Reflective Teaching
My professional
goal this year is to be more reflective. Reflective teaching, as most educators
know, is really just the practice of taking a few moments at the end of the day
to produce some sort of artifact demonstrating that you have thought about your
lessons that day. Many teachers naturally think about what they have taught. For
me, that is usually in the car on the way home while I metaphorically kick myself
for not having the best comeback to a snarky comment I got from that one
student. It isn’t a productive kind of reflection; you might just categorize it
as a sort of “decompression” or “venting” exercise. But this year I have made a
promise to myself that I would be more productive in my reflection. The result
of my goal-setting, as it turns out, has become another tool for my students.
At the end
of the day, I take about five minutes to review and reflect on the lessons I
taught. I already write too much, so I thought I would just do a bit of a vlog
and record my stream-of-consciousness reflections. After I did the first one, I
realized I was summarizing the lesson and, in a way, I was being pretty candid
about the lesson I had taught, sharing some highs and lows of the lesson. I
watched the first vlog and immediately thought that I would just post this on
Youtube and make it available to my students. Within about ten minutes of
starting my reflective teaching strategy, I was already thinking about how I
can better serve my students.
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| The Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St. Nicholas in Galway, Co. Galway, Ireland. Even in the midst of His own passion, Jesus seems to stop and shoe great concern for the women. He never ceases to Love, no matter how difficult. We teachers can learn from Him how to take a few extra moments. (photo P. Smith) |
The other day I was teaching my 9th grade students about Grace. There are some Graces that God offers to everyone, and then there are other Graces that God offers to individuals based in that person’s unique needs. Those kind of Graces are sometimes called “Actual Graces”. These videos will be ignored by nearly all of my students; I am confident of that. But if one students takes a few minutes to watch a video and if that video helps them with their individual needs in my class, then it will be worth it. I suppose it is not too far a stretch to say that this method, when viewed through a meta-pedagogical lens, is really just another opportunity to show how teachers can, in fact, show the image and likeness of God in the way they offer their lessons, both to the whole class and to individual students. Most of us do this, but this means we build our lessons to reach all the students, and when that lesson fails to connect with one or two or eight students, we take the time to work with them in a way that will best help them learn. It is the practice of validating their uniqueness. It is the practice of offering Love to all our students, both as a group and as individuals. Maybe my videos will connect with a few students. Maybe they will see in my methodology a shadow of what God looks like when He invites us into relationship with Him, not just collectively, but also individually.
Wow, I love the idea of vlogging and getting students to participate in the reflective process. If you really want to engage them, you might try Flipgrid. I just discovered it and will be implementing it (fingers crossed) in my classroom next week.
ReplyDeletePosted by Marjie Weldele
DeleteThanks for the suggestion! I will look into it. Good luck. Let me know how it works out.
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