How Do You Know If You’re A Reflective Teacher?

So this #reflectiveteacher blogging challenge for teachers has been quite a revelation. The desire for teachers to reflect, connect, and share their ideas has been–truly–a beautiful thing.

As a staff, we’ve been moved not just by teachers’ willingness to merely participate, but the nature of that participation.

We have teachers that had never blogged before–nor knew how to set one up–that have blogged together now for 10 days and counting–every day, checking the prompt and investing themselves in the process.

But more important than the process is the depth and authenticity of the reflection–brutally honest at times.

Teachers that look around them and see an “average” classroom.

Teachers that are unsure of their role in a modern learning process, or their own training.

Rebellious teachers, creative teachers, passionate teachers, tired teachers–every challenge you have to overcome, somewhere in the world is another teacher working to overcome it as well.

Reflection is a critical part of growth, and so it shouldn’t be surprising to see growth-minded TeachThought teachers being so, well, reflective, but to see it on this scale has been humbling, and inspiring to us as a staff.

Whether you blog once or daily; whether you tweet it or just think it; whether you barely get a paragraph down, or end up with closer to 500 words for each prompt, the idea is the same–reflection. Self-evaluation. Growth.

A 30 day challenge is a grind, especially the first month of the school year. Anything you get done is better than what you’d have otherwise done. Hopefully, just reading other #reflectiveteacher’s sharing their own thoughts will be enough to encourage you to be more reflective this year about your craft, and your role in an increasingly dynamic process.

We’ve included just a small sampling of the twitter usernames of those that have participated in the process above. To each of you, and all the others not listed, thank you for your effort, energy, and affection.

Are You A Reflective Teacher?