12. Reflection
Candidate demonstrates the ability to use reflection as a tool to improve his or her professional skills.
Reflection is a great tool for teachers with any amount of experience. It is useful to reflect on what worked and what did not work from year to year. This is a good tool especially for beginning teachers because if a teacher is able to reflect on a lesson that they just taught, talking about what went right and what went wrong, the new teacher will only improve the lesson by not repeating any ‘what didn’t work’ portions of the lesson. The lesson plan format that I use has a space for me to put any reflections that I want to add which makes it easier to keep up with from year to year. My lesson plan template
An example of how reflection has helped me better my teaching is during my first year teaching I would write notes about how a lesson went. I just wrote them on a legal pad and I really did not see the point to doing this but I did it. My second year teaching I looked back at those notes and made the adjustments that I needed to do to better the lesson. I found that I was not only a better teacher but I had more confidence when I was teaching because I had taught the topic before and I could remember how it went by the reflections I left. Now that I am in my fourth year teaching, I still leave notes to myself about what and how I taught but primarily unit-by-unit now instead of day by day.
Interactions with parents are a big thing to reflect about. I look at the way that my team members work with parents and I take it all in. I try to look at each encounter that I have with a parent as a learning experience. I have a FAQ toolbox of how to deal with parents now and I am still working on the other types of questions that parents ask like if the content is to hard or not hard enough and classroom the theory behind policies and practices.
