So You Survived Another School Year! Now What? 5 Ways a Reflection to Teacher Will Make Teaching Easier for You.

A reflection to teacher is the BEST way for students to give you honest, candid feedback on what worked and what didn’t work in your classroom this year. Reading these reflections will make teaching much easier for you.

Whether you’ve just survived your first year teaching, or you’re a veteran teacher of over 20 years like I am, no two school years are ever the same. Giving your students a teacher reflection to complete will be vital to making you not only a better teacher, but making teaching easier for you. This will in turn increase your chances to stay in the profession longer and avoid teacher burnout.

After learning about the 5 ways that a reflection to teacher will make teaching easier for you, you’ll be a pro and extra prepared for when you start a new school year.

This post is all about the ways a reflection to teacher will make teaching much easier that every teacher should know about. 

What is Teacher Reflection?

According to this Eastern Washington University post, “Reflection allows people to think back on and learn from their experiences, constructing new knowledge and applying that knowledge to new experiences. In this way, reflection could be thought of as nearly synonymous with process of education.”

Teacher reflection is the ability to think about what worked and what didn’t work so well this year. It’s a chance to self-reflect. It’s also an opportunity to ask your students to provide you with honest feedback that you can easily implement in your classroom.

Teacher Reflection Examples

You might give your students a short teacher reflection in the middle of the year to see what’s working so far and what changes you could instantly make to improve teaching and learning in your classroom. At the end of the year, even though you’re just ready to finish off the year and go on that long-awaited summer vacation, this is the critical time to ask your students to fill out a teacher reflection.

Here’s an example of questions you could ask them:

• Please provide advice for next year’s students on completing _______ project/assignment.
• What topic/concept gave you the hardest time?
• Which strategies, teaching techniques, activities helped you grasp the concepts best?
• Write suggestions for improvement you have so that I can be a better teacher next year?
• Tell me the concept(s) you feel I should spend more time on next year that we didn’t cover as thoroughly this year?
• Thank you for being fabulous this year! Most of you put in a lot of effort and you tried your hardest. Have an amazing summer. Please write any last comments below.

5 Ways a Teacher Reflection Will Make Teaching Easier For You:

1. Asking students what topic/concept gave them the hardest time will allow you to find out from them what topic/concepts you should spend a bit more time on next year. You will be able to reflect on how you taught that concept and then look into different ways to teaching it. In my case, I teach math, and many of my students’ responses where a bit everywhere. However, there was an overlap when it came to calculus. So I know now that next year I need to spend a bit more time on the concepts of differentiation and integration. I also know that I need to give them
2. Asking students directly what strategies, teaching techniques and activities helped them grasp the concepts the best is a win-win for you! If you use games such as bingo, Jeopardy or scavenger hunts, they will surely tell you which ones they enjoyed best. Chances are that next year’s students will also enjoy those same activities. I like using task cards in my classroom and coloring activities. Those were in fact popular responses with my students. At the end of the year I had them create study guides as a way to force them to go back to the old content that we had learned and then use it to do practice problems before they end of course exam. Many students actually told me they did not see the value in the study guides but did feel that the practice problems were great. So now I am going to change it for next year. Rather than assign the study guide at the end of the year, I will assign it as an end of topic assignment where they write out the calculator notes for those concepts and skills, but only assign the practice problems at the end of the school year. I would’ve never made this change to the curriculum unless without my students’ feedback.
3. I do ask my students directly how I can be a better teacher. Many of them are complementary, but you’d be surprised how honest they are. Some suggested I be a bit more strict. Others suggested that I slow down a bit when I talk because sometimes I speak fast. Many teachers would probably not feel comfortable putting themselves out there, but students will for the most part give honest feedback that will make you a better teacher. It will create an awareness of things that you do or say that could be improved on for next year.
4. A teacher reflection will guide your pacing for next year. Asking students what concepts they need more time learning will help you pace your lessons better. I highly recommend you start planning with the end in mind and then go backwards. Even though several of my students asked for me to go over some of the content slower, I also know that I can’t always slow down since I would run out of time before their test and that would not be good. So before the end of the year, take the time to look at your lesson plans and/or calendar and start planning the pace of the concepts you’ll be covering. This will change next school year of course, due to interruptions such as assemblies and pep rallies, teacher workdays, etc., but it’s a great preliminary pacing guide that will make planning for next school year so much easier.
5. Give students positive feedback and thank them for trying their best this school year. Then ask them to leave you any other comments. This will encourage them to be honest with you and tell you what they enjoyed and did not enjoy this school year.

Teaching is so much hard work. Taking the time to self-reflect and asking students to fill out a student reflection is an excellent way to improve your teaching next year. Their suggestions and comments will tell you what areas you can improve on and implementing these suggestions will make teaching much easier for you.

This post was all about the benefits of giving students a teacher reflection.