Ligher, Lighter: A reflection about a Ted Talk about Reflecting Teaching
By Carlos Andres Losada
There are so many issues, we can learn, adapt and apply from the video - Reflective Teaching: an Element of Life-Long Learning. For instance, I truly believe that in this profession of teaching, one has to be really committed and love what he/she does. But, sometimes that is not enough. Even if we are doing great things inside the classroom, it is necessary to take a deep breath on the go and look back/reflect, question ourselves about what is happening with my teaching and with the learners. In addition to that, we can through reflection explore and assess many relevant issues, especially those that involve students with disruptive behaviour or to explore a class situation in which students literally express their reluctance towards the subject or the way the teacher guides the learning process.
At this point, I can make several connections with the video and its contributions to the ELT field, for example, Yeung ( 2018 ) expresses that only when he found himself struggling in his classroom, then it was the time he started to think about reflection. Despite the fact, he presents/encounters reflections by chance in his teaching practicum, I consider that it must become a habit or a lifestyle for teachers that use/apply the cycle of reflection not only for his/her educational purposes but for his/her personal growth, and more importantly to help others in our society. With that, I suggest and invite teachers to start reflecting from a critical thinking standpoint.
By doing reflection in educational settings, the teacher may find himself/herself with a myriad of benefits that can facilitate his/her teaching practices, In the same line of thought, it must be mention that reflective teaching is also a key issue to foster teacher development. Nonetheless, most teachers complain about not having time or space to reflect, that being the case, we can reflect a different throughout the day as when commuting from one place to another, feeding with insightful entries a journal on our way go home every day.
By doing reflection in educational settings, the teacher may find himself/herself with a myriad of benefits that can facilitate his/her teaching practices, In the same line of thought, it must be mention that reflective teaching is also a key issue to foster teacher development. Nonetheless, most teachers complain about not having time or space to reflect, that being the case, we can reflect a different throughout the day as when commuting from one place to another, feeding with insightful entries a journal on our way go home every day.
The question then has to do with our willingness to change and embrace those changes for the betterment of our teaching practices. Yeung ( 2018 ) highlights that we need to listen to our inner voice as a starting point to avoid following someone else's' path. To avoid that, we need to question ourselves at all times and see what can be done, to finally take action which is the final step in the reflective cyclical process of reflective thinking.
