Reflectiveness

Reflectiveness can mean many things, but to me it means to look back on your past work and analyze it.  By reflecting, a teacher or student can see how much they have improved or what they need to continue to work on.  When teachers reflect, they can evaluate and decide how to move forward in their profession.  As a result, teachers and students together are able to form short-term and long-term goals.

In today's world, teachers and students struggle to reflect because of time.  In today's society, we are always on the run and living in the here and now.  We just don't think about reflecting and taking time to breath and look back on things.  We just want to get things done and look ahead to the future.  It seems that the past is more quickly forgotten today than in past decades.  I agree that is important to look toward the future, but the past should not be forgotten.  We learn from the past and our past work, and it is vital to reflect on previous work to improve a person's qualities in the future.  People find it hard to find time to reflect, but it is something that should be done.  We just need to breath, take a break, sit down, and evaluate our work and let it help us in moving forward to the future.

I believe that some people consider reflection to be the heart of the teaching process because of its importance.  By reflecting, students and teachers can see what they are capable of doing and what might trouble them.  Reflectiveness allows us to learn from our own work and grow from past assignments.  Learning and improving ourselves is the heart of the teaching profession.  We can never settle and be content as a teacher, instead we need to continue to find ways to improve and better ourselves as teachers.  All of this is made possible by reflecting, hence the importance of finding time to reflect.

I, myself, find it easiest to reflect when I have free time and do not have to worry about homework or studying.  As a college student, it is hard to find this time, so I usually do not reflect until there is a break in the school schedule.  For example, with fall break approaching, that will be a time where I will sit down at my computer and look at my past work and evaluate myself and think of ways I can improve and grow.  I save all my assignments over the course of a semester, which makes it possible to reflect and learn from my past.  As you can see, it is tough to find time to reflect, but I think it should be done about one or two times over the course of a semester.  We may not think much of it in today's society, but reflectiveness is vital whether it is being done by a teacher or a student.