Which teacher doesn’t want to have great lessons where students are engaged, motivated, stimulated and eager to learn?
That’s what the Good Teaching Practice book tells us, right? But how often during a school year do you feel frustrated when all your planning is ruined, your students don’t meet the standards, tests show hopeless grades, and on top of everything, yawning is the most common sound you listen during the class?
To make it worst, you feel exhausted in every level, and school year has caught you with changes and more demands. It’s completely understandable, everything is not looking bright.
Frankly speaking, that’s happened to the best of us! In fact, it has happened to me many times during my 18 year teaching career, so breathe! There’s nothing wrong with you! If you are worried, that means you care.
Experts say that the best teachers are often characterized by a strong desire to achieve the best possible outcome for their pupils and a willingness to improve their teaching quality.
So, if you are still reading these lines, it means you’re willing to be a better version of yourself as a teacher. Let’s just keep up with the Willingness and skip the students’ outcome for a minute because there will be no results if your will is not strong enough.
When these situations happen, just stop, freeze everything and only focus on yourself first, observe your feelings and respect your desires. Your own body and mind know exactly how to fix these things: we just have to listen & mute all the noise from outside.
Over the last years, I have worked with educational coaches and have had all types of evaluations done, like most teachers worldwide: rigorous peer evaluation & group discussions focused on the outcome, do they sound familiar to you?
But I haven’t found a more powerful strategy for improvement than Self-reflecting: on myself, on my actions and on what I wanted to achieve as a person and as a teacher. I am absolutely convinced that through self-evaluation you nourish to flourish, you are able to identify not only your strengths but also the drive that leads you to do what you do every day. It is that compass that tells you what is making you uncomfortable and what you should change. When you search online there are gazillion articles explaining what students need or what others want from you. I know it is presumptuous but now it’s time to highlight your own expectations: what you expect and want from yourself!
Remember that, with these types of exercises done regularly, we avoid (help avoid) the burnout syndrome, that common invisible monster lurking in every disappointment, waiting for potential prey in every bad day. As Bosquet, S (2012) says “Burnout is one of the most common reasons that teachers are leaving their profession, and it contributes to the increased teacher turnover rate in the past few decades». Teacher burnout is an extreme form of chronic stress that can affect any teacher, regardless of how experienced or passionate they are about their jobs. One quarter of all teachers view their jobs as extremely stressful, and 46 percent report high stress daily during the school year.”
- Self-improvement
A good reflective practice is the key to improvement. The only way this may happen is by questioning your own performance and behavior: thinking, analyzing and evaluating in depth each necessary aspect to give you a bigger picture of who you are, what you’re doing & what areas you wish to improve.
- Being innovative & creative
By reflecting on different aspects, you can create and experiment with new ideas, formulas and approaches to try things differently. This will allow you to get to know you better: your own limitations or opportunities.
- Understanding students
Self-reflection encourages you to stand in your learners’ shoes so that their abilities and needs are better taken into consideration. Stephen Brookfield (1995) believes that “of all the pedagogic tasks teachers face, getting inside students heads is one of the trickiest. It is also the most crucial.”
- Helping students become self-reflective
When mastering self-questioning, it is easier to replicate those newly acquired abilities to your own students more effectively & encourage them to reflect on, analyze, evaluate and improve their own learning. It’s a win-win situation.
Once you know where you stand, it gets easier to know your own needs, and at this point, you would know exactly what you need to become a better teacher, so you could start considering courses, webinars, lectures or other activities which would provide you with the tools to achieve your goals and would lead you to feel proud of the amazing work you can do.
