teachers reflection essay

12 Reflective Teaching Examples

Reflective teaching is a process where teachers reflect on their own teaching practices and learn from their own experiences.

This type of reflection allows teachers to see what works well in their classrooms and what needs improvement. Reflective teaching also helps teachers to understand the impact that their teaching has on students.

Examples of reflective teaching include observing other teachers, taking notes on your own teaching practice, reading about how to improve yourself, and asking for feedback from your students to achieve self-improvement.

Reflective Teaching Examples

1. reflection-in-practice.

Reflection in practice is a concept by David Schon which involves small moments of reflection throughout your day.

Instead of pausing at the end of your activities and reflecting upon what you did, Schon argues that good practitioners reflect in the moment and make tiny changes from moment-to-moment. This is the difference between reflection on practice and reflection in practice. “Reflection on” occurs once the lesson is over. Reflection in occurs during the lesson.

For example, as you’re doing a question-and-answer session with your class, you might realize that the students are tuning out and getting bored. In order to resolve this problem, you might choose to get the students all to stand up and play heads or tails for questions you ask them. This might get the kinesthetic learners re-engaged in the lesson and salvage it from its impending implosion.

Related Article: 15 Action Research Examples

2. Conducting Classroom Observations

Another way to do reflective teaching is to start a classroom observation routine. Create a template for your observations (e.g. listing each student’s name down the side, with notes beside it) and take notes on students’ work.

You could, for example, choose to observe how well students responded to a new classroom intervention. These written observations can form the basis for changes that you can make to your work as you progress.

Similarly, you could make observations about students’ interactions after changing the classroom layout. This can help you edit and refine your chosen layout in order to maximize student learning and figure out the best location for each student.

3. Pivoting based on Formative Feedback

Reflective teachers also try to obtain formative feedback from students in order to gather data that can form the basis of their reflection.

An example of formative feedback is a pre-test a month before the exams.

This pre-test can help the teacher understand the general areas of weakness for their students, and acts as the basis for a pivot in their teaching practices. The teacher may, for example, identify a specific math challenge that the majority of the students had trouble with. They can then put extra focus on that challenge for the next few weeks so the students can ace that challenge in the end-of-term test.

In this way, formative feedback is a core tool for teachers in their formative feedback toolkit.

4. Keeping a Teaching Diary

A personal teaching diary can help teachers to identify trends in their behaviors (and the behaviors of their students) that can help teachers to improve.

For example, in my teaching diary, I will often take notes about how I reacted to certain events. I’ll note my reaction as well as things I did well, ways I effectively self-regulated , and things I did poorly. If I’m taking notes on an answer to a student’s question, I might note that something I did well was “give a clear answer” but an area for improvement might be “I failed to follow-up later in the day to check my student’s comprehension”.

Incidentally, teaching diaries can be extremely useful for self-performance reviews . Bring your teaching diary into the performance review and go over it with your line manager. They will be super impressed with your reflective practice!

5. Receiving Student Evaluations

Despite how much we may despise student evaluations, they can contain important tidbits of information for us.

I often like to compare my evaluations from one to the next to see if there are changes in the student trend. I’ll also work really hard on one aspect of my teaching and see if I can get students to take notice and leave a comment in the evaluation.

For example, one semester, I decided to implement a tech intervention (I let students use an educational app in class). The students used the app, and it turns out – they didn’t like it!

Without the student evaluation, I wouldn’t have been able to identify this problem and work on solving it. You can read all about that study here, which I published in an academic journal.

6. Debriefing with a Mentor

Having a mentor has been invaluable for me in my career. By sitting down with a mentor, I learn a lot about my strengths and weaknesses.

Mentors tend to bring out reflectiveness in all of us. After all, they’re teachers who want us to improve ourselves.

Your mentor may ask you open-ended questions to get you to reflect, or discuss some new points and concepts that you haven’t thought about before. In this process, you’re being prompted to reflect on your on teaching practice and compare what you do to the new ideas that have been presented. You may ask yourself questions like “do I do that?” or “do I need to improve in that area?”

7. Using Self-Reflection Worksheets

Self-reflection worksheets are a good ‘cheat’ for figuring out how to do self-reflection for people who struggle.

You can find these worksheets online through services like Teachers Pay Teachers. They often involve daily activities like:

• Write down one thing you struggled with today.
• Write down one big win.
• Write down one thing you will actively try to work on tomorrow.

These worksheets are simple prompts (that don’t need to take up too much time!) that help you to bring to the front of your consciousness all those thoughts that have been brewing in your mind, so you can think about ways to act upon them tomorrow.

See Also: Self-Reflection Examples

8. Changing Lesson Plans Based on Previous Experiences

At the end of each unit of work, teachers need to look at their lesson plans and self-assess what changes are required.

Everyone is aware of that teacher who’s had the same lesson plan since 2015. They seem lazy for failing to modernize and innovate in their practice.

By contrast, the reflective practitioner spends a moment at the end of the lesson or unit and thinks about what changes might need to be made for next time the lesson is taught.

They might make changes if the information or knowledge about the topic changes (especially important in classes that engage with current events!). Similarly, you might make changes if you feel that there was a particular point in the lesson where there was a lull and you lost the students’ attention.

9. Professional Development Days

Professional development days are a perfect opportunity for reflective teaching.

In fact, the leader of the professional development day is likely to bake reflectiveness into the event. They may prepare speeches or provide activities specifically designed for teachers to take a step back and reflect.

For example, I remember several moments in my career where we had a guest speaker attend our PD day and gave an inspiring speech about the importance of teachers for student development. These events made me think about what I was doing and the “bigger picture” and made me redouble my efforts to be an excellent teacher.

10. Implementing 2-Minute Feedback

The 2-minute feedback concept is excellent for reflective practice. For this method, you simply spend the last 2 minutes of the class trying to get feedback from your students.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to give students a post-it note at the end of the lesson. Have them write on one side something they liked about the lesson and on the other something they didn’t like. Then, you can read the feedback to reflect on how to improve.

With younger students, you can do ‘hands up’ for students and ask them how confident they are with the topic.

For online lessons, I’ve put a thermometer up on the screen and asked students to draw on the thermometer how confident that are (line at the top means very confident, line at the bottom means not confident at all).

11. Reading Books

Books are excellent for helping us to reflect and contemplate. There is a wide range of books for teachers, from philosophical ones like Pedagogy of the Oppressed to very practical workbooks.

Through reading, we encounter new ideas that challenge our current ideas. As we pick up new ideas and information, we interrogate our current thoughts and find ways to assimilate them into our new thinking. Sometimes, that requires us to change our own current opinions or thoughts, and challenge us to consistently improve.

In this way, reading books about teaching is an inherently reflective practice. It makes us better practitioners and more thoughtful people.

12. Listening to Podcasts

Like books, podcasts enable us to consume information that can help us pause and reflect.

I personally love podcasts because I find them easier to consume than books. The conversations and dialogue in podcasts help me to feel immersed in a conversation with close friends. Good podcasts hosts make you feel like they’re grappling with the exact same concerns and emotions as you are – and it’s a motivating experience.

Good podcasts for teachers include The Cult of Pedagogy and Teachers on Fire. These podcasts help me to reflect on my own teaching practice and continue to learn new things that I can compare to my own approaches and integrate when I feel they offer new insights that are valuable.

There are many ways to incorporate reflective practice into your teaching. By taking the time to reflect on your teaching, you can identify areas where you can improve and make changes to your practice. This will help you to become a more effective teacher and better meet the needs of your students. Through reflective practice, you can also develop a stronger sense of who you are as a teacher and what your personal teaching philosophy is.

Drew, C. & Mann, A. (2018). Unfitting, uncomfortable, unacademic: a sociological critique of interactive mobile phone apps in lectures. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0125-y

Lousberg, L., Rooij, R., Jansen, S. et al. Reflection in design education. Int J Technol Des Educ. 30, 885–897 (2020). doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-019-09532-6

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
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• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

2 thoughts on “12 Reflective Teaching Examples”

Dr Chris Drew, this article is useful for teachers like me. I really appreciate your hard work. Thank you for being a helpful professor. Sandy

Dr, Chris Drew. First of all Congratulations. This article is handy for me as I am doing my teacher training course. You did a good job, explaining in a simple manner so, anyone can understand easily. Thank you so much. Alka

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Reflections on Our Favorite Teachers

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Editor’s Note: Obviously, the main thing on all of our minds is not the qualities of our favorite teachers—it’s the coronavirus and its impact on our society, our students, our families, and on us. Ed Week has been doing a tremendous job covering its impact on schools, and I have been posting related resources and advice every day at my Websites Of The Day blog (see The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) - Please Make More Suggestions! ). And, of course, I’ve been trying to figure out how to support my own students as our district shuts down.

Nevertheless, in this time of crisis, reading and thinking about non-coronavirus topics can be a welcome diversion now and then. I put thinking about and reading about our favorite teachers into that “welcome diversion” category.

(This post is the first in a multipart series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

Who was your favorite teacher when you were attending school, and why was she/he your favorite?

We all had favorite teachers when we were going to school, and I suspect that most of us hope that our students feel that way about us.

This series will share reflections from educators on their favorite teachers and what qualities made them so memorable. Perhaps we can apply these recollections toward improving our own daily practice.

Students Share Their Best School Experiences & What We Can Learn From Them is the all-time most popular post from this column. Keeping that in mind, a number of columns in this series will also share commentaries from present-day students about their favorite teachers.

Today’s post will share responses from Elizabeth Villanueva, Jessica Levine, Betty Cárdenas, and Jenny Vo. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with the four of them on my BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

“Love and dedication”

Elizabeth Villanueva is a Spanish teacher and world-language department chair at Luther Burbank High School. She has been recognized as the 2018 National Education Association Social Justice Activist Award Finalist; 2018 California Teachers Association, César Chávez “Sí Se Puede Human Rights Award"; and Sacramento City Unified school district, Teacher of the Year 2015-2016. Elizabeth is an Ed.D., candidate at the University of San Francisco in the Learning and Instruction Doctoral Program with an emphasis in heritage-language maintenance:

When I first came to Salinas, Calif., at the age of almost 18 not knowing any English, I had an ESL teacher whose love and dedication for her students’ success made her my favorite teacher. Her name is Rosa Montoya, who was, for the very first time in my life that I remember, someone who told me I was smart. Ms. Montoya was the first teacher I encountered when I first attended Alisal High School in Salinas. I remember her being tall and skinny with a very deep and strong voice speaking in a language that I had no clue of what she was saying. That made me be afraid of her, or it was just the fact that I felt lost in her class at first for not being able to understand and communicate in English. I was not the only one feeling that way, since most of the students in her class were in a similar situation as myself as a new English-language learner who had recently arrived in this country.

As time passed, a group of friends and I looked for a safe spot to meet during lunch, and we found out that Ms. Montoya kept her classroom open during lunch, and her students were welcome to come and hang in there. It was during lunch that we would go and sit by her desk and just talked about our families or any difficult situations we were facing due to the fact that we were far from our home country. She would ask us what was something we missed the most or what we wanted to do once we graduated from high school.

One day in specific, during the spring semester a few weeks before summer break, I remember at the beginning of her lesson she was very happy and excited sharing something that I couldn’t understand much except for the word “Paris.” It is a cognate in Spanish, and that last syllable sounds the same in both languages. We didn’t know then that she spoke Spanish; we knew that she understood because we would speak to her in Spanish, and she would respond in English. After she explained in English her summer plans, she switched to Spanish to let us know that she was going to Paris for her summer break. I was amazed and speechless because it was the first time that I knew someone who was going to Europe, specifically Paris. Then during lunch, we came back to her classroom, and I asked her so many about her upcoming trip. Then one of her answers was, “Elizabeth, when you go to college, you will travel to Paris and so many other countries yourself.” That was the first time that I heard the word “college.” I didn’t know what exactly that meant, but the way that she said it with such determination and a belief in me made me believe that one day I would travel like her.

My hopes and dreams that one day I could be “someone” in this country flew up to the sky. That was just one example of the many times she would instill in me motivation and guidance so that I would apply myself to graduate from high school in two years. She was the one who introduced me to my counselor to ensure that I was getting the right classes that would help me learn English faster and complete the high school requirements. She gave me academic tools, guidance, and an English and Spanish dictionary that I still have. She motivated me by saying that if I studied and received a college education, I could also travel the world like her. Her trust, commitment, simplicity, and interest influenced me tremendously later on in college to decide to become a teacher. Ms. Montoya’s passion, love, and patience to teach her subject matter and students were transmitted instantly. I believed her. I was very fortunate to have had her.

She not only cared for my academic success but also for my well-being. Even when I was not in her class anymore because my second year in high school as a senior I was taking regular English classes, she was constantly checking in on me. That fear and intimidation that I first felt in her class became admiration and respect for her and her profession. She was intentional and purposeful. Now, I have become a passionate teacher and world traveler, hoping one day my students will get inspired and expand their horizons as well.

“She advocated for me”

Jessica Levine is an innovative educator who strives to provide exceptional learning experiences for students and adult learners. She has presented on multiple topics focused on effective technology integration and innovative practices at the national and local level. Connect with her on twitter: @SCTechJess:

I want you to reflect on your career as an educator. When designing lessons, implementing classroom-management strategies, and connecting with your students, do you find yourself thinking about your childhood experiences? To this day, I often think about the experiences I had as a student. Even though I’ve had some amazing teachers throughout my elementary, secondary, and postsecondary school years, there are two teachers who have played an integral part in my professional and personal life. It has been close to 20 years since I’ve been in middle school; however, the qualities Mr. Tagg and Mrs. Bendell displayed are unforgettable.

Mr. Tagg was my Algebra 1 Honors teacher in 8th grade at Berkeley Middle School. Math has always been my favorite subject in school, but having Mr. Tagg as a teacher made my math class even better. He was very approachable and enthusiastic about teaching. There was never a dull moment in his class. I remember engaging in fun lessons and learning practical strategies to solve complex algebra problems. The most memorable part of my class was when Mr. Tagg turned the topic of probability and statistics into a game-based baseball unit. We also went on a field trip to a minor-league baseball game in Charleston. It was a remarkable experience because I had an opportunity to see what I was learning in school right before my eyes in the real world. As an educator, I strive to re-enact moments like this for students and other educators in the classroom and through my professional-development sessions.

Another phenomenal teacher I had was Mrs. Bendell. She also taught at Berkeley Middle School where she was my 6th grade Honors English teacher. I can truly say she instilled a love for writing and public speaking within me. She provided me with so many strategies to develop great speeches and writing samples. She was my only English teacher who allowed my classmates and me to share all of our writing samples with one another. I used to look forward to delivering my speeches and hearing from my classmates to get new ideas. As an adult, I have had an opportunity to deliver a Ted talk at the 2019 ISTE Conference. I’ve also presented at multiple national, state, and local conferences.

When I think about Mrs. Bendell, I also remember her being an advocate for me. The first couple of weeks in middle school, I was in the wrong classes. Before coming to middle school, I was in gifted and talented classes. For some odd reason, my schedule did not reflect this when I went to middle school. One day I spoke with Mrs. Bendell and shared with her my concerns. I told her that I was not in the right classes and that I should be in her Honors English class. Instead of brushing it off, she advocated for me. She went to the guidance department to share this information with them. She also told them how she felt it was necessary to change my schedule. Long story short, Mrs. Bendell was able to get my schedule changed within two weeks. I will never forget what she did for me. This is why I make sure to advocate for all of my students. Every child needs educators who will have their best interest at heart.

Abdul Kalam said, “Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual.” Educators must be mindful that everything they do has a lasting impression on their students. I’m thankful for the experiences I’ve had with Mr. Tagg and Mrs. Bendell for they have shaped my life. Thank you for being exceptional educators. You are my favorite teachers.

She helped me “establish my purpose”

Betty A. Cárdenas was a Texas bilingual educator for seven years and has most recently been serving as a bilingual/ESL & special education specialist for the Region One Education Service Center in the Rio Grande Valley. With a passion and dedication to the educational field, she is now pursuing doctoral courses in bilingual education at Texas A&M Kingsville. She seeks continuous learning experiences for herself that can help her provide all students with a feeling of success and enjoyment in school:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I remember being asked that question numerous times as a child. Now I wonder, is it possible that the knowing of who we aspire to be is the most important question to know the answer for? To me, this question never held more weight than it did my 4th grade year with Ms. Pérez.

I distinctly remember dividing my paper in half to draw a singer on one side (Selena Quintanilla was my idol) and a teacher on the other. Like any great teacher would, Ms. Pérez had us write the explanation for our choices underneath. Both reasons dealt with how these two actions made me feel. Singing gave me a sense of liberation and expression. Although I quickly realized that singing along to the radio or in the shower was enough singing satisfaction for me, I enjoyed dancing more, too. Teaching, though, teaching was another story.

Ms. Pérez gave us multiple group-work opportunities in which I would often take the leader role to help others, or she herself would assign us to assist. Being able to help others made me feel productive and useful, like I was making a difference. This feeling created a sense of purpose that went beyond completing my work. It was a sense of accomplishment to know I had made a difference in someone’s understanding. That’s what I was after when I decided to become a teacher.

Now as an educator, I’ve been asked the question, “Who was your favorite teacher?” multiple times. Usually, this question leads up to the importance of teaching the whole child. While my answer has always been, “Ms. Pérez,” and I rationalized my decision with her granting me the opportunity to realize the direction I wanted my life to take, I slowly realized it was much more than that. I have jogged my memory and discovered she stands out to me for more reasons than one.

Ms. Pérez was the patient type of teacher that always had encouraging words, she had high expectations, and rewarded our efforts. Even when we happened to break the rules, she would calmly inquire the reason for our behavior and helped us to see the importance of taking alternative steps. Moreover, as I went down memory lane, another profound memory I stumbled upon was my first day of school with Ms. Pérez. Like other parents, my dad walked me to her doorway. She greeted us with her genuine smile and communicated to him in Spanish that this would be my first school year to be in an all-English class but not to worry because she would still be giving me assistance as needed. “ Le va ir bien ,” she said, “she will do well.” I remember feeling the sense of importance in what she was saying, but at nine years of age didn’t realize why it was such a big deal. Hadn’t I already been receiving English instruction? I knew I had been receiving instruction in both languages and I had always been made to feel like both languages were valued and important. With Ms. Pérez, it was no different, but it did mark my transition year during which, in retrospect, being successful in her class only provided further validation.

Ms. Pérez did much more than present me with the opportunity to think of what I wanted to be when I grew up. She emphasized the importance of aspiration through her dedication to ensure I had a successful year since day one. She found my strengths and built upon them. Overall, she helped me believe—believe that I could be what I set out to be. Yet most importantly and unknowingly, by valuing me as whole, she marked the beginning of my need to provide students with the same empowering feeling that she provided me. With Ms. Pérez, I knew the answer not only to the most important question, but subconsciously I had also established my purpose: my why .

“Emotional support and love”

Jenny Vo earned her B.A. in English from Rice University and her M.Ed. in educational leadership from Lamar University. She has worked with English-learners during all of her 23 years in education and is currently an ESL ISST in Katy ISD in Katy, Texas:

I’ve had many amazing teachers during the years I was in school. A number of them still hold a special place in my heart—my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Logsdon, my 5th grade teacher Mr. Wooley, and my 9th grade English teacher Mrs. Vurlicer are just a few. However, the title of my favorite teacher goes to Mrs. Virginia Newcomb. Mrs. Newcomb has been my favorite teacher ever since I met her in 3rd grade at Robert F. Elementary School in San Jose, Calif. Mrs. Newcomb was actually the school librarian, but she also served as the gifted and talented teacher for our campus. My relationship with Mrs. Newcomb started when I qualified for the GT program in 3rd grade.

I started at Kennedy Elementary as a 2nd grader in 1981. We had just arrived in the United States that year—my dad and I. My mother and younger siblings were still in Vietnam. My dad and I had been reunited with my grandmother and uncle, who had come to the United States in 1985. At that time, we were living in a two-bedroom apartment with another family. I did not know much English—only a few words that I had learned from a few classes on the refugee island. But I was a voracious learner, soaking up everything like a sponge. I stayed after school and joined one of the 3rd grade classes when they had tutorials. I picked up the language quickly and was recommended and qualified for the GT program the next year in 3rd grade. From then on, this motherless girl found a mother and a second family in the form of our school’s sweet librarian and my GT teacher—Mrs. Virginia Newcomb.

Once I started the gifted and talented classes, Mrs. Newcomb and I were pretty much inseparable. I stayed after school helping her to shelve books (and reading all of them as I shelve!) and inventorying and tagging books in the summer. My love for reading blossomed under her tutelage. Our summer weekends were spent at church and garage sales. I still vividly remember driving around in her convertible with the top down and feeling the breeze blowing on my face.

Even though my family moved to another area when I started junior high, my weekends and summers with Mrs. Newcomb continued. Vacation bible school sessions were my favorite because I saw her every day! One summer, she even took me to Disneyland! I so cherished those days with Mrs. Newcomb and her daughter, Linda! My uncle and dad were busy working so we didn’t go anywhere, so my time with Mrs. Newcomb were a reprieve from those lonely Saturdays and Sundays cooped up in the apartment. Sadly, those weekends ended when my family moved to Texas in 1986. However, Mrs. Newcomb and I still kept in touch through letters and phone calls. The frequency got less and less as I grew older, but the love was still ever present. When I got married in 1994, Mrs. Newcomb and Linda flew over from California to attend my wedding. When I gave birth to my daughter, I received an ABC book that Mrs. Newcomb had painstakingly created for Kaitlin. We exchange Christmas cards and letters every year. I hope to bring my two children to visit her soon! Mrs. Newcomb will always be my favorite teacher because of the emotional support and love she gave me when I needed these things so desperately.

Thanks to Elizabeth, Jessica, Betty, and Jenny for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn’t include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the “answers” category found in the sidebar.

This Year’s Most Popular Q&A Posts

Race & Gender Challenges

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I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column .

Look for Part Two in a few days....

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Reflecting on teaching practice.

Reflection is an integral part of the teaching process. School activities in and outside the classroom create a natural environment for reflective teaching. Professional experience, healthy self-awareness, and genuine care for students and colleagues help teachers to reflect effectively. Reflective practices consist of in-the-moment reflection for immediate action, after-the-moment reflection for future action, and outside reflection for exchange of reflective experience among a teacher’s colleagues and professional learning networks. Reflection promotes evidence-based changes in the classroom to advance teaching practices and is one of the cornerstones of a teacher’s professional development and supports the quality of education in today’s ever-changing world.

Questions to Consider

Why is reflection essential to my growth as a teacher?

How do I receive feedback about my teaching and lesson content?

How does reflection impact my next steps towards continued growth as a blended or online teacher?

At-a-Glance Video

• Topic Summary
• Infographic: Reflective Questioning and Strategies
• Infographic: The Continuous Reflection Cycle
• Infographic: Benefits of Reflective Teaching

Web Resources

Reflection resources.

• Ways to be a More Reflective Teacher
• Benefits of Reflective Teaching and Learning 
• How To Apply Reflective Practice when Teaching Online
• How to Encourage Reflective Teaching in Your School
• Self-Reflection: Are You a Reflective Teacher?
• Questions to Tackle When Reflecting on Teaching
• Fun Ways to Reflect on Your Teaching
• Reflective Teaching: 5 Minute Definitions for Teachers in a Hurry
• Reflect on Teaching Practice

Related Online and Blended Teaching Hub Topics

• Building a Professional Learning Network
• Building Effective Relationships
• Culturally Responsive Teaching
• Work-Life Balance

Online and Blended Teaching Hub Tool Pages

• Assessment: Edulastic , Google Forms , Microsoft Forms
• Polling: Mentimeter , Poll Everywhere , Slido

• Professional development
• Taking responsibility for professional development

Reflective teaching: Exploring our own classroom practice

Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about if it works - a process of self-observation and self-evaluation.

By collecting information about what goes on in our classroom, and by analysing and evaluating this information, we identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching.

Reflective teaching is therefore a means of professional development which begins in our classroom.

• Why it is important
• Teacher diary
• Peer observation
• Recording lessons
• Student feedback

Why it is important Many teachers already think about their teaching and talk to colleagues about it too. You might think or tell someone that "My lesson went well" or "My students didn't seem to understand" or "My students were so badly behaved today."

However, without more time spent focussing on or discussing what has happened, we may tend to jump to conclusions about why things are happening. We may only notice reactions of the louder students. Reflective teaching therefore implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analysing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes.

• If a lesson went well we can describe it and think about why it was successful.
• If the students didn't understand a language point we introduced we need to think about what we did and why it may have been unclear.
• If students are misbehaving - what were they doing, when and why?

Beginning the process of reflection You may begin a process of reflection in response to a particular problem that has arisen with one or your classes, or simply as a way of finding out more about your teaching. You may decide to focus on a particular class of students, or to look at a feature of your teaching - for example how you deal with incidents of misbehaviour or how you can encourage your students to speak more English in class.

The first step is to gather information about what happens in the class. Here are some different ways of doing this.

Teacher diary  This is the easiest way to begin a process of reflection since it is purely personal. After each lesson you write in a notebook about what happened. You may also describe your own reactions and feelings and those you observed on the part of the students. You are likely to begin to pose questions about what you have observed. Diary writing does require a certain discipline in taking the time to do it on a regular basis. 

Here are some suggestions for areas to focus on to help you start your diary. 

Download diary suggestions 51k

Peer observation Invite a colleague to come into your class to collect information about your lesson. This may be with a simple observation task or through note taking. This will relate back to the area you have identified to reflect upon. For example, you might ask your colleague to focus on which students contribute most in the lesson, what different patterns of interaction occur or how you deal with errors.

Recording lessons Video or audio recordings of lessons can provide very useful information for reflection. You may do things in class you are not aware of or there may be things happening in the class that as the teacher you do not normally see.

• How much do you talk?
• What about?
• Are instructions and explanations clear?
• How much time do you allocate to student talk?
• How do you respond to student talk?
• Where do you stand?
• Who do you speak to?
• How do you come across to the students?

Student feedback You can also ask your students what they think about what goes on in the classroom. Their opinions and perceptions can add a different and valuable perspective. This can be done with simple questionnaires or learning diaries for example.

What to do next Once you have some information recorded about what goes on in your classroom, what do you do?

• Think You may have noticed patterns occurring in your teaching through your observation. You may also have noticed things that you were previously unaware of. You may have been surprised by some of your students' feedback. You may already have ideas for changes to implement.
• If you have colleagues who also wish to develop their teaching using reflection as a tool, you can meet to discuss issues. Discussion can be based around scenarios from your own classes.
• Using a list of statements about teaching beliefs (for example, pairwork is a valuable activity in the language class or lexis is more important than grammar) you can discuss which ones you agree or disagree with, and which ones are reflected in your own teaching giving evidence from your self-observation.
• Read You may decide that you need to find out more about a certain area. There are plenty of websites for teachers of English now where you can find useful teaching ideas, or more academic articles. There are also magazines for teachers where you can find articles on a wide range of topics. Or if you have access to a library or bookshop, there are plenty of books for English language teachers.
• Ask Pose questions to websites or magazines to get ideas from other teachers. Or if you have a local teachers' association or other opportunities for in-service training, ask for a session on an area that interests you.

Conclusion Reflective teaching is a cyclical process, because once you start to implement changes, then the reflective and evaluative cycle begins again.

• What are you doing?
• Why are you doing it?
• How effective is it?
• How are the students responding?
• How can you do it better?

As a result of your reflection you may decide to do something in a different way, or you may just decide that what you are doing is the best way. And that is what professional development is all about.

Julie Tice, Teacher, Trainer, Writer, British Council Lisbon

This article was first published in 2004

Well organized

Greetings, The steps explained in reflective teaching are quite practical, no matter how many years educators put into their experience, properly guided ideas will definitely enhance how to engage our students, at the end of the day, what matters is how the learning took place in the classroom. and reflect on how i inspired my students to deliver the content, the reflective teaching practice not only helps to get back and analyze, but helps the educator to be more organized, thank you for the wonderful article.

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Wonderful advice

Thank you very much for these suggestions. They are wonderful.

online journal

Reflecting teaching.

Dear Editor, This is a very useful article for English teachers and trainers. Teaching diary is a must for all teachers and trainers.

JVL NARASIMHA RAO

Reflecting on your teaching

Dear Julie,

An excellent article.  Nothing can be more important then self reflection, i.e. looking inwardly to find out what you did, how you did it and how and what you need to do to make it better.  Unfortunately we seldome reflect on ourselves. 

I would like to introduce few simple questions every teacher should ask after completing a lesson:

1. Can I state one thing thet the students took back with them after my lesson?

2. Can I state one thing that I wanted to do but was not able to it becasue of insufficient time?

3. Can I state one thing that I should not have done in this lesson?

4. Can I state one thing that I think I did well?

Answers to these questions will enable the teacher to do better in the future.

Research and insight

Browse fascinating case studies, research papers, publications and books by researchers and ELT experts from around the world.

See our publications, research and insight

Questions for Reflective Essays on Teaching

You may wish to consider some of the following issues as you think about writing a reflective essay on your teaching. We have grouped these questions into three subgroups: questions about your discipline and your research, questions about your student learning objectives, and questions about your teaching. These questions are not a template designed to produce a formulaic reflective essay. Select the ones which most effectively stimulate your thinking about your teaching, transform or adopt these questions, or create your own questions. Finally, while reflective essays should address the broad teaching issues which are fundamental to your teaching, you might also consider concentrating upon a single course.

Discipline and Research

• Think about your discipline as a lens or a window onto a given body of material, ideas, or texts. What problem, issue, or question first animated the construction of that lens? Do those same issues continue to animate it today? Think about the historical origins of your discipline, and its evolution as a field of study.
• What first captured your interest in your discipline? What now engages your attention about that discipline (i.e., what is your current research)? Think about the origins of your entry into your field of study, and about the transformations which your thought has undergone to lead you to your present interests.
• Under what broad problem, issue, or question would you subsume your current or most recent research projects and interests? How might that same problem, issue, or question have some impact on the lives, interests, or futures of your students? What kinds of texts or course materials might help you to demonstrate the relationship of your work and your discipline to your students?

Student Learning

• What important skills, abilities, theories or ideas will your discipline help students to develop or obtain? How will those skills or that knowledge help your students solve problems they may encounter, resolve difficult issues or choices with which they are confronted, or appreciate important–and perhaps otherwise neglected–dimensions of their lives and minds?
• How–if at all–do you communicate the value of your disciplinary lens, and the kind of research you pursue, to your students?
• What do you want your students to be able to do as a result of taking a course with you? Recall? Synthesize? Analyze? Interpret? Apply? Think both across all of your courses and within individual courses.
• What abstract reasoning skills will your students need to accomplish these objectives?
• How will you and your students best understand the nature of their learning, its progress, the obstacles it faces.

Teaching Practices and Reflections

• How do you communicate to your students what you expect them to know and do as a result of having taken your course?
• What teaching strategies do you use in the classroom–i.e., discussion, lecture, case studies, etc.–in order to foster the learning goals you have set for your students? How do you teach your students the abstract reasoning skills necessary for the learning you want them to do?
• How do your course materials, assignments, and exams contribute to fostering student learning?
• How do you measure student learning in your courses? How do you measure your own progress in helping students achieve the learning objectives you have set for them?
• How do you know whether your efforts to foster student learning have helped or hurt? Stimulated unintended, and perhaps undesirable, results? Have students learned despite you?

• Our Mission

Reflections of a First-Year Teacher: Learning How to Make a Difference

Seeing students reach their potential — or even just try — can sometimes be the greatest reward for a teacher’s efforts.

Toward the end of third period, the principal came to my room. "Read this to your class at the beginning of the fourth period," she said, handing me a short memo.

I glanced over the first sentence: "Earlier this morning, one of our students, Trevor Grover (not his real name), died of an apparent suicide. ... " I looked up in alarm.

"Please read it exactly as it is written," she continued in a slow, firm voice.

"I will." We stared at each other for a few seconds. Then she was gone.

It was May 24, the last full week of the semester, almost the end of my first year of teaching high school English at "Westy," as everyone called it. Westminster High School in the Denver metro area had been my first choice after graduating from Project Promise, a one-year teacher licensure program for mid-career professionals. I was attracted to Westy because of its diverse population (about one-third of the students are Hispanic and 10 percent are Asian), because education -- not family resources -- was going to determine whether or not most of the students "made it." And because I thought I could make a difference.

As the fourth-period sophomores tumbled into the room, I pored over each of their faces. How familiar those faces were to me now, after a year studying language arts together, testing one another, and learning to trust one another with varying degrees of success. How much I had come to care for them as individuals. But did they know this, and did it matter? I must have seen Trevor go into the room opposite mine a hundred times to take his Future Studies (future studies!) class, but I had never noticed.

Many Questions, But Few Answers

Could one teacher make a difference? That's a question I have been asking myself since I made the decision to switch careers at the age of forty-six. I stopped being a university professor, a scholar of Chinese poetry and textual criticism, and a teacher of comparative literature who read seven languages, and started being a K-12 teacher.

Over the course of my first year I taught students with remarkably different abilities. In the same class, I had students who read at the fifth-grade level and students whose abilities were comparable to college students. I taught students who were eager to learn, students with a "who-cares" attitude, and students who were just plain angry about being in school. Some kids benefited from strong support systems. Others were struggling to function in unstable family situations. Students entered my classroom with different skills and different needs as human beings -- and my days (and often my nights) were consumed with trying to help them.

Teaching in a public high school is much more complex than those outside can imagine. Every day, you are running five different classes, designing and adapting learning activities that you hope will meet the needs of your students while simultaneously fulfilling departmental, building, district, and state standards. Most days, you work from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M., often with just a break for dinner. Despite diminishing sleep, you need to maintain an energy level that matches that of teenagers, while remembering to remain the adult in the classroom. And you must constantly remind yourself of the power you have to affect your kids, for better or worse. You can't afford to be careless, indifferent, hurtful, fake, or oblivious (as you might on an off day with adults) because kids never get over it.

A Teacher and Her Students

It's August 25, the second day of the school year. I ask James to drop by and see me after class. There is something different about James. He's quiet -- almost too quiet. I often find him staring at a blank wall in the corner of the room, his features slack. James doesn't like to speak with other students. He doesn't even move when I ask students to get together in groups.

"You wanted to see me?" James asks when he returns after school. He's got a grip on an Ayn Rand novel that is strong enough to turn his knuckles white.

"I see you're reading Ayn Rand. Is she any good?" He doesn't answer and sits quietly for close to half an hour before finally saying, "People think I'm weird when they get to know me."

That evening, I call James' parents. I almost don't for fear I'm overreacting -- it's only the second day of school, after all. But I discover that James failed most of his classes last year and is becoming increasingly withdrawn. His parents are worried, and I agree to watch out for him.

The next morning, a couple of days later in the week, and then every day after that, James comes into my classroom before school to hang out. Sometimes he talks, sometimes he prefers to be silent. Sometimes we listen to a CD, and sometimes we just work. As the semester goes on, James struggles with panic on timed tests and writing assignments in class, and then he surprises me when he finally begins turning in projects for our Writer's Workshop. James writes like an angel, and nobody knew that about him. I let James and his parents know what a remarkable writer he is. And I think how easily I could have missed him.

As the year goes on, I collect other visitors besides James. They tend to be the mavericks, the loners, floating and dreaming through classes, and the wild kids who only know how to get a teacher's attention by getting into trouble. There's Luis, who sleeps as a way of escaping, and invisible Mai, who "does not turn in assignment regularly" as her report card states, but then comes in just before spring vacation with a novel she has written. ("Would you have time to read it and, like, help me with it? I mean, tell me if it's any good?") Each with his or her own story, just waiting for someone to listen to it.

A Helping Hand, a Sympathetic Ear

As the year goes on, the first-year teachers form a cohort, and we become our own chief support. We sit together at lunch and gradually begin to share our successes and our struggles. At first, we limit our stories to what's working in our classes. We share teaching activities, tell each other where to find teaching materials in our chaotic bookroom, even give each other copies of assessments and rubrics we have created. It takes more time, though, for us to develop enough trust to reveal the problems we're encountering: missing assignments, behavior and attitude problems, or the rising tardiness and absenteeism. As new teachers, we are not prepared to accept these behaviors as normal, but we aren't sure how to correct them, either.

Although you get an emotional release from confiding your problems to a fellow first-year teacher, sooner or later you have to trust a veteran. Even though each of us has been assigned a mentor teacher, for most of us, "mentor" means little more than the person you are entitled to pester a couple of times each semester for help on fulfilling an administrative requirement. I sought out others, though, and in the end, there were three remarkable veterans I opened up to -- a social studies teacher who, the previous year, had been named Colorado Teacher of the Year; a drama teacher, whom I greatly admired for her dedication and sense of humor, and a debate teacher, who let me weep but afterwards didn't think the worse of me for it.

From their candid accounts of their own beginning years as teachers, I learned that most teachers go through these experiences and feel the same doubts.

Yet the realization came to me, growing gradually from unwanted doubt to certainty, that even though I am able to make a difference for some students, I was never going to be able to turn everyone around. One teacher simply can't do it -- no matter how much he or she may want to.

In real life, it takes a whole school to turn things around. It takes teachers and administrators working together, and lots of parent and community involvement to make the kind of difference for all students that will stick. It takes time. When you walk the halls, past door after door that is shut or locked because class is in session, you have to wonder, given the traditional structure of high schools, how teachers will be able get the time and space to move out of our isolation as individual practitioners and enter into real collaboration. And, given the current public fault-finding with teachers by critics demanding accountability, you have to wonder how many teachers will be willing to stick their necks out to talk about how things really are.

The Payoffs of Good Preparation

To stay grounded amidst the chaos, I keep a red wooden apple on my desk, a graduation gift from Barbara McWhorter and Angie Paccione, my teachers at Project Promise . It reminds me of the pledge I took to devote myself to my students' success. Looking back on my Project Promise training, I realize that it transformed my understanding of what it means to be a good teacher.

As a Project Promise student, I learned to become a reflective teacher, to think about the assumptions behind the environment I was creating in the classroom. I learned to pull back from the performance concerns that typically preoccupy beginning teachers and think about my classroom from the students' perspective.

"Students don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care," Angie would counsel us. And so, as I struggled through my first year, I spent time with students, got to know them as people, and encouraged them to know each other through cohort development activities that I wouldn't have valued otherwise.

Through the program's Diversity Institute, I tackled such issues as multiculturalism, conflict resolution, prejudice reduction, gender equity in the classroom, the needs of special student populations, and a wide variety of factors that put students at risk of dropping out, poverty, alcohol and drug addiction, or being part of a dysfunctional or abusive family.

This month-long program included student-teaching experiences at both an urban Denver high school and a prison for juvenile offenders, and it taught me to have compassion for students in trouble. I tracked down students who had stopped coming to class and said whatever was necessary to get them back. I called their parents. I went to their homes on weekends to provide added help. I also kept the class troublemakers with me until we found a way to work together instead of taking the easier way out, which was to expel them.

Project Promise also made me determined not to dumb-down my classroom. Instead, I strived to make it a smarter classroom, with high expectations for all. But I made sure my students had the chance to meet those expectations by providing them scaffolding at every step of the way and not letting them give up. When students failed, I felt frustrated, but I didn't blame them for being lazy or stupid. I tried to figure out how to fix it. I made sure that my students had a choice in learning projects, even when that choice sometimes led to some belly-flops.

I had learned to draw on a wide variety of data-driven research to design learning activities for different classes. Graduates of many schools of education get almost all the theory up front, then wait to apply it in a student-teaching experience at the very end of their programs. I had to begin translating theory into practice within two months of my induction into Project Promise, by teaching for a week in a rural school on the eastern Colorado plains under the watchful eyes of Project Promise professors.

After receiving a detailed critique, more coursework followed, then a second, eleven-week student-teaching assignment in a junior high school in Fort Collins, where I again received ongoing feedback from my instructors. The same cycle of training, practice, and feedback was repeated in a similar high school teaching assignment. By the end of the program, I had five different field experiences and a very clear idea of the issues and challenges I would face as a first-year teacher.

Finally, I found that I had a tremendous advantage as a Project Promise graduate because I had been trained in using technology and had been expected to demonstrate it in field teaching assignments. Knowing how to use multimedia software to create presentations, feeling comfortable with tools for Internet research and with a broad array of hardware and peripheral devices meant that I was able to move beyond word processing to develop learning activities that kids were really interested in, using our computer labs. I also invested in an LCD projector (which I am still paying off) so the kids and I could work on multimedia presentations in class, too. This was one aspect of classwork I think they liked. At least it was different from other English classes they had.

A Look Back -- And a Look Ahead

My mission was to make a difference for my students. Did I succeed?

In a faculty meeting in November, one of the assistant principals announced that she had recently received a phone call from a parent telling her about how I came to his house to work with his daughter. After that visit, he said, the struggling student got on track with all of her courses. The assistant principal then handed me my award -- five $1-off coupons at Wendy's. In January, I was named Westy's literacy coordinator and began helping my colleagues work with students who were struggling with reading and writing.

But these public honors provide only a partial answer to my question.

The fuller answer comes from students like Greg, who came to my classroom with his mother and a chocolate cake to share as I was packing my things at the end of the year. Greg, who sat with me after school. Greg, who sees depths in writing that others miss. Greg, who kept his head down on his desk until he woke up, I hope, for good.

"Just came in to say goodbye," he explains. "I'll miss you. It will be different without you next year." That last part is hard for him to say.

We fix some tea, cut the cake into three large portions, and eat it all right then and there.

Susan Wei, Ph.D. , is a graduate of the Project Promise class of 2000. She is currently teaching at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado.

Meaningful Teacher Reflection

by Elizabeth Peterson | General Education Topics , Pillar , SEAL: Social-Emotional Artistic Learning | 0 comments

Chances are, you do it already as you create new goals, prepare for observations or look forward to evaluations.

But what about the types of reflections that really matter?  (Not that those don’t, but let’s face it, sometimes we rush through those administrative types of reflections to get them over with… am I right?)

So, let’s get real for a moment, shall we?  Reflections take time (and we just don’t have a lot of that), but they are important.  And as far as I’m concerned the more personal you make your reflections, the better.

What does that mean?  Take ownership of your reflections.  Don’t wait for the next observation or end-of-the-year eval.

When you do take the time to reflect on your teaching or your role in education, you do 3 things:

• Make Progress – When you reflect on your work, you can’t help but move yourself forward.  You can see your mistakes and improve on them, celebrate your successes and increase them.  Reflection helps you to make progress.
• Inspire – When you reflect, you inspire yourself and probably even others.  Reflection helps to keep yourself on your toes and you can see how far you come each day.  And as you make progress on your own profession, that can certainly be inspiring to others around you!
• Empower – Continued reflection helps to empower you.  It puts you in the driver’s seat of your progress.  You make note of your talents, success, weaknesses and failures.  And then – you move forward!  Why – because YOU want to!

Let’s take a look at some Personal Reflective Strategies  that YOU can do for yourself!

Checklist & questions for meaningful teacher reflection.

If time is of the essence, checklists are a great way to quickly and meaningfully reflect on yourself.  But first, you must spend a little bit of time creating one that is useful to YOU!

To create your own reflective checklist, ask yourself this key question:

“What do I want to see inside my classroom?”  (or office or learning space)

Then, you can make your list into a checklist.

Here is what I have on my checklist.

• Students are smiling.
• Students seem ready to learn.
• Students are participating. (hands up, contributing to discussions)
• Students are getting their work completed.
• Student work is successful.
• My materials are ready.
• I am prepared for the lesson(s).
• I am calm and ready to teach.
• My room is organized.
• The students’ areas are organized.
• My room “looks good”/seems inviting.
• Transitions are smooth.
• The adults in the room are adding positively to the student learning.

If you want, translate your checklist into a quick rating scale.  That way, you aren’t reflecting on do you have it or not, but you are rating it with 1, 2 or 3 points.  A 1 rating can be the best meaning you definitely have it, a 2 can mean you are working towards having it and a 3 can mean that you just aren’t there yet.  (Of course, you can use whatever rating scale works for you!)

Once you have your own checklist, you can follow up with a few questions.  Here are some general, but effective ones you can use:

• What are some things that are going really well?
• What are some things you can improve on?
• What students do you need to check in on and why?
• What students need to know that they are doing a great job?
• What needs to happen for things to be more successful?
• What resources might you need to help the learning be more effective?  (people, materials, etc.)

(A copy of the reflection checklist that goes with this type of reflection can be found in this week’s FREEBIE!)

Meaningful teacher reflections.

• Name * First

Journaling for Meaningful Teacher Reflection

But instead of using a list of questions for this, I like to have some Journal Starters.  These are like sentence starters.  They give you a jumping point from which to write.  As you read through some of these Journal Starters, one may resonate with you for some reason.  That’s the one you should use.

Journal Starters for Reflection:

• Today was ______.  Let me explain.
• We had a break-through!
• ________  finally got it!
• No matter what I try, ______ just can’t understand the concepts.
• I think it may be time for me to revisit __________.
• It’s time to check on ____________.
• I really need to do more ___________.

(These and many other Journal Prompts can be found in this week’s FREEBIE which includes a mini-journal to print and use!)

Blogging for meaningful teacher reflection.

Now, blogging may be something that interests you as well.  It certainly did for me!  I started my blog in 2008.  It was a way for me to express my ideas and give voice to my concerns and aspirations for education, specifically for teachers!

And now… 11 years later, those reflections have helped me define my role as a teacher and consultant.  It continues to do so as I try new things with my students, develop my craft as a teacher and work on new ideas for YOU in arts integration and SEAL.

I love to type.  It’s like playing the piano to me and it feels good under my fingertips.  Handwriting, on the other hand is difficult.  My handwriting is messy and my hands tire easily.  But typing is almost therapeutic.

Maybe you have a reason blogging would be a better fit for you!  You can type your thoughts, add images, format your words and then send your reflections and ideas out into the world!  Consider it.  😉

Reflecting with Future Goals & Vision Boards

Thinking about your goals, hopes and dreams is another way to reflect on your teaching.  (And a fun one at that!)

For this, you can journal, blog or create something that shows the vision you have for yourself professionally.

Creating a vision board is a powerful exercise and beneficial, reflective process.  When you create a vision board, you choose images, words and colors that not only inspire you to be your best, but allow you to focus on what is most important to you.  It’s as much about the  process as it is the product!

And speaking of the product, when your vision board is complete is acts as a constant reminder of your values and vision of yourself in education.  I have mine hanging behind my computer at school.  (And my personal one is hanging in my office at home!)  Here are pictures of both.

Starting up, here are some questions you can ask yourself on envisioning your goals, hopes and dreams for your career. This is only a sampling.

• What would my best day look like?
• How do I want my students to feel when they enter my room?
• What feelings to I want to have when I’m done with a lesson?
• Where do I want to be in 5 or 10 years?

(Instructions on how to create a vision board and other questions to help you unveil your goals are included in this week’s FREEBIE!)

Verbal reflections.

Now, let’s get real.  Written reflections are great, but it doesn’t always make sense for some of us.  It takes time and energy and well, sometimes you just need to reflect in the moment WITH someone.

In fact, when I polled some of the Inspiring Teachers over in our wonderful Facebook group , (BTW – Have you joined yet???), verbal reflections were what many teachers preferred.

So, here are a few important points to keep in mind when we talk about verbal reflection.

Reflect with Those that Get It

Sometimes you just need to kabitz with your own people who just get where you are coming from.  Their experiences are similar and they can show true empathy as well as give you constructive criticism from a professional standpoint.  In other words, they are educators too and walk your walk.

Reflect with Those who Detach from It

Other times you just need to talk with someone who doesn’t quite live your challenges or successes.  It’s fun to share a success story of how you really helped a student out.   (Thus proving what you do is super awesome and amazing.)  It can also be satisfying to tell someone a crazy story from the trenches that will shock the heck out of them.  (Proving that what you do is pretty much something only certain people are cut out for.)

Talking with a spouse, a friend and family member who does not work in education can help give you a new perspective.  If you choose your person carefully, they can also be a safe place get something off your chest.  And that brings us to one more thing…

Venting – Do it in Moderation

So, this topic needs to be mentioned here…  right?  Venting is certainly part of reflection and is, at times, necessary!  We all do it whether in the form of an eye roll, a silent scream or a cathartic release of words.  Let me repeat – we all do it!  But I’d like to offer a couple of bits of advice when venting.

• Be Aware of Your Surroundings   At one school I worked in my colleagues would go out for a Friday afternoon drink after work and, as any group of teachers seems to do after a little bit, we started talking about school.  The problem was, we didn’t leave the town where we worked.  And while most of our conversation was totally fine, there was one afternoon where a teacher told a story about a student and used his name.  Little did we know there are townies at the establishment who listened in and then went to administration.  Oof

You always want to be self aware when you start talking, and most importantly WHO is nearby.

The school I’m at now is a modified open-concept school: a few flimsy walls, but you can hear and see nearly EVERYTHING.  Private conversations are laughable and while we obviously need to have conversations in school about curriculum and students, it’s so important to know where you are and who is nearby.

Venting – Keep it Under Wraps

• Keep it off of Social Media  Just like knowing your surroundings when in public, you need to do the same on social media.  Actually, it’s probably MORE important.  The rule of thumb:  If you don’t want your principal, parents (of your students) or grandmother to see what you are posting, DON’T DO IT!

It’s the same advice I give my own children: Once it’s posted, it doesn’t go away – ever – even if you delete it – it lasts forever!

And if what you posted is mean-spirited, sarcastic or easily misinterpreted, you might as well not even bother.  Better safe than sorry.  ANYone can take what you post and turn it on you.

Venting – Have a Buddy

• Have that 1 Person Gerry Brooks (FB Funny Guy) once gave some great advice to teachers when it comes to venting:  Have 1 person that you vent to.  Make it someone you trust and who is willing to listen without judgement.

I really appreciated that he understood that there is actually a NEED for teachers to vent their frustration. So, I’ll say it again:

Find one, trustworthy person for your venting.

• Keep Kindness in Mind   While venting is easy, it’s important to remember that we are dealing with people I know I can certainly get into a heated conversation, wanting to know the latest gossip or funny stories.  However, our true calling is to help and be role models for maturing students.  It’s ok (and possible) to vent your frustrations with kindness.

Are you interested in going even more in depth with this topic?  Awesome!  Meaningful Teacher Reflection is the topic of this month’s mini-workshop on Facebook Live!  All you have to do is tune in Thursday, October 17 at 7:00 pm EST in our Inspiring Teachers’ FB group .

But you have to be part of the group to join in!!!  So, get over there and JOIN!!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/inspiringteachers/

See you then!

Attend Our Free Class!

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Becoming a Teacher: What I Learned about Myself During the Pandemic

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Introduction to the Article by Andrew Stremmel

Now, more than ever, we need to hear the voices of preservice teachers as well as in-service teachers during this pandemic. How has the pandemic affected them? In what ways has the pandemic enabled them to think about the need to really focus on what matters, what’s important? What were the gains and losses? These are very important questions for our time.  In this essay, Alyssa Smith, a senior studying early childhood education, attempts to address the lessons learned from her junior year, focusing on the positive aspects of her coursework and demonstrating an imaginative, growth mindset. This essay highlights the power of students’ reflection on their own learning. But I think it does so much more meaningful contemplation than we might expect of our students in “normal” times. Alyssa gains a new appreciation for this kind of active reflection—the opportunity to think more critically; to be more thoughtful; to stop, step back, catch her breath, and rethink things. As a teacher educator and her mentor, I believe this essay represents how the gift of time to stop and reflect can open space to digest what has been experienced, and how the gift of reflective writing can create a deeper level of thinking about how experiences integrate with one’s larger narrative as a person.

About the Author

Andrew Stremmel, PhD, is professor in early childhood education at South Dakota State University. His research is in teacher action research and Reggio Emilia-inspired, inquiry-based approaches to early childhood teacher education. He is an executive editor of  Voices of Practitioners .  

I’ve always known I was meant to be a teacher. I could feel my passion guide my work and lead my heart through my classes. So why did I still feel as if something was missing? During the fall of my junior year, the semester right before student teaching, I began to doubt my ability to be a great teacher, as I did not feel completely satisfied in my work. What I did not expect was a global pandemic that would shut down school and move all coursework online. I broke down. I wanted to do more than simply be a good student. I wanted to learn to be a great teacher. How was I supposed to discover my purpose and find what I was missing when I couldn’t even attend my classes? I began to fret that I would never become the capable and inspirational educator that I strived to be, when I was missing the firsthand experience of being in classrooms, interacting with children, and collaborating with peers.

It wasn’t until my first full semester being an online student that I realized the pandemic wasn’t entirely detrimental to my learning. Two of my early childhood education courses, Play and Inquiry and Pedagogy and Curriculum, allowed limited yet meaningful participation in a university lab school as well as engagement with problems of substance that require more intense thinking, discussion, analysis, and thoughtful action. These problems, which I briefly discuss below, presented challenges, provocations, possibilities, and dilemmas to be pondered, and not necessarily resolved. Specifically, they pushed me to realize that the educational question for our time is not, “What do I need to know about how to teach?” Rather, it is, “What do I need to know about myself in the context of this current pandemic?” I was therefore challenged to think more deeply about who I wanted to be as a teacher and who I was becoming, what I care about and value, and how I will conduct myself in the classroom with my students.

These three foundations of teaching practice (who I want to be, what I value, and how I will conduct myself) were illuminated by a question that was presented to us students in one of the very first classes of the fall 2020 semester: “What’s happening right now in your experience that will help you to learn more about yourself and who you are becoming?” This provocation led me to discover that, while the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light (and at times magnified) many fears and insecurities I had as a prospective teacher, it also provided me with unique opportunities, time to reflect, and surprising courage that I feel would not otherwise have been afforded and appreciated.

Although I knew I wanted to be a teacher, I had never deliberately pondered the idea of what kind of teacher I wanted to be. I held the core values of being an advocate for children and helping them grow as confident individuals, but I still had no idea what teaching style I was to present. Fortunately, the pandemic enabled me to view my courses on play and curriculum as a big “look into the mirror” to discern what matters and what was important about becoming a teacher.

As I worked through the rest of the course, I realized that this project pushed me to think about my identity as an educator in relation to my students rather than simply helping me understand my students, as I initially thought. Instead, a teacher’s identity is formed in relation to or in relationship with our students: We take what we know about our students and use it to shape ourselves and how we teach. I found that I had to take a step back and evaluate my own perceptions and beliefs about children and who I am in relation to them. Consequently, this motivated me to think about myself as a classroom teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic. What did I know about children that would influence the way I would teach them?

I thought about how children were resilient, strong, and adaptable, possessing an innate ability to learn in nearly any setting. While there were so many uncertainties and fear surrounding them, they adapted to mask-wearing, limited children in the classroom, and differentiated tasks to limit cross-contamination. Throughout, the children embodied being an engaged learner. They did not seem to focus on what they were missing; their limitless curiosity could not keep them from learning. Yet, because young children learn primarily through relationships, they need some place of learning that helps them to have a connection with someone who truly knows, understands, and cares about them. Thus, perhaps more than any lesson, I recognized my relationship with children as more crucial. By having more time to think about children from this critical perspective, I felt in my heart the deeper meaning children held to me.

My compassion for children grew, and a greater respect for them took shape, which overall is what pushed me to see my greater purpose for who I want to be as an educator. The pandemic provided time to develop this stronger vision of children, a clearer understanding of how they learn, and how my identity as a teacher is formed in relationship with children. I don’t think I would have been able to develop such a rich picture of how I view children without an in-depth exploration of my identity, beliefs, and values.

In my curriculum course, I was presented a different problem that helped me reflect on who I am becoming as an educator. This was presented as a case study where we as students were asked the question, “Should schools reopen amidst the COVID-19 pandemic?” This was a question that stumped school districts around the nation, making me doubt that I would be able to come up with anything that would be remotely practical. I now was experiencing another significant consequence of the pandemic: a need for new, innovative thinking on how to address state-wide academic issues. My lack of confidence, paired with the unknowns presented by the pandemic, made me feel inadequate to take on this problem of meaning.

To address this problem, I considered more intentionally and reflectively what I knew about how children learn; issues of equity and inequality that have led to a perceived achievement gap; the voices of both teachers and families; a broader notion of what school might look like in the “new normal”; and the role of the community in the education of young children. Suddenly, I was thinking in a more critical way about how to address this problem from the mindset of an actual and more experienced teacher, one who had never faced such a conundrum before. I knew that I had to design a way to allow children to come back into a classroom setting, and ultimately find inspiration for learning in this new normal. I created this graphic (above) to inform families and teachers why it is vital to have students return to school. As a result, I became an educator. I was now thinking, feeling, and acting as a teacher. This case study made me think about myself and who I am becoming as a teacher in a way that was incredibly real and relevant to what teachers were facing. I now found inspiration in the COVID-19 pandemic, as it unlocked elements of myself that I did not know existed.

John Dewey (1916) has been attributed to stating, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” Learning may begin in the classroom, but it does not end there. Likewise, teaching is not a role, but a way of being. The ability to connect with children and to engage them meaningfully depends less on the methods we use than on the degree to which we know and trust ourselves and are willing to share that knowledge with them. That comes through continually reflecting on who we are in relation to children and their families, and what we do in the classroom to create more meaningful understanding of our experiences. By embodying the role of being an educator, I grew in ways that classroom curriculum couldn't prepare me for. Had it not been for the pandemic, this might not have been possible.

Dewey, J. 1916. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education . New York: MacMillan.

Alyssa Marie Smith  is currently an early childhood education student studying at South Dakota State University. She has been a student teacher in the preschool lab on campus, and now works as a kindergarten out of school time teacher in this same lab school. In the fall, she plans to student teach in an elementary setting, and then go on to teach in her own elementary classroom.

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3 Inspiring End-of-Year Teacher Reflection Examples That Hit the Mark

As the school year ends, there are many things to do. You need to add an end-of-year teacher reflection to your end-of-year routine that helps you reflect on this year and create a plan for the following year. Because I love helping teachers everywhere simplify their teaching tasks so they can enjoy more life, these end-of-year teacher reflection examples will help you know exactly how to take this year’s challenges and turn them into wins for the next year! 

If you found yourself struggling this year with finding the time you need to spend with family, take care of yourself, and live your life outside of teaching, fgrab a copy of my 5 Teacher Time Management Secrets to Leave Work at Work so you can finally spend your upcoming school year the way you want! Download your copy here . 

Read on to learn more about the end-of-year teacher reflection examples that will help you get a head start on your year next year! 

End of Year Teacher Reflection Example 1 

The 10-minute reflection .

Take a few moments with your favorite notebook and best pen and write down one or two things from each school year month, including ups and downs. 

Set a timer for 3 minutes and try not to overthink how good or bad each was but instead get it all out on paper. 

Once you have everything down, you can look back and see what came out of your year. Take 2 minutes to reflect on each and process how the year went. 

Then take 5 minutes to plan for what you will continue to do next year, what you will stop doing, and what you must think about before deciding. 

End of Year Teacher Reflection Example 2

The conversation .

As you did in the 10-minute reflection, take 3 minutes to write out all you can about your year. 

Find a time to speak with a trusted colleague or administrator about what you wrote down. Ask them for feedback or insight to get a different perspective on what you experienced. They may have another way of seeing something that seemed challenging then and help you see how it was a learning experience for you. 

Take the insight you gained and bring it back to your notebook. Use the opportunity to journal how you can use the year’s challenges as learning experiences to help you plan your instruction differently, prep your lessons in less time, deliver your education creatively, or have another inspiring idea! 

End of Year Teaching Reflection Example 3

The ask .

If you can, send a letter to families or ask your students a few questions about how they felt the year went for them. Know that what is written is only one person’s opinion, and don’t be too harsh on yourself if there is negative feedback. 

Here are some examples for students 

• What are you most proud of accomplishing this year? 
• Where did you encounter struggles today, and what did you do to deal with them? 
• What about your thinking, learning, or work today brought you the most satisfaction?

Here are some examples for parents 

• What growth have you seen in your student this year? What do you think contributed to that growth? 
• Where did you see your student struggle? What do you think would have helped them to overcome the struggle?

Take a few minutes with the feedback and choose 3 things to modify, grow or change for the upcoming school year. 

More Examples of End of the Year Teacher Reflections

Teacher End of Year Reflection: A Year of Growth and Change (blog)

Why Teacher Reflection is an Educator’s End-of-Year Secret Weapon (article)

END OF YEAR MUST DO: TEACHER, STUDENT, AND PARENT REFLECTIONS (blog)

10 fun ways to reflect on your teaching (Video)

Go Forth and Reflect

End-of-the-year teacher reflections are a necessary part of teaching to help you learn and grow as you continue year after year. No matter how many years you have been in the classroom, there are always things that can be shifted, improved, or changed to help to make your teaching and life better. 

As lifelong learners, teachers are always finding ways to improve, especially in time management. In addition to the 3 Inspiring End of Year Teacher Reflection Examples, you can learn how to keep teaching in the classroom and enjoy a lifestyle you love with the 5 Teacher Time Management Secrets to Leave Work at Work. 

Recommended Articles

3 simple ways to cure spring fever in the classroom, when passion fades: dealing with end of year teacher burnout, beyond the classroom: 4 clever ways to fix the effects of teacher burnout this summer, how to build an effective grading checklist for your classroom.

5 Teacher Time Management Secrets to Leave Work at Work

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What Is Reflective Teaching and Why Is It Important?

Gerald smith.

• June 11, 2022

If you feel that your teaching is becoming a bit stale or you’re unsure of a lesson’s effectiveness, reflective teaching is the best way to regain your confidence and interest in ESL education. Let’s take a closer look at what reflective teaching entails, why it’s important, and how you can implement reflective practices in your career.

Reflective teaching is covered in detail in the IDELTOnline™ course, Bridge’s most advanced professional TEFL certification, which can be used as a pathway to an MA TESOL at more than 1,600 universities.

What is Reflective Teaching?

Reflective teaching is a teacher’s practice of thinking, writing, and/or speaking about their lessons and their teaching methods and approaches.

It’s easy for teachers to get into a rut while teaching, where it feels like they’re delivering lessons on autopilot. Reflective teaching is a way to break out of that rut and become the best teacher you can be.

In his essay, “Reflective Practice for Language Teachers,” Thomas Farrell writes, “Reflective practice occurs, then, when teachers consciously take on the role of reflective practitioner and subject their own beliefs about teaching and learning to critical analysis, take full responsibility for their actions in the classroom, and continue to improve their teaching practice.”

Want to read the entire essay and get a more in-depth look at reflective teaching? Take the graduate-level IDELTOnline™ course.

Why is Reflective Teaching Important?

“Teachers who engage in reflective practice can develop a deeper understanding of their teaching, assess their professional growth, develop informed decision-making skills, and become proactive and confident in their teaching.” -Farrell

It improves your lesson plans

One of the main benefits of reflective teaching is that it helps you to become a better teacher who engages their students more and consistently improves their lesson plans .

By analyzing different aspects of lessons like teacher talking time or student collaboration, you can measure your success.

For example, if you remember that students weren’t engaged during an activity, you can analyze the reasons why. Maybe you didn’t set a clear context or you overexplained and slowed down student discovery. Or, maybe it didn’t have anything to do with your planning, and the students simply partied the previous night and didn’t want to discuss the differences between the present perfect and past simple.

Whatever the reason, reflective teaching can help you think of a solution.

It can help you break out of a teaching rut

The more you teach, the easier it is to get into a teaching rut. You reuse the same tried and tested activities, you tell the same old anecdotes, and you recycle the same tired grammar explanations.

While reusing activities is great, you need to make sure you’re not doing something that feels boring to you. When you’re not having fun, you can’t expect your students to have fun.

Farrell writes, “If teachers engage in reflective practice they can avoid such burnout because they take the time to stop and think about what is happening in their practice to make sense of it so that they can learn from their experiences rather than mindlessly repeat them year after year.”

Reflective teaching gets you to think about how to modify activities and lesson plans so they’re fresh and interesting for both you and your students.

It inspires you to try new things

When materials like ELT course book activities start to get boring, it’s time to try something new.

Online, there are tons of resources for up-to-date lesson plans. Personal favorites are Onestopenglish and TeachThis.com , but there are hundreds more, some free and some paid.

Another great way to try new things is to collaborate with a fellow teacher. This is easy when working at a language school, but you can also do this online through Facebook groups and Linkedin. Teachers even share lesson plans through Twitter.

It’s part of continuing professional development

Continuing professional development comes in many forms, such as Specialized TEFL/TESOL courses or Micro-credentials that offer targeted training. Reflective teaching is also an effective way to continue developing and expanding your teaching skills throughout your career.

While reflecting on your teaching, you can also think back to training from TEFL courses you’ve already taken and see if you’re fully utilizing what you studied in your online TEFL certification lessons.

Learn more about professional development for EFL teachers.

It provides opportunities to share your experience

Posting your teaching reflections in Facebook groups or on Linkedin helps start conversations around best teaching practices .

You’ll be surprised to see how many teachers have had the same experiences as you or will have suggestions on how to teach in new ways.

This not only allows you to offer and receive great feedback but also builds your network or community of teachers .

See the ways that the IDELTOnline™ sets you apart as a teacher.

What are the characteristics of reflective teaching?

Although reflective teaching can take many forms, there are a few characteristics that appear throughout all types of reflective practices:

• Reflective teaching notes what happens in the classroom, why it happens, and how it can be improved.
• If you are practicing reflective teaching, it’s rare that you will teach the same lesson again in the exact same way because reflective teaching challenges you. You’ll need to critique yourself and your go-to lesson plans.
• Although many teachers write their reflections down, not all reflective teaching needs to be written. Many teachers, instead, choose to speak about their lessons with a colleague or mentor, or what Farrell calls a “Critical Friend.”
• Reflective teaching is collaborative, often involving a head teacher or a colleague.
• Reflecting on and speaking about how your lessons go often leads to helpful insights.

What are some examples of reflective teaching?

Some ways of practicing reflective teaching include:

• Teaching journals: Write down classroom reflections in a journal.
• Classroom observations: Be observed either by a mentor or by recording the lesson and rewatching it yourself.
• Critical friends: Speak about your classes with a friend who can offer constructive criticism.
• Action research: Research something you struggle with, and maybe even take a course to improve specific teaching skills .
• Online groups: Teachers actively post online about reflective teaching in teacher development groups like the Bridge Teaching English Online Facebook Group . Posting online helps teachers get more recognition in the industry as well as organize their reflections.
• Blogs: Many teachers choose to share their reflections by creating their own EFL blogs . For example, Rachel Tsateri, an EL teacher and writer, published a reflective post on her teacher talking time (TTT) on her website, The TEFL Zone . Because Rachel read a lot of the literature around TTT, she was also engaging in action research, a rather academic but effective approach to reflective teaching.
• Teacher beliefs: Continue to develop and verbalize your own beliefs about what makes good teaching. Not sure where to start with your teaching beliefs? Learn about crafting an ESL philosophy of teaching statement.

Try different methods to find the right one for you. Journaling is an easy first step, but if you’re a more social teacher, you might prefer working with a critical friend or a teacher development group.

Teaching, a lot like learning, is a journey. No one becomes a great teacher overnight, so don’t be too hard on yourself when a lesson doesn’t go well. Instead, think critically about how you teach so you can continue to improve your students’ learning experiences and grow in your profession.

Want to learn more about reflective teaching and other best TEFL practices covered in the IDELTOnline™ course? Take a look at what this certification entails and whether it’s right for you.

Gerald Smith is an EL teacher, journalist and occasional poet. Originally from Texas, he now lives on a houseboat in Glasgow, Scotland with his partner and their two kittens.