The Effects Of My Professional Decisions And Actions On Students Through Self Reflective Journals

Kelley Dawson Salas’ “Time to Learn” (2010) is filled with examples of the setbacks and discouragements she faced throughout her first year of teaching. While she did not mention this, I am sure that many of those obstacles have followed her throughout her thirty-year career. What I found most encouragement in is her advice to not “…get too down on yourself; maintain high expectations but take time and space to develop your skills” (p.16). There will no doubt be many disappointments in our professional lives but it is crucial to remember why we chose to teach and focus on bettering ourselves. Being too self deprecating will never lead to improvements, but high expectations along with positive self criticism will allow us to grow as educators.

As I strived to be a transformational coach who then influences CMs to be transformational teacher, I reflected constantly. In my independent and often painful self-reflections, I had to be true to what was happening and act upon what was happening to influence teacher and student level change. Part of acting was seeking out knowledge and opportunities to build skill. Specific examples include the learning opportunities provided in my overall story. Whenever there was an opportunity to learn, I would definitely seize it.

Hi Colleen, You have explained about self-reflection in nutshell. Nice post. I was fortunate enough to go to library and read journaling in autobiography of the historians and leaders of the country in school age. The single bit of their message used to be thought provoking and enriched with practical values in human life. Reading of those literature taught me to be disciplined and led me to travel in pathway to success. You mentioned that Journaling is one of the great way to do self-reflection. That is true, everyone might have experienced the same. I encourage the journaling for the younger ones to begin with, so that self-realization, actualization take place to identify our strength and weakness in difficult times. Personal and professional

Self- assessment has been shown to be effective strategies to support both student learning and self- regulation (Harris and Brown, 2013). Harris and Brown found that students were able to self- monitor and make corrections to their behavior on a regular basis after they assessed their own writing entries. This finding is supported by an earlier research on how nursing students use diary writing to develop a reflective practice (Richardson and Maltby, 1995). The critical result of this study was that writing of a reflective diary does promote student reflection and ongoing self-monitoring.

There are several great tools that are available for self assessment that are provided to students by Bethel University in the read section of unit 2. (Bethel University, 2013) When I think of self assessment, I think of self improvement. I feel that the general desire of people to enhance themselves both mentally and physically is the primary purpose of conducting a self assessment.

It is vital to have a professional reflective journal that helps record thoughts and insights about their personal learning experience and reflect on how you are developing yourself as a professional and specify the problems and concern you may have. It gives confidence to students to review and consolidate learning, to evaluate performance, to plan future learning based on past learning experience. In that way, students become proficient to make charges of their own learning, and develop themselves independent ultimate learners.

“Creating a profession of teaching in which teachers have the opportunity for continual learning is the likeliest way to inspire greater achievement for children, especially those for whom education is the only pathway to survival and success” (Sumner, 2011, p. 10). Educators today are required to have a different set of skills to effectively prepare students to be global competitors in the workplace. Educators cannot make these alterations in teaching methodology and instructional delivery without support. Coaches support and encourage teachers, improve teacher strategies, promote teacher reflection, and focus on desired outcomes (Sumner, 2011). A key

One of the many things that I have learned through teaching young people is that time goes by a lot faster. In reflecting from my field teaching lessons, I realized that there were many things that I was pleased with, but I also realized that there were many things I know I need to work on. Watching a video of you teach a class is the absolute best way to self-evaluate yourself. We are most critical of ourselves when we can see our work played back to us. This experience has not only been helpful in my teaching methods, but it has helped me to establish a more professional and authoritative essence in the classroom.

As an aspiring educator, I always find it valuable to reflect on work. I think that this is a skill that we, as teachers, need to use often and appropriately. Additionally, in the teaching profession, we will be collaborating a great deal with other professions, so I like that we were given the opportunity to reflect on our own

The last phase was that the teacher-researcher maintained a reflective journal which they used for recording information, observations, and conversations on days where there were mini-lessons and when students wrote in their journals

The purpose of this journal is to be aware of what I learn in this course. In this reflection I am trying to write down some of my thinking that I have been through while doing this course. Through this I become able to make sense of what I did and how it help me to do better in future. I personally believe that the process of writing journal is in itself very useful because it makes sure that I really listen carefully in class.

It has now come to my understanding that as a trainee teacher, it is vital that I become a reflective practitioner when fostering the role of a teacher. In support of this, Tripp (2012, p.12) adds that being reflective is an ‘essential’ part of the ‘development of professional judgement’. He continues to state that one must be able to examine and critique their teaching to build on their own professional values and ideas.

I am not the teacher I was when I first started teaching. I am proud to say that each year has

classroom and to think about why you do it, is not always an easy task or something that comes natural to all people. The process involves self-observation and self-evaluation, which at times can be very difficult to do and can be difficult to do correctly. However, if a teacher will take the time to continually practice reflective teaching, the teacher will be able to identify underlying beliefs, which can then lead to positive changes and improvements in his or her own teaching. Therefore, for me reflective teaching is my own personalized professional development.

There are many activities that occur in education. Teaching and learning are showcased as being the two most important by Hoy and Hoy. These activities require an impressive skill set to execute successfully in the classroom arena. The purpose of everything that transpires in the name of education is for the sole purpose of student learning. I agree with their assertion that student differences impact the amount and rate at which students learn. Students have great differences in race, gender, learning styles, intelligence, and emotions. Hoy and Hoy’s view of improvement as being progressive and constant, was hard for me to wrap my head around in earlier years. Constructive criticism appeared to be a means to keep me suppressed and in check. Luckily, I learned the ignorance contained within my thinking. Things like professional development, observations, and PLC’s were meant to improve my skills as a teacher. Constant collaborative and reflective analysis helps correct imperfections and oversights as we strive for higher student achievement as the school-year rolls on. As Hoy and Hoy mention, these are obtainable through principals that communicate the clear vision of the school to all involved stakeholders. The correlation between positive influences and success is discussed as well. I know first-hand that having a vested interest in my school and students improve everyone involved.