Teaching Teachers to Reflect on Their Teaching

Question: How can we encourage teachers to reflect on their teaching?

Answer/Quotes: “Students [teachers] start the semester writing their literacy autobiographies and constructing their literacy self-portraits.”

“As the students and I present autobiographies and self-portraits, I have listeners note ideas from each presentation that resonate with them, personally.”

“Once we have all shared, students choose one person whose presentation stands out and write a note to that person explaining what resonated with them.”

“During the reading of each article/chapter in assigned texts for the course, students then note their ideas on some sort of strategy: note-taking form….” etc.

 After exploring literacy and working with several reading strategies, students…reflect on the strategies they have learned, including how they would use the strategy in their own content area classroom.

Comment: Well, it’s a beginning anyway. One thing I have always regretted in my teaching career is my failure to take the time to reflect on my teaching practices, concerns, problems, etc.  Therefore, I was not as good a teacher as I could have been. RayS.

Title: “From Resistance to Advocacy for Math Literacy: One Teacher’s Literacy Identity Transformation.” E Spitler. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (December 2011/January 2012) 306-315.