A Plan to Enhance my Critical, Self-Reflective Skills
1. How will I become a more critically reflective practitioner?
To become a more critical practitioner and self-reflective educator I have been sketching a plan in order to apply some strategies and clear measures to enhance my teaching experiences so far. My intention is to start right away, I want to put my plan in action during this year's final unit. I want to be able to test my intended activities, evaluate and analyze my different options, come up new ideas and review possible changes or adjustments as soon as possible. My goal is to have a solid and well structured plan with a list of specific steps ready to be completely implemented on my instructional activities before I come back to school after the summer break.
This is my proposal to become a more reflective educator with some of the tools and specific actions I'd like to use to improve the quality of my instructional practices:
To become a more critical practitioner and self-reflective educator I have been sketching a plan in order to apply some strategies and clear measures to enhance my teaching experiences so far. My intention is to start right away, I want to put my plan in action during this year's final unit. I want to be able to test my intended activities, evaluate and analyze my different options, come up new ideas and review possible changes or adjustments as soon as possible. My goal is to have a solid and well structured plan with a list of specific steps ready to be completely implemented on my instructional activities before I come back to school after the summer break.
This is my proposal to become a more reflective educator with some of the tools and specific actions I'd like to use to improve the quality of my instructional practices:
- Teacher's blog: I want to design a personal blog to show evidence of my daily experiences according to each grade level and parallel; this virtual diary will allow me to go back and evaluate specific events in a more organized way. I will be able to write down my feelings, thoughts, opinions, expectations in a more detailed and synthesized manner, making it simpler to identify my success or failure during any given activity in class.
- Grade level blog and wiki space: My intention is to create a blog for each grade level in order to build a learning community and to have an interactive space in which the kids and myself will be able to express our feelings, have access to different documents and resources about the class, clarify doubts or concerns, provide continuous assistance and support online, work in collaboration helping one another, demonstrate responsibility and solidarity and to find a more immediate feedback from me. With this blog and wiki space I will be able to be connected with my students and their needs, evaluate the information posted by them and analyze common setbacks or achievements during the overall development of my classes.
- Documentation (Class video): I want to record at least two of my teaching sessions during every month, randomly selecting a different parallel each time to make sure I have information of all the different grades I instruct. The idea is to present this multimedia material to my peers during the Area Heads Meeting or Grade Level meetings with the intention of reviewing the quality of my class, the activities and contents addressed, the class management and the teaching strategies used during that period. This visual document will let me identify what am i doing right or wrong in my daily practices and will provide valid evidence of my performances to others in order to get relevant feedback from other teachers and administrators.
- Student's survey: After each unit (six during the school year) I want to make the kids fill out a digital survey evaluating the content, the final product, their personal and collective performances, the creative process and problems or achievements they have experienced during the general development of the project. I would like them to analyze with integrity and self-reflection if any changes or improvements must be considered in order to improve our next activity regarding its complexity, time management or support material.
- Self-reflection: I want to establish a well-structured schedule to reflect on my daily practices during school hours. Using my personal blog I‘d like to set up a template for each one of my class activities in order to document my ideas, feelings and general experiences before, during and after my teaching sessions. I know this sounds a little unreal or maybe too ambitious due to the very limited amount of time we have in our schools dedicated to these kind of activities; never the less I think the more often we evaluate ourselves and our learning environment, the more significant our experiences will be after all. I totally believe that quality is much better than quantity, but I also agree with the idea of the more we practice our strategies to reflect on our teaching, the better we’ll get at it.
- Peer Observation: I want to have specific hours of my schedule dedicated to facilitate and provide peer observation; I'd like to have at least two sessions every three months in order to get feedback from other teachers and have a different perspective of what I am doing right or wrong. The establishment of a meeting after these periods of time is critical to review and analyze what my peers have observed during the visit and if he/she has any comments, suggestions or particular advice to make my learning experiences more significant to my students and myself.
- Evaluation the Data: I'd like to set up a meeting with other technology teachers to elaborate a final review of all the information collected from the previously presented tools and strategies. I want to have different opinions and points of view to facilitate the identification of any setbacks (minor or major) during my instructional activities. The presence of my peers will provide professional assistance to find the root of a given problem; another important aspect of this point is the establishment of periodic sessions of collaborative work among teachers to come up with hypothesis, strategies or specific approaches to solve the problem in a short term.