More Reflection to Become a Better Teacher

I had a chance to talk for a while with Catie, a fellow teacher/trainer/facilitator the other day (and yes I'm trying to get her to be a guest blogger) and she impressed the hell out of me. Really she shouldn't have. It was such a simple thing she was doing, and I should have been doing it myself. I can’t wait to try and implement this with my team. What’s sad is that I’ve been implementing tools like this for the class for years, I’ve just failed to do it for the instructor pool. 

When I was training for my previous job, I would end each class, or even each segment of class by asking each person in the class what they had learned that they hadn’t known before the class started. This I felt did several things: 

1) it made them think back and reflect on the course from their own perspective, wake up those memory cells, 

2) it made them reprocess what I had said and put it into their own words to vocalize it to the class, 

3) it allowed the other trainees in the class to hear it again to help reactivate their memories and 

4) they were allowed to hear it that second time in someone else’s voice, in one of the other trainer’s frame of reference, which might have been different and more in their lingo than mine might have been.

I didn’t know then that I was forcing reflection on the class, but it seemed like the right thing to do so we did. Who knew is was so thoroughly grounded in learning theory. 

Since taking classes and learning about the power of reflection we’ve also created a website group page for our leadership training students. We hope to make it a place they can come and access new tools and tips, hear from others, and reflect again about what they may have learned in the class. A reflection page so to speak. 

I have been reading a book on Skillful Teaching by Stephen Brookfield’s book on teaching, it seemed like every single chapter was filled with feedback loop mechanisms both for the instructor and for the student. It was clear to see that he was a huge proponent of reflection. If I take nothing else from this second life educational journey it will be about the power of reflection for creating resilient long term memory. I see now from your post that I can do more for our cadre of instructors as well in helping them with their own reflection and learning!