Reflecting on the School Year

As the 2020 - 2021 school year comes to a close, I want to encourage you to take some time to reflect. It does not matter if the 2020 -2021 school year was your first year or twenty-first year as an educator. You need to set aside time to reflect. I was a classroom teacher for fourteen years. Some of those years were delightful. I was sad when the school year came to an end. However, I also experienced one or two challenging years. Years where it seemed like everything that could go wrong did just that. Whether the school year was fantastic or not, I was so busy teaching that I rarely stopped to reflect deeply. As an educator, I’ve found value in taking time to reflect after the last boxes have been packed and bulletin boards dismantled. 

As you reflect, think about these questions: What went well and why? Who were your allies? What would you like to do again next year? What would you like to change about your instruction? How did you get along with your students, parents, and colleagues? What were your “big rocks” over the school year? Did you address challenges to the best of your ability? These are just a few of the questions to ponder. Consider keeping your reflections in a journal. This will allow you the opportunity to compare from one year to the next so that you can identify patterns in your reflections. 

At the beginning and end of the courses, I ask my students to tell me what they would like me to know about my teaching, the class, and their learning. Even when the feedback is positive I spend time reflecting. For example, when I read “I appreciate that the class addressed our current learning/teaching situation,” I reflect on how I addressed learning and teaching situations. This information was collected during the pandemic of the 2020/2021 school year.  I have to ask myself, are the strategies I shared during this course still relevant for current learning and teaching situations? I use the knowledge I gain from surveys to plan and update my syllabus for the next semester.  

Another important data point to review is students’ data. Our main goal as educators should always be that our students’ mastery of skills. Review students data to see where your students thrived and where minimal growth was evident. For example, if you are an 8th-grade math teacher teaching number sense and operations, algebra, geometry, spatial logic, measurement, data analysis, probability, etc., dissect the data. Where did your students start; pre-test data? What was the average increase of students in various areas? What did the data tell you? Reviewing these data provides insight into instructional strategies that work well and strategies you might consider changing or modifying. 

I surveyed students in my Materials for Teaching Reading course on how the course impacted their teaching. One of the questions I asked was “What is one practice you learned from this course that you intend on implementing and one practice you intend to stop? Here are a few of the answers I’ve received:

This class has impacted my teaching by reading different teaching strategies I could use in the classroom that would be fun and amusing. I am a person that likes to try different things, especially if it helps to improve my teaching skills. For instance, one practice I would like to implement would be Co-constructing Anchor Charts and Annotating Text. A practice I intend to stop is teaching every lesson, learning how my students take over and teach each other.

I will never just lecture to students like I did at points in the beginning of the school year. I will also stop assuming that because a student is not participating the way that I want them to doesn't mean that they are not participating.

This class is assisting with understanding the importance of providing students with a variety of tools for reading and writing. (1) One practice I intend to implement in my classroom is before, during, after reading strategies in order to keep students engaged. (2) One practice I intend to stop in my classroom is limiting students to only one form of reading (not only digital).

Stop just doing thumbs up or down to check for understanding. Make students explain their answers.

Two things I have begun to incorporate in my class are weekly assignment check-ins and formative assessments that engage the students.

I dissect this data looking for trends or strategies my students found helpful. What comes up multiple times? I also need to look for gaps; subjects that are not mentioned. These data have multiple entries about check-ins and engagements. Based on the feedback I believe the assessments and engagement strategies are resonating with my students. Now for the gaps; if no one mentions multicultural text, then I need to figure out how I can beef up my instruction in how I cover that topic. 

Having students self-evaluate should be a data point. I complete multiple check-ins throughout my course to see if my students feel that they are learning and growing as educators. One part of these formative assessments is having students rate their growth.

A team led by James Spillane at Northwestern University published a study in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis that looked into teacher behaviors. “Their researchers found that the best teachers, … were the ones who were actually more likely to seek advice from their peers the following year.”  Talk to a few trusted colleagues. Ask them questions that can contribute to your development as a teacher. Here are a few questions I’ve asked my “go to” teacher pals. What advice would you give me to help me grow? Have you observed any blindspots I have as an educator? What do I need to know about ____ (fill in the blank with a specific topic)? Offen, I like to have these discussions over lunch; away from the school when possible. I value their feedback and find that when we have more time to relax and really talk I get more out of the discussions. 

One of my favorite reflection questions is Rate this school year on a scale from 1 - 5, with one being this school year was horrendous and five being things could not have gone better.  If you rated the school year, a five what made it a five and what can you take from this school year to make other school years successful. If you rate anything less than 5, reflect on what you could do to make the school year a 5.

Finally, celebrate your victory. Excellent, exemplary, alright, or challenging, you have reached the end of the school year. You’ve done your best; count that success. Celebrate in a way that makes you feel uplifted.