Start Fresh
By Mary Ellen Bafumo

Teachers hear a lot about the benefits of reflecting on their practice, and for good reason - reflection is beneficial to professional practice. The problem is the "in your face" reality of classrooms, which makes reflection a very challenging activity. There's so much to accomplish during the school year and rarely enough time to do it. Distractions are frequent and student needs can be overwhelming.

Time to reflect
That said, this issue of Teaching K-8 marks the close of the school year. You can almost see the light at the end of the teaching tunnel. If you haven't had time for reflection all year, don't despair. The conclusion of the school year is an excellent opportunity to conduct your personal "year in review" reflection. The benefit is that you have a year-long perspective on how things have gone, rather than a snapshot of a single week, unit or lesson. Are you concerned about not remembering a thing? Don't be. If you have unit outlines, lesson plans, scribbled notes, books you've used, a journal or only your plan book to prompt you, the highlights (very effective activities, units and lessons) and the lowlights (no additional description needed) will be remembered with surprising clarity. Now is the time to stop and think about your year - the content, instruction, books, manipulatives, maps, arts integration, activities and more - and consider how well they worked. Are you wondering why you should add yet another activity to your schedule? Here's why.

The road to a new place
The old adage, "If you do the same things you always do, you'll always get the same results," is certainly applicable to teaching. If you want to improve your craft, make teaching more exciting for you and learning more motivating for your students, then reflection is the tool you need to take you to a new place on your teaching journey. Read on for five easy steps to productive reflection that will improve your professional practice.

1. Make reflection a priority. Closing out the year is a hectic time. Once students, report cards and year-end paperwork are off your plate, determine that you will take stock of your year and set aside a morning to do this. Don't confuse cleaning out your room with reflection. They are separate activities, although what you clean out and what you keep is helpful to the process of reflection.
2. Decide on a focus. Do you want to reflect on the best materials you used or the best units, topics or lessons? You can't accomplish everything in a morning, so make some critical choices. What will make the most difference in your teaching next year? That question may help you narrow down areas for reflection.
3. Don't sweat the details. Once you have a focus, let's say lesson materials, ask yourself the questions in the simple chart above. A chart provides an overview of what improved and why, as well as what needs work and why.
   4Clean house. Immediately weed out or cross out lesson or unit plans and materials that didn't work. This takes some time, but is well worth the effort. You won't have those materials in hand for the next go round, and you won't make the same mistake in using them.
4. Consider what works. Think about which successful materials can replace what was weeded out. Can you use more music to set the stage for lessons? Will more photos add interest? Are there additional movie clips that could highlight a topic? Which artifacts can bring a topic to life? Which websites are best for specific topics? If you answer these questions now, you'll be ahead of the game when it's time to teach next year.

Taking a short cut
Is this approach too time-consuming for you? Are you looking for a short cut? One is available. Instead of focusing on a single area like lesson materials, reflect on the topics you taught. Which ones were motivating for students? Which ones didn't work for anyone, including you? Discard all of the units and lessons that didn't work. Don't spare a page. Know that you will have to rewrite x number of lessons or y number of units when the school year starts, but don't leave anything in place that wasted everyone's time. Start fresh and be aware of exactly what has to be replaced.

Knowing this information as the school year closes gives you an opportunity to begin acquiring ideas and materials during the summer. Perhaps some will come from your travel or readings or summer job. If your goal is to become better at the craft of teaching, give yourself a head start for the new school year by taking time to think about it now.

Have a safe and restful summer!

Mary Ellen Bafumo is a Program Director for the Council on Educational Change, an Annenberg legacy group.

May, 2007, Vol.37, No.8