Journal #7Inquiry Into Practice

July 17, 2014

Describe a time you used critical reflection or inquiry to examine a component of your teachingstudent
learning, a lesson plan, an issue, etc.
Perhaps you only used a lower level of reflection at the time to alter your behaviorthis is okay. As you
write then reflect upon how you could have taken it to the dialectical level.

This past year was my third year of teaching and my first year at my current school. I teach at a charter
school that has a lot of rules and systems and I am in charge of maintaining and enforcing these systems. This was
a really hard school to transition in to because my students knew the system better than I did. I spent all my
attention and energy at the start of the year trying to enforce and maintain the system, and I failed to pay any
attention to the tone I set for my classroom. Although I tried to put on my confident teacher act, I did not come
across as a confident and authoritative presence in the room. I looked like I wasnt sure of myself, because
honestly I wasnt at the time but I didnt realize how easily my students would pick up on it. And the fall semester
this year was the worst semester I have had so far. The students were not invested in my class and they were
definitely not invested in me.
I did not figure out how to change this situation right away. In fact, I didnt even realize right away the
problem was me. The grade level I taught was labeled the worst behaved in the school. During summer PD, I was
told stories of how misbehaved my students were. And I was not the only teacher struggling to manage them. In
fact, almost all of us felt the same lack of control in our classrooms. For a while I believed the situation as out of my
control and I would simply go through the motions hoping things would get better. This may have continued for
the rest of the year if one exception did not occur. Every day I observed my craziest class attentive, behaving and
completing their work in English class. The English teacher on our team, Ms. Ashworth, seemed to have no issue
managing these students. Like me, she was new to the school this year, but she has taught for many years. Seeing
her classes made me stop and reflect upon my own classes. I knew she was doing something I was not and I was
determined to figure out what that was. Because I saw what my students were capable of, I knew I could do
something differently to change the atmosphere of my classroom.
My first reflection was that I did not have the relationships I had with my students in the past. Ms.
Ashworth had really great relationships with the students. Strong student relationships were something I really
prided myself of having my first two years teaching, and this was something that was glaringly absent this year. I
think I was too overwhelmed trying to learn the systems of the school at the beginning of the year to focus my
usual attention on relationship building. Through my reflection I realized these relationships were missing from
my class and perhaps the reason my students misbehaved in my classroom. I tried to rectify this situation by
sitting with my students at lunch and talking to them during recess and any other chance I could find. I also
intentionally focused my efforts on the most disruptive students. We would chat and joke, I would ask questions
about their lives and I would share some stories from my own. I had some really great conversations with the
students, but it didnt translate into improved behavior in class. I was now able to have better conversations with
students after an incident occurred but I was still not preventing the disruptions from happening. I realized that I
had a tone set in my classroom and now trying to back track with relationships was not going to be enough to
change it.
Once I realized I could not achieve the classroom I wanted from relationships alone, I began to think about
how the disruptions were occurring in my classroom in the first place. Most days we couldnt even get through the
warm up without students starting to act up. Since I couldnt pinpoint a trigger for the poor behavior, I tried to
remember the rare moments in class that my students were attentive and engaged. And I realized these times
came when I was asking them to do something different in the classroom. I remember I once played them Mozart
music before I presented an article about a scientific music study. I was amazed at how silent this classroom could
be! Reflecting about this moment, I realized something else. Although I tried to present the material in interesting
ways, I was doing most of the work in class. I was afraid to allow the students to collaborate or work in stations or
with manipulatives because I feared how they would behave when given any little amount of freedom. Based on
these two ideas, I decided that the second part of my issue, the first being a lack of relationships, was that my
students were bored. Therefore I decided to really change the schedule of my classroom. For the next unit, I spent
a lot of time working on lessons that asked students to practice the information in new and interesting ways. One
day I would have stations, the next a card sort, the next a detective day, and so on. Every class was different and I
found my students actually wanted to participate and complete their work. Even my toughest students sat down
and accomplished the task. I am not going to pretend that it was perfect or an overnight success, but I could see
improvements every day, in every class period. My room went from total chaos in September to fairly functional
by the end of November.
Eventually, the material did not lend itself to these different modes of working, but at this point my
students knew the expectations of the classroom and we settled into a normal functioning relationship for the rest
of the year. They were still not as behaved for me as they were for Ms. Ashworth, but we were finally learning
material and I continued to improve with them for the rest of the year. If I had not stopped to reflect upon my
actions in the classroom I would have never been able to turn the situation around. I would have never realized
what I was doing to contribute to the situation. At the time I did not know about critical reflection, and I definitely
did not think through the situation in the clear and linear manner as it comes across now, but I can see now I was
engaging in a process very similar to the formal reflection as Dewey and Schon described.