either by yourself or with other teachers, it is important to notice what went well and where there is room for improvement. A self-reflection could improve teaching because the teacher could realize how they designed and taught the lesson. They could reflect on whether they asked enough questions or differentiated the lesson enough for each student.

Critical reflection could also improve learning because it involves thinking through material that is given. As Clara states, "reflection can be defined as a thinking process which gives coherence to a situation which is initially incoherent and unclear". It involves thinking about how well one understood an article or how much effort they put into learning for that day. Part of learning is recognizing that not everything is black and white. That there are many ways to interpret things and critical reflection can help one to think though the information presented. It can improve learning by providing the students the time to sit down and think about what they were presented and what that means and why they learned about it. It involves critical thinking that can be done individually or with others.

This critical reflection is so central to contemporary education because often students come to school and want to know the answers for the test and move on. Students are so focused on doing well on the test and being at the top of the class that they forget to reflect on what they are learning and why they are learning it. Reflection is necessary so that students can connect their learning to what they already know. It involves taking a step back and recognizing that what was just taught had a reason behind it. That there could be an underlying meaning that surrounds what was just taught. It is through reflection that one can figure out what that underlying meaning is.

For teaching, critical reflection is so important because the students deserve to be learning all that they need to in a way that fits their learning style. It is important for teachers to stop and think about what went well in the lesson that they just taught and where they can improve. Mr. P has provided me great insight into the importance of reflection after teaching a unit. He emphasized the fact that some lessons won’t always go the way that we plan, however, that through reflection we can find ways to improve and provide the students with the best learning experience. He said that it was in his third year when he realized that reflection was necessary to make sure that the students are receiving the best lesson and that the teacher is satisfied with the way that the class runs. I hope to use reflection in my classroom right off the bat and hope to encourage my students to reflect on their work throughout the year.

Until next time…