Self-Reflection: Has My Teaching Been Effective?

I believe strongly that people need meaningful feedback to learn.  I try to provide opportunities for my students to get that feedback as often as possible and in a variety of ways.

In order for me to learn and grow as a teacher, I need meaningful feedback as well.  This is often difficult to get.  Test scores aren't the best measure of what's important in school, so it would be silly for me to use them as a self-reflection tool.

With that in mind, I asked my students to spend a few minutes filling out a five question survey yesterday.  Since I stressed to my students that the survey was totally anonymous and that I wanted them to be brutally honest, I was a bit anxious to see the results. 

Here's what I found:

Question #1 - Do you agree with the following statement?

I enjoy learning more than I did before this school year started.

Question #2 - Do you agree with the following statement?

I've learned a lot so far this year.
 

 

Question #3 - What are some things we have done so far this year that have made it easier for you to learn? (I paraphrased student responses and put them into Wordle - more frequent responses appear larger.)

 

Question #4 - What are some things Mr. Soskil can do better during the second half of the year to make it easier for you to learn?

 

Question #5 - What are some things that you (student) can do better during the second half of the year to make it easier for you to learn?

My reactions:

• I'm disappointed by the number of students who are not enjoying learning more than in the past.  Increasing love of learning is one of my top goals.  I need to focus on this more.
• I'm happy that my students feel that they are learning a lot.  I agree with them.  I've seen amazing growth in all of them.  I purposefully didn't include any clarification on what has been learned.  As long as they are learning, I'm happy.
• This is my first year having my students blog.  I'm sold.  It was the number one response when listing the things we've done that have made it easier to learn.  I see that they are motivated to learn new things so that they have material to blog about, and I see that they are becoming better writers as they continue sharing that learning. 
• The words "explaining" and "explanation" came up a lot in many of my students' responses.  I see that as a possible red flag that they still view me as the person who gives them information.  They learned more because I explained things more to them and want even more explanation of things going forward.  I worry that I'm not passing the control of their learning over to them as much as I had hoped I would.
• On the other hand, many of them see that they need to seek information on their own in order to be more successful during the second half of the year.  That's encouraging. 
• Many students' self-reflection responses ("pay attention more", "stop talking") tell me that I still have work to do in convinving them that learning isn't about sitting in one's seat and listening to the teacher.  I know that this group has difficulty listening to anyone who is talking, even when collaborating with others for a common purpose.  I'm hoping their responses are more about the issues when collaborating, but I doubt it. 

Friday's Five - Self-Reflection

In order to become better at anything we do, it's important to take an honest look at our practices and look for areas of improvement.  Knowing our strengths, and recognizing our weaknesses allows us to make positive changes in our teaching.  Often, it's hard to do this self-reflection for a variety of reasons.

Flickr/nicola.albertini

Over the past few weeks, I've been forced into reflecting on my teaching, and it's been both humbling and immensely beneficial.  I've been fortunate to be nominated for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching (PAEMST), and the demands of the application process have forced me to seriously look at what I do as a professional both in and out of the classroom.  Because of this, I've been thinking a lot over the past few weeks about ways teachers can self-reflect to improve their craft.  Here are five ideas.

1. Videotape and watch a lesson or two.  Having to watch myself teach has made me realize a few things about my teaching.  As the amount of time in the period gets short, my use of formative assessment decreases.  When my students are discussing concepts in groups, I sometimes cut them off earlier than I should.  Sometimes they are having great conversations, and I should let them continue.  I never would have realized these things if I didn't watch myself teaching.
2. Allow others that you trust to come into your room, and discuss your teaching with them.  This is beneficial for both of you.  Too often we teach with the door closed.  Our great lessons never get shared, and we never get to hear an outside perspective on our teaching.  Some lessons are great, some stink, and most fall somewhere in between.  That's going to be true whether another teacher is watching your lesson or not.  The only difference is that you get professional advice and dialogue when you invite others into your room.
3. Re-write your resume at least once per year.  If you are not looking for a job, it's easy to forget about your resume.  It can be a great self-reflection too, though.  As you look over your list of achievements you'll probably find it easy to identify what areas are strengths, and areas that are lacking.  Identifying those lacking areas is the first step toward building them into strengths.
4. Develop lessons collaboratively with others who teach the same topics.  This can be colleagues in the same school/district, or it can be those you know from networking.  Collaborative planning gives you ideas of ways to improve upon your pedagogy, opportunities to share resources (like videos you make, math manipulatives, etc.), and different points of view.  Collaborating with those in a different location is easy now with videoconferencing tools like Skype and Facetime.
5. Participate in a Professional Learning Community (PLC).  This term has gotten a bad reputation in some places because it refers to mandatory meetings lead by an administrator.  That's not what a PLC should be.  Get a group of committed professionals together and agree to meet once a month or every few weeks to discuss pedagogy.  At each meeting, set the topic for the following meeting and decide upon the information and/or data that each teacher needs to collect.  One month you could focus on formative assessment and have everyone bring the two techniques that work best in their classrooms to share.  The next month you could focus on reading comprehension and have each teacher bring a summary of a journal article, blog post, or other piece on best reading comprehension practices.  The meetings should be voluntary, lead by teachers, and the topics should be set based on what the participants want to improve upon.  

Friday's Five - Blogging through Writer's Block

Image Credit: David Castillo Dominici

Sometimes you just don't feel like blogging.  Maybe you don't feel like you have any good ideas.  Maybe you have too many ideas bouncing around in your head and are finding it hard to focus.  Maybe you're just not into writing, or your energy is focused elsewhere.

One of the reasons I started "Friday's Five" is to force myself to blog at least once per week.  I wanted to make sure that I meaningfully self-reflected, thought about hot issues in education, or examined pedagogical practices at least that often.  Today, though, I had a tough time deciding on what I wanted to write about.  One of my colleagues suggested writing about ways we (or our students) can overcome writer's block.  Here are five ideas:

1. Read other blogs.  Often my first action when I am struggling to find something interesting to write about is to open up Google Reader and see what other people are saying.  Many times I stumble across a post that gets me riled up or thinking about things in a different way.  The Education Section of the New York Times gives me inspiration at times as well.  If our students are stuck we can encourage them to read blogs from their friends or others their age from around the globe who may have written posts on similar topics.
2. Relate other interests to the topic of the blog.  When I was with my family at Walt Disney World in November, teaching was not at the forefront of my mind.  My post that week was on great educational opportunities in Disney World.  It turned out to be one of my more popular posts, and I got a great deal of enjoyment searching out experiences at Disney I otherwise may have passed over.  Our students would benefit from relating that which they are interested in with what they are learning in the classroom as well.  
3. Talk to colleagues, co-workers, friends, etc.  As I mentioned above, this is how today's topic came about.  Think about conversations you've had with people lately.  What have they been about?  Maybe there's something in those discussions that will motivate you.  If your students are having trouble, often asking a friend for writing subjects can lead to great ideas. 
4. Take a break.  At times everybody gets burned out.  Your brain just doesn't work.  A short break of mindless activity can be just the refresher you need to get it working again.  Do something you enjoy for a bit, and then come back to the computer.  Often you'll find that your block has lifted and the ideas flow more easily.  Our students need this break at times, too.  Let them take 10 minutes to read, play a game, or talk with a partner about a different subject.  They may just come back to work with better ideas. 
5. Just start writing.  Even after doing all of the above, sometimes I'm still stuck.  At these times I just start writing whatever comes to my head, even if it's not any good.  I may have to delete or edit it later, but at least I'm getting ideas down.  Some of my most successful posts have been the result of this kind of "braindump."  After a few sentences are down I'll often find that my ideas are starting to gel into pretty good thoughts.  If students are not intimidated by failure, this strategy can work well.  Tell them it's OK not to have great ideas all the time.  They might just find that some of their perceived "lousy" ideas are inspirational to others. 

How do you get over writer's block?  What strategies do you use with your students when they are having trouble getting a blog post written?  Please share with us in the comment section below, and share the post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Plurk so that we can hear ideas from others as well.  To see a list of past topics, please take a look at the Friday's Five Page. 

It's About the Actions, Not the Outcomes

I'm going to be a bit philosophical in this post.  Lately I've been feeling a lot of stress because I'm not happy with the direction we are headed as an educational system or as a country.  I've wanted desperately to change things in some way for the better.

I now realize that my ego got the best of me.  I no more have the power to change those things than I do to alter time, speed up the harvest, or teleport people.  The only things I can control are my actions.  The outcomes are controlled by a power much greater than me.  If they are meant to happen, then they will.  If they aren't, there's not much I can do about it.

So, I'm going to focus on changing myself for the better.  I'm going to focus on giving my students the best education that I can.  I'm going to focus on teaching 21st century skills.  I'm going to focus on giving back to my community where I can.  I'll share what I'm doing with people if they ask.  Hopefully, that will make a difference in some way. 

Best of all, I'm going to let go of the stress that comes with feeling like it's my responsibility to change things.  It's not.  It never was.  That was just a product of my ego.