A few years back, we had a thoughtful administrator who opened up our faculty meeting with an image of a street sign. On the pole with the street sign, the city had posted six or seven other notices and ordinances which seemed almost absurd. In some cases, the message on one sign seemed to contradict other messages on the same pole. The administrator used this as a metaphor for districts, schools, and teachers that are not thoughtful about their choices.
Making thoughtful choices, however, is not as easy as one might think, especially under the circumstances that we are often expected to perform. There are so many different duties and expectations placed upon teachers, and our schedules are so compressed, that the spaces in which we teach can sometimes feel more like emergency rooms than classrooms. Just as we catch our breath from one prep, we must move on to another. Extra duties, special schedules, and changing expectations of the school seem to create conditions that are not always conducive to making good pedagogical decisions. And because we are working so hard to just get through the day, meaningful teacher practices like reflection simply don’t feel as immediate or important. As Finlay (2008) points out, “Busy, over-stretched professionals are likely to find reflective practice taxing and difficult.”
It takes quite a bit of discipline, and in some cases, a streak of rebelliousness (prioritizing reflection over answering emails for example), to carve out just a few minutes each day to breath, review, consider, and imagine.
Yet, the practice of reflection has been established as critical to gaining mastery in a broad range of disciplines (Ericsson 1993). The idea is that working towards mastery involves “deliberate effort”, which differs from just good old fashioned “effort”. While we would like to believe that simply working hard as teachers will bear fruit, the more nuanced truth is that the effort must be strategic and focused. And I believe this is important, especially for teachers.
We will eventually get into more of the pragmatics of reflection, but to begin with, it is good to start with your “why”. Your why may change over the course of your career, but it is important to continually consider and revisit your why. It is a foundation upon which everything else can rest. And if you have a good “why”, and you are aware of, and believe strongly in it, then many of the short term trials and struggles of your daily classroom lives become tolerable, and even informative.
Here are three quick entry points for the reflective practitioner:
Elevator Pitch: You most likely have this already constructed, since it seems to typically come up in conversation with others, but formulate your elevator pitch for why you chose to do what you do. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and you don’t have to worry about using a cliche, just contemplate in one concrete sentence what it is that has driven you to take up the classroom as your calling.
Authenticity: How authentic is that “why” or mission statement? It might be the answer you give others when they ask why you chose to become an educator, but does it ring true? Does it need to be adapted to become more genuinely suited to your current emotional, mental or even developmental state?
From the Outside: With that “why” (or mission statement) in mind, consider if the people around you (fellow teachers, students, and school staff) would be able to match your daily decisions to that “why”. In what ways is your “why” clearly visible? And in what ways might your choices sometimes work against that stated purpose?
Ericsson, K.A., Krampe, R.T., & Tesch-romer, C. (1993). The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363-4-6.
Finlay, L. (2008)
‘Reflecting on Reflective Practice’, PBPL CETL, www.open.ac.uk/pbpl.
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