Educators engage in professional learning.

 

EDUC 391 Experiential Practicum

During my experiential practicum I did not have opportunity to attend professional learning experience in terms of a Pro-D seminar because there we no NI Days planned prior. However, I took it upon myself to work on myself as a reflective practitioner.

In my previous education, there no real emphasis on reflection, or the power in what you can learn about yourself through reflection. However, in the education program it is really the opposite. Through this program, I have leaned that reflection is a key strategy into becoming a more effective and adaptable teacher.

So, the way that I went about becoming a reflective practitioner was by creating a professional reflective journal.

I picked a journal that I was drawn too, and thought was cute along with used colored pens to get me started on using my journal- because even if the process of reflecting felt a little funny to begin with, it was nice to use those tools.

Attribution: Journal by Loki Ba from the Noun Project

In this journal I take a few minutes after every day that I teach and intentionally think about:

  • What went well?
  • What should I do again?
  • What did not go well, and I should not do again?
  • How can I either make changes or tweaks to improve my practice?

Within this journal I like to also include strategies that have been effective for our professors, my fellow teacher candidates and from coaching teachers. This way, they are documented, and gives me easy access to new strategies when I need them.

In addition, I feel that this method of reflection has provided a nice documentation of my progress in learning how to become an educator. Which I find motivating, because there are days where you may think, I am not cut out for this, or really feels like I haven’t improved. But really, when I look at the start of this journal it is evident that there is improvement. Moreover, it also highlights that there is no perfect teacher, we can only work on being better than we were yesterday for the learners who are directly in front of us.

Overall, this practice was valuable, and by the end of practicum I even looked forward to actively examining my thoughts. I feel from writing these experiences in my journal it helps me analyze what happened that day and come up with ways that I can change to become a better instructor.