July 23, 2013 -- Reflective Practice and Anchors

Having read Reflective Practice for Continuous Learning last night, I immediately jumped back into the reading, this morning to find a few anchors that will help me to remember the lessons and the practices that the reading offered. None of my education courses back in the 70’s ever touched on Reflective Practice, so I felt a little intimidated by the concept. I have learned, through my anchors that I have encountered Reflective Practice in my career.

It didn’t take too long, as I found my first anchor in the quote placed immediately below the title of the reading.

Anchor 1.

“The ultimate guardians of excellence are not external forces, but internal professional responsibilities.” -- Paul Ramsden (1992, p.221), Learning to Teach in Higher Education

I chose this as my first anchor because it presents me with a clear reminder that as an educator, I have an inherent/internal professional responsibility to do whatever I can to enable my students to experience excellence in the lessons that we share. I wouldn’t take this responsibility as far as one of my high school teachers did. Mr. John Algeo (no relation to Ron), was my senior English teacher. When we received our first quarter report (the one that is so important for college), I had a grade of 69, a failing grade in those days. I was distraught with the grade because my true grade average for the course was an 88 no matter how my father and I calculated it. When we met with Mr. Algeo, I asked him how he could have given me a 69 when all of my work and grades averaged to an 88. He politely turned to my father and told him that my average was 88, but he didn’t think it would be fair to me to give me that grade. Puzzled, my father asked him why he felt that way. John Algeo looked back at me and said to my father, “He has the ability to do work in the 95 range; an 88 would have been a good grade for some, but he must learn to work up to his ability level.” I looked for my father to challenge the man, but instead he asked me if I could do 95 work. I answered that I could; Dad stood up, shook John’s hand and said to me, “Do the work that you’re capable of doing.” I learned that day that John Algeo cared about my work ethic and cared about me as a person. When I did my semester of student teaching in my senior year of college, I chose to return to John Algeo’s senior classes at Roman Catholic, in order to learn so much more. His advice to me: Expect 110% effort, no matter what the student’s ability might be. If you don’t expect more, he will never learn to give more. John saw that his internal professional responsibility was to expect our best. He made a great difference in the lives of many students.

Anchor 2

"Sometimes you must go slow to go fast"

                                                 --A Chinese proverb

Reading and thinking about Reflective Practice helped me to realize that in my own way, I do perform this step in my teaching. I believe that my preparation  for class lessons is one of my strong points as a teacher. I try to look at a lesson the way that my students would look at the lesson. My classes for the past four years have been the Academic levels of ninth and tenth grade English. In these classes, I have found students ranging from those with great ability but little motivation to those with minimal abilities but a willingness to do everything possible to get good grades. In preparing for these classes, I take my time (I go slow) to make sure that I am challenging the students at their ability level. The unmotivated students might not even take the challenge, bur the motivated students will take it and will do good work. The confidence that they feel is evident in their eyes and in their future efforts; the students with more ability learn to take the challenges a little more seriously when their grades are not the top grades in the class. I like the first step in the theory of Reflective Practice – the Pause. I find myself making the pause and looking at the deeper levels for ways rather than using trial and error. That word Deliberate that we chose as one of our values appears in the reading as the deliberate thinking that we all do in order to improve our actions as educators. I gained confidence in myself as I realized that a better understanding of the Theory of Action for Reflective Practice will help me to continue enhancing student learning.

Anchor 3.

“What does it mean to be a Reflective educator?”  

The profile offered in the bulleted list on page 16 assured me that we, as a group, are heading in the proper direction. As I looked around the table today, I saw people interested in developing and maintaining the skill set in that list. I noticed that every one of my classmates in this Summer Institute has most or all of the qualities in the bulleted list profile. Critical friends are developing in the group, and that development will assure success for our students in the future.

In closing tonight, I’d like to recommend a book for all of us. The book is titled

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. The author is Carol Dweck. In the book, Dweck differentiates between people (students) with a fixed mindset and people (students) with a growth mindset.

The basic difference is that those with the growth mindset are “clued in to all the different ways to create learning.”  They accept failure when they encounter it, but take charge of their situation and continue to work to be successful.

The people (students) with the fixed mindset “would do almost anything for a good

grade — except take charge of the process to make sure that it happens”.

I think that one of my goals for this year will be to work with my students to develop growth mindsets that will enable them to be successful.