Reflective Practice

I was reading another persons blog today and found one of the statements really interesting.

"Often in our classrooms we get so busy planning for and managing the lessons we do with our students that we don’t allow ourselves time to reflect...Taking the time to reflect critically on the things we are doing in our classrooms is perhaps the most effective thing we can do to ensure that what we are doing is having the desired outcomes, and is changing our practice in the ways we want it to" (Wenmoth, 2007).

Reflective practice, through my teaching training and going out to schools on practice I used to keep a dairy of my time at the schools, I would write this up on my $500 laptop and email it off to my father each night. I really didn't care if he read it or not, it was something I was going to do. It was also part of my assessment while at college. Writing in the diary become something of second nature, I was writing about the classes I attended, taught and observed, how the students reacted with one teacher and then another. What worked well, and what didn't and how when the fire alarm rang we just sat there in class and carried on working. (I loved that day) No none really had any idea on what to do, as the fire alarm went off three times during the lesson. And to watch the next morning briefing when the SLT decided that a continuous ringing bell should be used as the alarm and to forgot what they had originally been told. But going back to my point, I enjoyed writing the journal and still have it in my area in the resource room for when I am having a really bad day, It is interesting to see what was happening in my life 6 years ago.

I started to keep a online diary when I started here at the school I am in, It was on a server at home in a home made PHP/mySQL database. The server is still somewhere and I should rip all the data off it one day and bring it in or incorporate it into my current blog through the use of the Post Options function.
Newer technologies have taken over and the blog is the new form, if you have read any of my previous entries it mainly focussed on the incompetence of the SLT at the school and how some of them blatantly show off that they do very little at all.

But one thing I am finding out now through using the blogs it that I am focussing on my teaching and professional development. I am finding these really useful for taking notes as well as being able to provide feedback to the department at the department meetings.