Skip to main content

Time to Reflect before Moving Forward


Over the last four years, my intentional focus has been the completion of my Masters of Educational Leadership whilst not dropping the ball on either my teaching career or my family life. Now to do this, it has not been easy and slack had to be taken up in other areas of my life.

One of these areas that has been affected is my regular reflections I previously made on my blog. This happened because my cognitive load was being diverted into productive academic study rather than systematic reflection.

Don't hear me wrong, the reflections I did throughout my course were benefital and job appropriate, though they were a requirement rather than coming from personal searching and an inquisitive nature. 

If you are like me and have found it hard to really get into 2020 because of the devastating fires happening around me in Australia or because of a myriad of other reasons, choose to do something that will help you reflect. This could be camping, walking, spending time with those you love, reading, writing, flying a kite, unplugging from social media and the internet, listening to music, going to a movie or a concert. Whatever it is make it a priority.

This year, I choose before I move forward to reflect on where I have been, I choose to be thankful for the progress I have made and the lives I have impacted. I choose to show care and respect to the lives of the students and families I teach. I choose to honour the interactions I have, being present and available. Above this, I choose to go deeper with my faith and family, they make me better and are there without strings attached. 

Giving yourself permission to reflect opens up the possibility of personal goal setting because through this you begin to understand what make you tick and what you want to be a priority. I find my creativity comes when I have an awareness of the things I desire and the type of person I want to be. 

If you haven't yet, I would like to challenge you to find a place of AWE, where you can sit in amazement, wonder and engagement, and discover a life bigger than your current situation.

So this year, what do you choose? I would love to hear your thoughts...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How do we Build a Culture of Inquiry and Data Use?

School systems have a shared responsibility to improve student learning outcomes. Likewise, for staff there is an obligation to provide extended opportunities to build on what they already know. High quality recording methods that ascertain growth mapped over time can identify trends and highlight threats allowing organisations to predict implications of applying a learning initiative or intervention. This can become complex and messy due to competing agendas and a variety of interpretations. For this reason, organisations have an obligation to develop a fair, ethical and shared understanding how data will be used and interpreted (Stoll & Fink,1996). A strong and user-friendly data system when properly implemented, empowers teachers to discover value in functions that bring student data to their fingertips (Brunner, Fasca, Heinze, Honey, Light, Mandinach & Wexler , 2005). Therefore, teachers require adequate learning support if they are to use data to improve practice

Managing the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the classroom

As educators, we all understand the importance of ensuring that students submit their own work and are not cheated of their success by others. However, with the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the classroom, it can be difficult to ensure that students are not cheating on assignments. Fortunately, there are a number of measures that educators can take to minimise the possibility of cheating while still using AI to their advantage. Here are a few tips to help you manage the use of AI and minimise cheating by students on assignments. 1. Set Clear Guidelines The first step in preventing cheating is to set clear guidelines about the use of AI and make sure that students understand the expectations. Make sure students are aware that AI-generated work is not permitted and that any work submitted must be their own. 2. Monitor Student Activity Monitoring student activity through AI can help you identify any potential cheating. AI can be used to detect plagiarism and other sign

What does a post-industrial class look like? Part 2

This post is the second part of a series that I have been working on to identify what  does a post-industrial class look like? In my previous post , I looked at using video, collaborative discussion, grouping and student-centred learning. Why a large display and one to one? The large electronic display is used as it offers many benefits to a given lesson; these include demonstration and modelling as the teacher could showcase the application or video from the board (Moss, et al, 2007). It is easy to show the important features of particular web-based activities and have students interact with the material on their own devices. The board can accommodate different learning styles (Herrington & Harrington, 2006). Interactive boards can help tactile learners by touching and marking the board. Audio learners can have the class discussion and auditory multimedia, visual learners can see what is taking place as it develops at the board and it offers multimodal learning which can b