A Reflective Teacher

 

In order to learn and grow towards one’s goal, one goes through four stages (in any innovative order): (1) Premise, (2) Vision, (3) Purpose and (4) Strategy. Examine your premise, the belief system that you carry. Focus on where you are and create a vision of what you wish to be. Connect it to a purpose, a reason to do what you envision. Finally develop a strategy to do the same. Then go back and reflect and continue the cycle over and over again.

If the purpose is to develop students with global mind-sets, then first step would be to examine what it means for oneself. As an educator, my belief system was as traditional and narrow as it can be in the beginning. Education for a degree and a job. However, having moved from school to school in very differing environments has exposed my belief system to again and again, requiring me to adapt and grow. The purpose has been to create a learning space where ALL children can grow into self-sufficiency. My strategy has been reflecting, learning, inquiring and take risks in giving up working in schools where I was doing very well to move to new places. I have “…the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees ...”, (Brown, 2010, 9.31).

 Hence without reflecting on who we are, envisioning what we want to be and making these central habits of teaching, the rest cannot be built. “A reflective practitioner builds and examines knowledge about learners, the culture and curricula of schooling, and the contexts in which teaching, and learning occur; such a practice assists an educator to simultaneously renew, invigorate, and maximize the teaching process” (WLC, n.d., para. 3).

 My commitment is at 3 levels:

1. Working on my mind through mindfulness practice. “Mindfulness meditation asks us to suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness, to ourselves and others”, (Getting started with mindfulness, 2018).
2.  Working on curriculum through integration of best practices. "You can take any unit and change it a little so that students really start to see the world globally," (JSIS, 2013). This is by staying aware of new ideas in education and connecting them to classroom practice.
3.  Learning to collaborate with others. “The reflective practitioner seeks to integrate previously learned information with the present experience in order to achieve future results. This quest is enhanced through collaborative efforts with colleagues, other professionals and community resources” (WLC, n.d., para. 4). “There is a ceiling effect to how much we can learn if we keep to ourselves”, (Fullan, 1993). I don’t think I can do anything without community support!

 Conclusion

A teacher needs to see herself or himself as a change agent, a crucible of critical changes in the fabric of the world itself. We have that as a responsibility. We often get caught in the soot of day-to-day stresses. But through mindfulness and creating challenges for oneself, one can shrug it off for our focus is “to make a difference in the lives of students”, (Fullan, 1993, para. 2).