Characteristics Of a Novice Teacher #8

The characteristic I chose for my fourth posting is #8: The novice teacher should be a reflective practitioner. The artifact I chose to go with the characteristic is my video tape lesson and analysis. I wrote in my paper about this chracteristic and about how this assignment was a really great tool to reflect upon and make constructive changes to our teaching plans. We were required to video tape and lesson of ours (no more than 30min) and then go back and analyze what we saw. We consider such things has student engagement, teacher questioning, and teacher responses. When I returned to my video to analyze it I noticed some of these things more so than when I was actually teaching. Although I don't think it is practical for a teacher to tape her own lessons because it would be hard unless someone could do it for you, I do think that being about to see yourself teach opens up the door for a lot of improvement. Through the video I could see more clearly which students were not engaged and piddling in their desks, and which students were focused on the lesson at hand. Through this assignment I have learned a great deal about myself as a teacher and I think that is the purpose of reflection; to learn and to grow.