Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, said that individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience. For teachers, what does this mean?
Splichal
I think this means that for us to get to be better teachers we need to first know ourselves. This means trying to look at ourselves as objectively as possible and seeing from lives up to that point what are our strengths and our weaknesses. We should then focus on how we can use our strengths to bring up our weaknesses. Once you know this we teach students using our strengths and focus on getting better in the areas we are weak. I think this should be a constant thing once you finish a task you should look back and say what did I do well and what cold I do better. Then plan a way to do it better.
John, I really enjoyed reading your post and think that you hit the question dead on. I think that we need to continually be looking at our strengths and weaknesses in all aspects of our lives to make ourselves grow and be better. We need to create lesson plans around our strenghts and as you said, use our strengths to bring up our weaknesses.
I'd have to agree with John above. I think that knowing your strengths and weaknesses as an educator will make you grow to be a stronger more aware teacher. I say this is like having to do a reflection over our formal observations for our internship courses. Our own teachers are wanting to know our thoughts on what worked well within our lessons, and what didn't, what we would change, and what worked great that we'll use again. If we continue to analyze ourselves we will continue to grow therefore we will hopefully help our students knowledge as well.
That is very true! The reflections we have done for our internships has allowed us to reflect and be self examine our teaching. As we reflect we look at what needs to be adjusted to better teach students.
As teachers we need to help students find their inner strengths. We should know that what works for one student may not work for another. We need to provide variation in teaching methods. People by nature want to learn and grow to achieve higher levels of knowledge through development of experience based in learning and experimenting. Students may need help in determining a way to learn that works best for them so they can have the best educational experience possible. Learning styles will vary from person to person depending on their interactions with their physical environment, their personality, thinking styles, emotions and perceptions. Not only will students need to evaluate how they work best but teachers need to evaluate their teaching styles being conscious of the dynamics of the classroom in which they are teaching.
I believe you are correct, we do need to help students find their inner strengths. I think that in order for teachers to do this, the teacher must first find his/her inner strengths. We have to know how to reach the students and that starts by us identifying what tools we posses to help us do that.
I believe that this teaches on the very core of what good teachers do: they self-reflect, they analyze, they plan, they adjust. Self-examining is the ability to look at realistically look at yourself in a critical way. This requires brushing aside superiority and inferiority issues and actually examining what you have done, what worked, what didn’t. Self-knowledge, I feel, means knowing your strengths and your weaknesses and working to improve them. Self-improvement can be an unconscious experience, for instance going to a workshop because it interests you, instead of “because you have to.” Taking college classes and doing more than getting a passing grade or learning things for the test. Learning in and of itself is self-improvement! This quote reminds me of the reflective writing criteria we have to fulfill. It's about knowing yourself well enough to be constantly assessing and improving yourself.
Sarah- I also think that this is the base for a great teacher. The more a teacher can reflect on themselves the better then will be in the classroom. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is so important as a teacher and being able to work on them and improve yourself for your students should be a main goal for a teacher. The more that you can improve yourself in the classroom the better you will be for your students and giving them the best education possible. Christine Moses
I think that this means that as teachers we are taught and programmed to always be self examining ourselves, our lessons, and out teaching techniques and by doing this so often we have become to do these things without even thinking about it. I know that when I did my first internship I had a lot to work on for classroom management and I pounded it into my head that I needed to be better at it and now I do not even need to think about it and I can control my classroom and have authority over the students while teaching them. The more that we as teachers self evaluate, reflect, and have knowledge of ourselves and our teaching strategies the less we need to focus on them and the more natural they become to us. We need to know what makes us great teachers so we can create the best environment and the best education for our students. The more we know about ourselves the more we can provide for our students.
I agree with your statement, "the more we know about ourselves the more we can provide for our students". This statement is very true. As an educator we must self examine ourselves and adjust instruction as need to best suit our students needs.
I believe that for teachers this means that we need to be actively looking at ourselves. As an educator you have to self examine how you are teaching and be aware of what is working and what is not. With the self knowledge of how you are teaching then you can change and adjust instruction to best fit the students needs. Teachers need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses as an educator and strive to be a better educator. No teacher is perfect, however as an educator you must be actively trying to be the best teacher you can be.
I love how you talk about being ACTIVE. Teaching is an ever-changing and evolving job (very active). We must change with the ways are students are changing and evolving. This involves reflecting on every lesson, discipline action, and activity that is done in our classroom. We need to ask ourselves questions like, "Did the work well?" and "Did all of my students learn what was being taught?" Sometimes we may need to present a concept in 2 or 3 different ways in order to reach all students. It comes natural to teach the way that YOU learn, but we need to always be thinking about all of the learning styles so that we can reach the maximum number of students!
I love your response to this question! My thoughts are along the same line as yours. I feel that WE, the teachers, need to continually look at OURSELVES, both professionally and personally, in order to be an effective teacher.
I think as a teacher this means we constantly need to be evaluating ourselves and how our students are learning based on our teaching strategies. For example, as a teacher, we can't just say "This is how I will teach and if the kids don't learn--OH WELL! I'm not changing!" Because it will only hurt the students (and you!). We constantly need to reflect on ourselves. We need to be the best teachers we can be, and we can't do that without self reflecting!
Vanessa, I completely agree with you. I have known several teachers from my past that could've used a little self-examination every once in awhile. They had taught the same way their whole career and didn't realize that the way our parents learned in their class was not the way we were going to learn.
I believe this means that we constantly need to be reflecting on our experiences to improve the way we teach and interact with our students. I also think it means that people who choose to be teachers have somewhat of an unconscious ability to be role models and are nurturing, caring, and encouraging without thinking about it. I believe this comes through examining ourselves and evaluating how we can be better teachers and even people. After we evaluate ourselves so often and strive to improve our instruction to students, being a better teacher comes naturally and unconsciously over time.
As education majors we are all aware of the need to reflect over EVERY SINGLE EXPERIENCE! Examining who we are as a member of society and acting to change or not to change is the unconscious choice that needs made.
Carl Jung's theory of self-examination and self-knowledge relates to teachers because they need to do an inventory of themselves before they can even begin to teach others. As a main influence on a young child's mind, it is especially important that we are constantly critiquing ourselves and improving the way we provide instruction to them.
I think this means that in our first years, we will have unrealistic expectations in the classroom and that after the first semester or year we will have to go through a self examination and reflect on what to change. Kids are smart and can read us like books so we will have to change a little bit of our ways to gain that advantage.
It means the more that teachers examine themselves and process the information to turn it into useful knowledge, the more the growth experience will become instinctual in educating rather than a conscious consideration. I work with behavioral kids and I have to self-examine several times a week. I look at incidents and think about what worked and what didn’t. Once I identify what worked and convince myself that it’s the way to go, the easier it is to apply. There are times when a student is having a melt down and I don’t even have to think about what to do, I just respond in an affective way. Had I not done self-examination on previous experiences, I may have hesitated to respond (because I am considering my options consciously in the moment), which is not affective at all. My response system is very unconscious. Teachers need to be quick on their feet and taking that few minutes out in the day to reflect on previous experience can help them stay sharp. Kids need to buy into what the teacher is selling (education). If a teacher is not confident, the kids see that and will protest against it. Not only do I think that self-examination is important for the role of a teacher, I also think it’s beneficial for a teacher to use on the students. If a teacher encourages kids to use the same process, they are more likely to learn better. I think when the students taking a few minutes to have students reflect back through the day can help them find easier solutions in the future. Just having the students be able to identify affective ways to go about problems they face is beneficial to the teacher. So to the teacher, it means better classroom management, possible higher achievers and overall better problem solving skills for the students. I actually think this concept is the best way to teach. The whole idea is to help the child grow. If we are able to get them to process a situation and evaluate it to turn it into useful information in the future, they have actually grown as a person. I would rather that than to have a bunch of students the regurgitate information on test to get a grade and will forget it all within a week. I rather students learn how to look at what just happened, discover what they could have done to get a better result and make a change in the future without any thought because it came natural.
Great post! Teaching is all about reflecting! We teach, then analyze and reflect. From there we make a plan for next time taking note of what worked and what didn't work. Reflection is very important for all educators!
I believe as educators it is important to find out what you are good at and what it is that you aren't so good at. You have to look at yourself and find out what ways you are effective in teaching students. You aren't going to want to use something in the classroom that you aren't good at because most likely if you aren't good at it the students aren't going to learn as well. We need to first use our strengths and use them to get better in other areas that may need some work. We have to know ourselves before we can help others.
We do need to find our strengths, but the more important role is to identify our weaknesses and learn how to improve them. Becoming more self-efficient allows for us to recover from a failed lesson plan, teaching attempt, or anything else that goes wrong. Continually improving is key to success.
After reading the statement I believe that this should impact teachers and how they teach. I got that as teachers we need to make sure that we are looking at the way we are teaching and see if that style really does help our students. There are so many teachers that have been teaching the same way forever and won't change the way that they teach even if their students do not learn that way. I also got that the teachers that do this are considered the great teachers in a school because they are able to step back and reflect on what they teach and how they teach it.
Elizabeth - I too believe that the way we teach should benefit our students. It is important to remember that change is a good thing in educating. I want to be the kind of educator that is easy going and likes to try new things, I want to show my students the importance of having an open mind.
I enjoyed reading your response. I agree that reflection is a necessary trait for individuals in order for them to be an effective teacher. I believe that we need to self-reflect on a continual basis in both our personal and professional lives in order to be good role models for our students and to provide them with the best education we can.
Carl Jung describes a process that teachers (and most everyone) should perform in order to better themselves. Through self-examinations, people discover knowledge and create self-knowledge that translates in to a more complete schema. Asking ourselves “who I am” gives us a self-biased view of who we think we are. Actually digging deep into past experiences and the handling of situations provides a better portrait of “who I am”. Taking action or making a conscience effort to positivity change and correct deficiencies allows for greater self-efficacy. Increasing self-efficacy often creates a more persist goal setting teacher (person) who is able to recover from a failure.
The other thought on asking ourselves who we are can also help us to not force our biases onto our students. If we truly know who we are and continue to reflect upon ourselves and what we are teaching - we can be sure to make sure we are not creating biases within the classroom.
I think Jung was saying that to succeed, we have to participate in constant self-evaluation to truly know ourselves and understand how our experiences have unconsciously shaped who we are. For teachers, if we know ourselves, we can focus on utilizing our strengths and improving our weaknesses to continuously strive to become a better educator. As we grow in our professions, our experiences will allow us to acquire new knowledge and skills that will change who we are and how we look at things. Consequently, the process continues resulting in renewed self-examination. Therefore, the need of self-examination never ceases, creating a continuous cycle of self-examination, experience, and self-improvement. Sarah O. and Christine M. both made great points saying that good teachers utilize this concept to self-reflect, analyze, plan, and adjust within the classroom. I agree that through self-reflection, educators can improve teaching skills and strategies to become more effective teachers. I also agree with John K. when he stated that individuals can use their strength to improve upon their weaknesses. Through constantly re-evaluating our strengths and weaknesses, teachers can engage themselves in a cycle of constant improvement. I also really liked what Bonnie S. said in her post about encouraging students to utilize self-reflection in order to help them grow. I looked at Jung’s statement purely from the perspective of growing as a teacher, but after reading Bonnie’s post, I recognized that like self-regulation and self-efficiency as discussed in our text, this concept can be used to help students mature and grow as learners as well.
I believe Jung is speaking about taking a good luck at yourself, What is it that you are doing, how can you do things better. As teachers, we are constantly looking at how we can improve in the classroom. We look at lesson plans, test, homework and assignments and see how these are reaching the students. Our ultimate goal is to reach out and teach the student so they can be successful. Through this process, and its always cycling, not only do the students grow and learn, but so does the teacher.
No matter how old a person gets, there is always room for improvement. A person should know himself or herself well enough to understand they are always learning from their weaknesses is what I think Carl Jung was saying. As a teacher, we will have days when the lesson went great, and other days when the lesson was a flop. We need to be able to look back and figure out what worked and what did not, what needed to be changed and what should be added. Knowing if you need to ask for help or if you are able to solve your own issues is something else I thing Jung was referring to. As you get older, you realize, you don’t have all the answers, and students need to know you are human and need help too. We are all learning everyday academically, and emotionally.
I agree that showing you are a person doesn't make you a weaker teacher--it is important that students realize you are human. Admitting a mistake is okay, and so is fixing it. Especially because failures in teaching (for most of us) will be inevitable. Such an important point to make!
The "unconscious experience" Jung refers to is coming to a sort of truth about oneself--by reflecting and critically examining yourself as a teacher, you do gain the psychological advantage of knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, as many people on this board have said, but by doing this examination, we also decide that we are worthy of "sympathetic attention and interest" as Jung says.
So as teachers, I would agree that rigorous self-examination is a good idea--we need to know our own tendencies and need to cultivate an awareness of what we are very good at in the classroom as well as what we lack. I think of this in terms of student learning--some students may not learn with our lessons because we have a bias towards a specific type of teaching. I know that mine is definitely read-write! But some of my students really need visual learning and kinesthetic learning, so I have to examine myself and know when I am favoring that type of teaching so I can shift my methods to help include more students.
I do think that the "unconscious experience" also refers to us deciding our own worth as teachers and as people--if we are constantly doing this self-examining, we ARE critical, but we must also affirm ourselves--I am worthy as a human being of other peoples' attention and interest. I think this can be important because many teachers are so hard on themselves (especially in the first year, when some days just feel like a failure), that they forget that they are worthy of attention and interest. Sometimes it's easy to forget that teachers will have life outside of school where they will want that affirmation as a human, beyond being a teacher.
I like your definition of the unconscious experience. I agree this is the only way to truly reflect on ourselves. I like how you added critically examining, this is the most important yo have to realize your not perfect and accept failure at times. I was thinking about stating that, but couldn't find the word. Great blog!
I believe what Mr. Jung is saying to educators is that in order to know yourself as an educator you have live through those “unconscious experience.” It is the unconscious experiences that make us the teachers we become. We as educators have to know what we can handle in the classroom and what we cannot handle, we also have to let our students know what it is we expect of them in our classrooms. When each student steps into our classroom they are stepping into our lives. We as teacher give them a look at what their lives can amount to, and them as students give us a reason to continue in our lives of teaching.
I also believe that no matter the age of the student they can teach us the teachers a thing or two about life. I believe that no matter how old a person is they are still learning something new every day. It may be that they are re-learning something they learning a long time ago. But that day it is new to them and should be cherished.
Matraca, I agree with you as teachers we need to make sure our students understand our expectations. We have to continually reexamine how we are teaching to see what we need to fix in order for our students to be successful. I also agree that you learn something new every day. I know as a mother of two incredible kids that i am taught something ever day at a minimum. Kids have so much to offer when we are willing to let the explore and tell us what they are learning about.
I think that Carl Jung is saying that we need to reflect on our work. For teachers this is reflecting on the lessons we do, how we teach it, and even the activities/worksheets we use. Everyday we are constantly growing and learning and it is necessary to recognize that. Even if we don't formally recognize our reflection we are thinking about the student responses. I also think this goes a step further for teachers and we need to not only evaluate ourselves but to have the students learn to evaluate their own work. Looking back this is what we did in English class when we had to edit our own papers. We also did this in classes that made you give yourself a grade and then see if it matched with the teachers. Eventually I think this helps the students, academically they can see a rubric and see if their work matches the criteria and then it helps them to evaluate what they do later.
Samantha, Yes as teachers we have to reflect on our work in order to make improvements. I think this is why authentic assessments are so important to our teaching. Then help use see were we need to refocus our efforts and not loos valuable teaching time reteaching in a way that will not work. Rubrics are also tools that I love and think that they will be a huge part of my assessments in the future. It helps everyone involved if we all understand how the information being taught will be assessed.
I agree with my peers Carl Jung's message is to take a look at yourself. Self reflection is an important process for growth and success. I believe this means to have to not only evaluate what you are planning and teaching, but reflect on it. To truly reflect you have to look at what went right, what went wrong, where could you improve, and what to keep the same. This self reflection can be used any time for any situation. Allowing the teacher to grow from mistakes and strengthen their achievements. I had a tutoring session for the correcting reading disabilities course, and one of my biggest teaching strategies was self reflections and peer reflections. This allowed the students to pinpoint their own mistakes instead of giving negative feedback, and allowing them to reach their own solutions of how to improve. This worked wonders on my group they all improved by the end of our sessions.
I think that as others have said, as teachers we are constantly changing our methods and thoughts about teaching. What Carl Jung is stating it that we must look at ourselves first when we are trying to correct a problem or situation. We need to understand that who we are will affect our students in both negative and positive ways. If when look at ourselves in a critical manner we may be able to make adjustments that will lead us down a path of getting through to our students. Just like each of our students will have their own ways of learning we will have our own ways of teaching and we will need to be able to tweak our teaching strategies to meet the needs of all of our students. I think that we all have unconscious attitudes towards certain subjects, learning styles or behaviors that will affect how we teach. The exceptional teachers are those that learn these unconscious factors and make a conscious effort to change them for the benefit of their students. Carl Jung is asking us to look at the attitudes or behaviors in a way that we can them make choices that will help use be better teachers. We can’t change unwanted behaviors in our students until we understand how our own actions are contributing to those behaviors. For example, we were having a lot of “bulling issues” with my 10 year old foster daughter and when we fi9naly looked at all of the factors the majority of the problems were solved by regrouping the students in a way that the kids that were having difficulties working together were no longer in the same group. It did not fix every issue but it did stop a lot of the problems that were inhibiting the learning of many of her classmates. By the teachers being willing to reexamine how she had set up the class in the beginning of the year we were able to save some very valuable classroom time. Teachers need to do this type of self reflecting often to see all of the ways that they can increase learning and decrease distractions that may take away from learning time.
I think that what Jung is saying is that we need to continue to reflect on the things we do in order to gain a better perspective of our strengths and weaknesses. The more we know about our strengths and weaknesses the better we can portray our strengths and work on our weaknesses. This is very important to us as teachers. In every teaching class that I have taken at FHSU, I have been asked numerous times to reflect on the learning that I have had throughout the semester. This not only helps me grow as a student and future-teacher it also helps me to grow as a person. I reflect on what I did well and what I should work on to better myself. All the reflecting that I am learning to do know will help tremendously and it will become second nature when I become a teacher. While reflecting on myself is important as a teacher it is also important for me to bestow those same skills upon my students so that they too are able to learn and grow from reflecting on learning experiences.
Kristi, It is very important that we also teach students to self reflect! I am glad you mentioned that. What good does it do for us to self reflect if we don't pass that on to younger generations? One day we will all be gone and they will have to take charge of the world. The whole point of getting an education is to become independent and self reflection is an important part of that.
I agree with many of the previous comments in that it is very important that we as teachers continually reflect on our strengths and weaknesses. As we get to know ourselves we gain not only knowledge about ourselves but many times we gain confidence and a sense of self value as we work to highlight strengths and work to improve our weaknesses. This can make us better teachers because we have personally done the work to feel confident and comfortable in our role as an educator. The unconscious experience comes from this type of self-reflection, and the process of making changes and adaptations. As we go through the process personally we unconsciously model active and lifelong learning to our students. Another benefit of this type of reflection and self-examination is that it makes us aware of our biases and preferred methods of learning and instruction. This can bring to our awareness what changes and adaptations we need to make in order to reach more students.
Jackie, I like your point on reflecting our strengths and weaknesses. We all can strive to improve and become stronger teachers. I also agree we can become to confident and need to stop and humble ourselves to make sure we are doing what is best for the students.
After thinking about this and reading other's posts all I can think is, "I'm pretty enough. I'm smart enough. And doggone-it people like me!" I'm not sure that the authors of Saturday Night Live were thinking about Carl Jung when they wrote this skit, but it's a fitting comparison.
Over the course of history there have been a lot of external forces that have demanded changes in education. However, every teacher - every year - makes a change that effects the way that students are taught. Evaluating and assessing: lesson plans, activities, field trips, room arrangement, classroom schedule, classroom rules and a dozen other pieces that put an entire school year together, are processes that teachers use to ultimately help, one day at a time, change the face of education. Teachers who are unable or unwilling to participate in self-examination may be good teachers today, but they are unlikely to be good teachers tomorrow. A teacher that is unable or unwilling to dig deep and know themselves as an individual is likely to become so entrenched in their "teacher mode" that they will be unable to relate to the world as it changes around them.
Self-examination and self-knowledge are about more than just being good teachers. They are important pieces to the puzzle of quality education and raising tomorrow's leaders.
Stacie, I like your comparison with the Saturday night skit and the quote. If we do not teach each class with the right tools than we will not be giving the best to our students. I keep thinking of hair dressers and how they need to stay informed and educated on the different styles of haircuts. If they never evaluated what they were doing then they would begin to loose customers. We as teachers are the same way. If we do not continue to examine our teaching strategies and keep on the changing dynamics in the classroom then we loose students. I enjoyed your post.
Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, said that individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience. For teachers, what does this mean? Splichal
After a bit of research I found an interesting web site http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Carl-Jung.htm where I looked a little deeper; I was pretty confused by the “psychological advantage” and “unconscious experience” part of the statement above. Anyways I found this full quote that helped me, so maybe some of you will find it useful as well, “only when the individual is willing to fulfil the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge. If he follows through his intention, he will not only discover some important truths about himself, but will also have gained a psychological advantage: he will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest. He will have set his hand, as it were, to a declaration, of his own human dignity and taken the first step towards the foundations of his consciousness -- that is, towards the unconscious, the only accessible source of religious experience. (Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self)” I underlined what I thought was important in the quote. It may also help to know that Jung describes the unconscious as objective whereas conscious is subjective. So, I believe that he means when we self reflect we will find the objective truths about our self, the beautiful and the ugly, our strengths and our weaknesses. We will see that we are worthy of attention and interesting – we are important and deserve ethical treatment (dignity.) This is important to keep in mind while we are teaching because we are important to students and we influence the future of the world. We should have a high self-efficacy and believe in ourselves! In addition we need to keep in mind that other people are just as important and they are just as interesting and deserving of attention. What Jung said applies to all of us, not just myself.
I greatly appreciated your break-down of the quote. You were able to help me in getting a much deeper understanding of what he was trying to say. You are exactly right, we need this definition in our lives, what exactly our strengths and weaknesses are because by knowing them, we will be able to better reach our students. We must understand that we ourselves must be looked at and analyzed before being able to successfully and meaningfully help our students. good work!
This statement by Carl Jung makes me think about all of the reflections we are asked to complete throughout the Teacher Education program. From day one of the program we are asked to reflect on everything we do so we can figure out what we need to do to get better. If we taught lesson after lesson and never reflected on what worked or didn't work we would never make any improvements. We would never gain that advantage of becoming the best teacher that we can be. I can honestly say that writing all of those reflections have already helped me see what works for me and what doesn't and I haven't even been in the classroom for more than an hour and fifteen minutes at a time!
Not only do we need to constantly make self-evaluations, but we must teach our students how to do the same. We need to encourage students to think about maybe how they studied for a particular test - teach them to figure out what works for them and what doesn't. Teaching students to self-reflect at a young age lets them begin to figure out how to be the best they can be.
I agree with you about the reflections that we are expected to complete in the Teacher Education program. Not only do these reflections help us to understand what we need to improve upon, but they also help us to understand our feelings about teaching. I remember one of my high school teachers telling me that a lot of teachers get burnt out on teaching after only a few years. I sometimes wonder how often some of these teachers really reflected on why they became teachers or why they liked teaching. I've also heard stories about teachers who started out teaching one age group, only to discover afterwards that they did not really like this age group and would be happier with a different age group of students. I think self-reflection can really help future teachers realize some things that they may not discover until they are out in the field.
Yes, by using the reflections we can self-regulate our teaching habits and see what works and what doesn't work with our group of students. Good connection.
I totally agree with Sara's statement above. I also immediately thought about all of our reflections, and how thinking about our experiences in the classroom helped me learn about myself and what I would do in certain classroom situations, how I will manage behavior, and how I will teach content. Even beyond that, I think the decision all of us made to earn our teaching degrees was the result of much self-reflection, especially since most of us seem to be non-traditional college students. I don't know about you all, but it took me about 10 years to decide to return to school for teaching, and I thought long and hard about myself on the way to making that decision. However, during that 10 years I had many experiences that enabled me to learn about myself, like travelling abroad, having children, and working at two different careers. I can talk about a lot of things I learned, but what Jung is referring to is the overall sense of self that we can't describe or put into words; it is just a feeling we have or a part of our personality that others see. For teachers, I think that giving students as many experiences as possible to learn, both about themselves and about others, contributes to the child's sense of self.
You are right, by writing our reflections we are able to put ourselves in the shoes of the teacher. I liked your "reflection" on how most of us are "non-traditional" students, which most likely means that we did a lot of self-reflecting as people to decide this is where we want to be today. Giving students those opportunities to learn about themselves and others will ultimately make them into the person they will be. good post!
I never realized how important reflection was until I got further into my teacher education classes. I used to think it was just busy work, something for a grade. But I actually enjoy reflecting now and learn from it tremendously. I appreciate corrective guidance from peers and instructors because it really will help me to be a better educator!
As teachers, self-examination is key to improving our methods. By examining both ourselves and our teaching, we can understand what our strengths and weaknesses are. Through examination, we gain knowledge into how we teach and how well we are doing. We can come to realize what methods we use frequently with success and what methods that we can improve upon in order to create a much more enriching learning experience for all students.
Along with focusing on methods, we also gain personal insight into how we feel about our jobs. By examining our own feelings about teaching, we can address any negative feelings that arise. Many teachers start out with a great sense of purpose in their work. As the years pass; however, some of these teachers may lose this sense of purpose and begin to just "go through the motions" everyday. They may even come to hate teaching. By examining our feelings, we can hopefully confront these negative feelings and decide how we can alleviate them before they completely take over our professional lives.
Examining both our methods and our feelings can make us better teachers and feel great about our jobs. People who do well at something or are able to improve in an area they are weak in develop greater self-efficacy and generally feel good about their work. Likewise, people who feel positive about their work will persist in their work and find new ways to improve.
I think this means that in order for us to be successful and meaningful teachers to our students, we must first take a deeper look at ourselves. We must know ourselves inside and out, what and how we act in certain situations. Why do we act that way, what drives us to determine our beliefs? We must first get a good grasp of who we are as individuals and teachers within the classroom. If we don’t know where we stand, than how can we expect our students to stand for what they believe in? Carl Jung was right, we must take look at ourselves though “rigorous” self-examination. I think this means that we must not only look at our strengths, but focus on our weaknesses as well. We must learn how to better our weaknesses in order to be successful. Teaching our students to do the same, taking time to reflect on themselves is important. They must learn to reflect in order to grow as individuals. Someone mentioned above that in order for teachers to change with the world that is changing around them, teachers must be able to self-examine themselves and the ways in which they are teaching. The world is changing every day, if we aren’t in tune enough with society, and ourselves, than we aren’t going to be willing to make those necessary changes in favor of our students.
I agree with you. To be able to guide our future students in education and in life we first must know how we are, how we stand and what our life means. This gets deep but also as a parent this is something that should be done to model for our our children along with our students.
This is an interesting topic for me to discuss. Carl Jung had corresponded with Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous over a number of years. In December of 1938, Bill W. began writing the 12 Steps of AA that were then published in the original edition of the AA Big Book in 1939. Step 4 is “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves” and Step 12 is “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs”.
In 1957, Jung published the book The Undiscovered Self in which he stated that the fundamental question that one must answer in life is: "Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving into the crowd?" "To this question," Jung pointed out, "there is a positive answer only when the individual is willing to fulfill the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge." (Thus, the necessity of taking, and continuing to take, a searching and fearless moral inventory of one's "self.") "If he follows through on this intention," Jung continues, "he will not only discover some important truths about himself, but will also have gained a psychological advantage: he will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest. He will have set his hand, as it were, to a declaration of his own human dignity and taken the first step towards the foundation of his consciousness - that is, towards the unconscious, the only accessible source of religious experience."
It makes me wonder if Jung’s statement “that individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience” were based on Steps 4 and 12 of Alcoholics Anonymous or if it was something Jung had corresponded to Bill W., which Bill W. used in writing Steps 4 and 12. Even if one of their writings were not based on that of the other, I believe they mean the same thing which is for individuals to CONTINUALLY undergo a fact-finding and fact-facing process in which we honestly search out our flaws, and without regret, make the necessary changes in our lives.
In response to what Jung’s statement “that individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience” means for teachers, I believe that in order to be an effective teacher, we need to continually self-examine ourselves and take stock of our self-knowledge. Using these self reflections will enable us to dismiss what is not working in both our professional and personal lives; which in turn, allows us to be good role models for our students and provide them with the best education we possibly can.
I think that this means to be a person who possesses higher psychological advantages you have to know yourself and understand the full scope of what you know. If you do not know yourself or your own knowledge then how as a teacher are you to shape the minds of other people when you yourself is unsure of your abilities. When you are able to know the full scope of yourself and your knowledge this leads to more self-assurance and therefore lead to the unconscious abilities to guide another in life and knowledge, because you are aware of yourself and believe in your own abilities.
I think that for teachers this means that we must be open-minded when it comes to self-reflecting in regards to our strengths and weaknesses in the education field. Take what we are learning about ourselves as educators, learn from it, and grow. Apply what works and learn from what doesn’t in order to become better educators. We all have something that we are good at and other things that we need to work on. Accept that, and do what you can to become better in those weaker areas. Be willing to continuously grow as an educator and seek out how you can become better within your classroom for your students. Continue to broaden your learning by going to professional workshops, and attending as many learning events as you possibly can. Take the time for self-improvement, and always approach your teaching by instructions by using as many different strategies as you can in order meet the needs of every student in your classroom environment. Most importantly, don’t just think of ways that you can improve to be a better educator, do the work that it takes to get there and stay there.
I agree with you completely that an open-mind is definitely a requirement for ongoing self-reflection. I like that you brought up the fact that we all have strengths and weaknesses going into teaching, and I think once teaching a year or so, will become even more aware of our shortcomings as an educator. I learned in my positive psychology class taught by Dr. Loomis at KU that if we spent as much energy improving our assets as we do trying to improve our weaknesses, we will be more successful and happy in the long term. Food for thought.
I agree with many of the ideas already posted. To grow and become stronger we must be willing to reflect on our values and beliefs and practices. This is an important process for teachers and cannot be forgotten to be a truely effective teacher. When we reflect on ourselves, we gain a deeper understanding of our motives and how we influence those around us. Not only will self-reflection lead to changes in our concious efforts, but will undoubtly lead to changes in our unconscious responses as we internalize our learning.
This means, in my opinion, that we should always be looking at ourselves and be willing to accept we can learn more and we are always able to learn more about us and the knowledge we have. By constantly accepting to learn more we will be forever learners. We should realize that our students are looking to us for models and if we show them we are willing to be forever learners than they will be encouraged to keep learning also. Being open to new ways of teaching is necessary also to help any student learn. We as educators need to learn to help the students learn also. We need to learn new ways to teach to reach all children. without striving to continue our self-examination, we could be the teacher that teaching to only one style of learning instead of the whole class.
I agree our students are looking to us as role models and if we can be model students ourselves they will have someone to model after. I tell kids when I make a mistake, I will say things like boys and girls I goofed up, I did X, Y, Z and I should have done A, B, C, I will get that fixed I just wanted you to know I realize my error. They always tell me oh that's ok, people make mistakes. What I think is important here is that they see even adults goof up, it's okay to say, oops I goofed, and work to fix it with out a melt down or blow up. Knowing faults and errors helps you reflect and work on making things better.
For me, this means you have to do three things: be a lifelong learner, be introspective with yourself, and reflect frequently over all of life's endeavors. For teachers, this means that you want balance in what you as an instructor teach with the amount of teaching you are doing for others. 50/50 is best, and requires a real commitment.
I love that you said be lifelong learners! I 100% agree with that statement. I don't think you can be a good educator with out continuing to learn yourself. I get bummed out when I see teachers that do just that. Not only do you gain knowledge, but you also remember what it's like to be a learner, the things you like and dislike are a great reminder of what your own students might like and dislike and to remember to do what you can to meet all your students needs.
Just last week, I scheduled my formal evaluation of one of my coed PE classes by my administrator. In addition, I had the same class videoed for the FHSU T2T class evaluation. After I received the administrators’ feedback in writing I was feeling pretty good about myself as a teacher. My administrator asked me to also watch the video and to do a self-evaluation. At first, I was a bit take back because I thought I had done so well based on his evaluation. Talk about great timing, when I started reading this chapter and all of the blogs, I realized my administrator was only trying to help me to keep improving as a teacher through self-evaluation. When I watched the video of myself with this renewed understanding, I honestly couldn’t believe the number of things that I could have done better. I agree with everyone in the class, we have to participate in constant self-evaluation to truly know ourselves and understand how our experiences have shaped who we are. I like what Stacie S. said in her blog, “By knowing ourselves as teachers’ through self-evaluation, we can focus on utilizing our strengths and improving our weaknesses to continuously strive to become better educators.” Continuously means that the need of self-examination never ceases and as a result we create a constant cycle of self-examination, experience, and self-improvement. I also liked what Bonnie S. said in her blog about encouraging students to utilize self-reflection to help them grow and mature as learners.
I can understand that about self evaluation. I make notes ton my lesson plans after every class. (I'm doing T2T in Art, so I teach the same lesson to 4 different groups of kids with 5 different lessons a day) I started doing this years ago when I went to work for a children's summer camp. I found that if I looked back at my notes and made changes things went smoother the next go around. I can really see this during my weeks teaching. My poor Monday kids,I feel for them, not because it's not a good lesson, but after three times of teaching the lesson my Friday kids get the benefits of all my notes and the lesson is very smooth (tho I make notes on it as well). So I loved this chapter because it's just plain true!
Self evaluation is a great tool for us to see ourselves in action. It is easy to think that we are doing a great job teaching, but when we are able to watch ourselves we find ways to make it better!
"individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience."
Basically for teachers this means you are always learning, always reflecting, always looking for a way to make the lesson better. In anything we do in life, there are things we can do to make the experience better. As educators we are dealing with individuals with different learning styles, home lives, experiences, behaviors, and the list goes on. It doesn't' matter if we have taught the lesson a million times, it will always be different to the learners we are educating. Because of this we need to constantly look at what we have taught and see where we can improve to better reach our students. By knowing ourselves and reflecting we can continue to grow and learn to better the educational experience for our students.
As teachers we cannot be too proud to ask for help or guidance. It is imperative that we rely on veteran teachers and utilize their expertise in planning our daily lessons. As teachers, we also must be good students. In order for us to gain a psychological advantage we must take courses, attend in-services and grow with the new technology that our students learn with. Our motivation to teach our students must remain strong and we have to continue to want more. The more we learn, the more they will know!!!
Michelle, I liked how you stated that we cannot be too proud to ask for help or guidance. All too often I feel as though adults (myself included) don't ask for this exact reason, too proud. Getting a teaching degree and having a classroom full of students, doesn't mean we aren't students anymore ourselves. It is truly crucial to continue with a constant 'self-examination' to better ourselves. The guidance and help of veteran teachers is a good thought as well! Good post!
For teachers this means a great deal of constant self-reflection. This is the best way for teachers to make themselves better. Not only is it good for the teacher to know what went well and what needs to be improved on, but it is important to express that to the students. By expressing this to the students they get to see how important it is to self-reflect on a daily basis and learn from that self-reflection to grow.
For teachers, this means that we need to first do some self examination. We need to recognize our strengths and weaknesses. We need to know what we are good at and use that to help what we are bad at. For me, I am a procrastinator but I am great with due dates. For this reason, as a teacher, I will always need to make a due date for myself. After we have examined our strengths and weaknesses, we then need to recognize how we are doing. After we teach a new lesson or do an activity, we need to look back and recognize how we did. We should see if there is room for improvement. This would be our self-knowledge.
AS everyone has stated in their blogs, a teacher must reflect upon him/her self. However, I also believe that children are the best lie detectors. A child can tell automatically if an adult is being sincere and genuine in their approach, or if the adult is simply attempting to manipulate them. As teachers we must know ourselves in order to communicate sincerely with our students. Being able to communicate sincerely and honestly with ourselves leads to the abiliby to communicate sincerely and honestly with our students and collegues. Without a clear idea of who we are and what we need, we cannot begin to help our students reach their full potential when we are not at our full potential.
This means that a teacher that engages in rigorous self-examination will have an advantage over his or her counterparts because with this self-examination will come a strong knowledge and understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, attributes, and general disposition of that teacher. By using a strong sense of self-knowledge and self-reflection this teacher will have an advantage over peers that do not reflect on their teaching because they will better be able to place themselves in classroom situations that take advantage of their strengths and they will be better able to adapt to challenges in the classroom.
I think it means that if you continually evaluate your performance in the classroom and your approach to each day, you will naturally start to correct the things you feel need improvement. If each time you teach you take time to reflect on what things you did right and wrong, you can come up with ways to fix them. If you continually do this you can start to notice right a way when you may have made a mistake and can unconsciously fix it.
For educators, this means that the only way to continuously grow and get better is to continuously self-examine. We need to be able to reflect upon past experiences and determine our high and low points - thus leading us to be better in the future. In a classroom setting, it is important to continuously grow and improve - for the children - therefore constantly self-examining allows us to become more efficient educators, gaining greater, more worthy self-knowledge.
I believe this means that as an educator you must always be learning to become the best teacher you can be for your students. You must know yourself and the material you are teaching better than anyone else. If you are constantly striving for this perfection you will find that you will be able to fix problems that occur in the classroom at a moment’s notice without even thinking about it. If you know yourself and are constantly evaluating your teaching methods, you will only benefit from it and grow as an educator. You will notice when you make an error while teaching and be able to correct it in time. If you know the material you are teaching and are constantly researching new ideas, you will be able to know when an error occurs as well. You will unconsciously be a better overall teacher if you are striving to improve in both of these areas.
I feel this means that as teachers we always have to be learning just as much as our students are. We have to perform self-exams to make sure we are being effective teachers. If we simply say this is the way I was taught and I don't want to learn a new way then we are going to miss some of those students that just needed to be taught a different way. We also have to take into concideration what our students need to have as far as teaching methods. We have to realize that our way is not the only way and we need to do whatever we can to teach our students the material in the way that they can fully understand what we are teaching.
As teachers we must know the material we are covering and be able to reflect on our lessons. We should be able to improve in areas where we may fall short and help our students see the importance of success. We should also maintain knowledge in our area by attending workshops and keeping up-to-date on new developments in our course areas. We can take new information along with methods that work and continue to develop better lessons and approaches to improve learning in the classroom.
We must always find ways to improve upon our selves and our teaching. We should always question our lessons and our actions to see if there is a better way. This is not done only for our benefit but also for the benefit of our students. When we do not reflect upon our actions then we risk becoming stagnant in our teachings. The unconscious experience that Jung discusses is a developed reflective instinct. When we are constantly aware of our inner reflection then it will eventually become and an automatic teaching habit. The ability to reflect on any given teaching matter will improve the general teaching quality.
I believe that for teachers, we must also self examine ourselves to achieve a true self knowledge or awareness. Just like we are to evaluate our lessons for effectiveness and how we can be more effective, so must we examine ourselves. I believe as people we have ways in which we do things, schemas that guide our thinking and approaches, especially in the classroom. Not all students will be receptive to our styles or specific strategies while teaching but through self examination of who we are and how effective we are with regards to our students gives us self knowledge. Knowledge of ones weaknesses and strengths comes through rigorous self examination. This self knowledge allows us to modify and improve ourselves
I think this means that for us to get to be better teachers we need to first know ourselves. This means trying to look at ourselves as objectively as possible and seeing from lives up to that point what are our strengths and our weaknesses. We should then focus on how we can use our strengths to bring up our weaknesses. Once you know this we teach students using our strengths and focus on getting better in the areas we are weak. I think this should be a constant thing once you finish a task you should look back and say what did I do well and what cold I do better. Then plan a way to do it better.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I really enjoyed reading your post and think that you hit the question dead on. I think that we need to continually be looking at our strengths and weaknesses in all aspects of our lives to make ourselves grow and be better. We need to create lesson plans around our strenghts and as you said, use our strengths to bring up our weaknesses.
DeleteI'd have to agree with John above. I think that knowing your strengths and weaknesses as an educator will make you grow to be a stronger more aware teacher. I say this is like having to do a reflection over our formal observations for our internship courses. Our own teachers are wanting to know our thoughts on what worked well within our lessons, and what didn't, what we would change, and what worked great that we'll use again. If we continue to analyze ourselves we will continue to grow therefore we will hopefully help our students knowledge as well.
ReplyDeleteThat is very true! The reflections we have done for our internships has allowed us to reflect and be self examine our teaching. As we reflect we look at what needs to be adjusted to better teach students.
DeleteAs teachers we need to help students find their inner strengths. We should know that what works for one student may not work for another. We need to provide variation in teaching methods. People by nature want to learn and grow to achieve higher levels of knowledge through development of experience based in learning and experimenting. Students may need help in determining a way to learn that works best for them so they can have the best educational experience possible. Learning styles will vary from person to person depending on their interactions with their physical environment, their personality, thinking styles, emotions and perceptions. Not only will students need to evaluate how they work best but teachers need to evaluate their teaching styles being conscious of the dynamics of the classroom in which they are teaching.
ReplyDeleteI believe you are correct, we do need to help students find their inner strengths. I think that in order for teachers to do this, the teacher must first find his/her inner strengths. We have to know how to reach the students and that starts by us identifying what tools we posses to help us do that.
DeleteI believe that this teaches on the very core of what good teachers do: they self-reflect, they analyze, they plan, they adjust. Self-examining is the ability to look at realistically look at yourself in a critical way. This requires brushing aside superiority and inferiority issues and actually examining what you have done, what worked, what didn’t. Self-knowledge, I feel, means knowing your strengths and your weaknesses and working to improve them. Self-improvement can be an unconscious experience, for instance going to a workshop because it interests you, instead of “because you have to.” Taking college classes and doing more than getting a passing grade or learning things for the test. Learning in and of itself is self-improvement! This quote reminds me of the reflective writing criteria we have to fulfill. It's about knowing yourself well enough to be constantly assessing and improving yourself.
ReplyDeleteSarah-
DeleteI also think that this is the base for a great teacher. The more a teacher can reflect on themselves the better then will be in the classroom. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is so important as a teacher and being able to work on them and improve yourself for your students should be a main goal for a teacher. The more that you can improve yourself in the classroom the better you will be for your students and giving them the best education possible.
Christine Moses
I think that this means that as teachers we are taught and programmed to always be self examining ourselves, our lessons, and out teaching techniques and by doing this so often we have become to do these things without even thinking about it. I know that when I did my first internship I had a lot to work on for classroom management and I pounded it into my head that I needed to be better at it and now I do not even need to think about it and I can control my classroom and have authority over the students while teaching them. The more that we as teachers self evaluate, reflect, and have knowledge of ourselves and our teaching strategies the less we need to focus on them and the more natural they become to us. We need to know what makes us great teachers so we can create the best environment and the best education for our students. The more we know about ourselves the more we can provide for our students.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement, "the more we know about ourselves the more we can provide for our students". This statement is very true. As an educator we must self examine ourselves and adjust instruction as need to best suit our students needs.
DeleteI believe that for teachers this means that we need to be actively looking at ourselves. As an educator you have to self examine how you are teaching and be aware of what is working and what is not. With the self knowledge of how you are teaching then you can change and adjust instruction to best fit the students needs. Teachers need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses as an educator and strive to be a better educator. No teacher is perfect, however as an educator you must be actively trying to be the best teacher you can be.
ReplyDeleteRashawna,
DeleteI love how you talk about being ACTIVE. Teaching is an ever-changing and evolving job (very active). We must change with the ways are students are changing and evolving. This involves reflecting on every lesson, discipline action, and activity that is done in our classroom. We need to ask ourselves questions like, "Did the work well?" and "Did all of my students learn what was being taught?" Sometimes we may need to present a concept in 2 or 3 different ways in order to reach all students. It comes natural to teach the way that YOU learn, but we need to always be thinking about all of the learning styles so that we can reach the maximum number of students!
Rashawna,
DeleteI love your response to this question! My thoughts are along the same line as yours. I feel that WE, the teachers, need to continually look at OURSELVES, both professionally and personally, in order to be an effective teacher.
Becky
I think as a teacher this means we constantly need to be evaluating ourselves and how our students are learning based on our teaching strategies. For example, as a teacher, we can't just say "This is how I will teach and if the kids don't learn--OH WELL! I'm not changing!" Because it will only hurt the students (and you!). We constantly need to reflect on ourselves. We need to be the best teachers we can be, and we can't do that without self reflecting!
ReplyDeleteVanessa, I completely agree with you. I have known several teachers from my past that could've used a little self-examination every once in awhile. They had taught the same way their whole career and didn't realize that the way our parents learned in their class was not the way we were going to learn.
DeleteI believe this means that we constantly need to be reflecting on our experiences to improve the way we teach and interact with our students. I also think it means that people who choose to be teachers have somewhat of an unconscious ability to be role models and are nurturing, caring, and encouraging without thinking about it. I believe this comes through examining ourselves and evaluating how we can be better teachers and even people. After we evaluate ourselves so often and strive to improve our instruction to students, being a better teacher comes naturally and unconsciously over time.
ReplyDeleteAs education majors we are all aware of the need to reflect over EVERY SINGLE EXPERIENCE! Examining who we are as a member of society and acting to change or not to change is the unconscious choice that needs made.
DeleteCarl Jung's theory of self-examination and self-knowledge relates to teachers because they need to do an inventory of themselves before they can even begin to teach others. As a main influence on a young child's mind, it is especially important that we are constantly critiquing ourselves and improving the way we provide instruction to them.
ReplyDeleteI think this means that in our first years, we will have unrealistic expectations in the classroom and that after the first semester or year we will have to go through a self examination and reflect on what to change. Kids are smart and can read us like books so we will have to change a little bit of our ways to gain that advantage.
ReplyDeleteDan, give me more. What must we do as educators? Splichal
ReplyDeleteIt means the more that teachers examine themselves and process the information to turn it into useful knowledge, the more the growth experience will become instinctual in educating rather than a conscious consideration. I work with behavioral kids and I have to self-examine several times a week. I look at incidents and think about what worked and what didn’t. Once I identify what worked and convince myself that it’s the way to go, the easier it is to apply. There are times when a student is having a melt down and I don’t even have to think about what to do, I just respond in an affective way. Had I not done self-examination on previous experiences, I may have hesitated to respond (because I am considering my options consciously in the moment), which is not affective at all. My response system is very unconscious. Teachers need to be quick on their feet and taking that few minutes out in the day to reflect on previous experience can help them stay sharp. Kids need to buy into what the teacher is selling (education). If a teacher is not confident, the kids see that and will protest against it. Not only do I think that self-examination is important for the role of a teacher, I also think it’s beneficial for a teacher to use on the students. If a teacher encourages kids to use the same process, they are more likely to learn better. I think when the students taking a few minutes to have students reflect back through the day can help them find easier solutions in the future. Just having the students be able to identify affective ways to go about problems they face is beneficial to the teacher. So to the teacher, it means better classroom management, possible higher achievers and overall better problem solving skills for the students. I actually think this concept is the best way to teach. The whole idea is to help the child grow. If we are able to get them to process a situation and evaluate it to turn it into useful information in the future, they have actually grown as a person. I would rather that than to have a bunch of students the regurgitate information on test to get a grade and will forget it all within a week. I rather students learn how to look at what just happened, discover what they could have done to get a better result and make a change in the future without any thought because it came natural.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Teaching is all about reflecting! We teach, then analyze and reflect. From there we make a plan for next time taking note of what worked and what didn't work. Reflection is very important for all educators!
DeleteI believe as educators it is important to find out what you are good at and what it is that you aren't so good at. You have to look at yourself and find out what ways you are effective in teaching students. You aren't going to want to use something in the classroom that you aren't good at because most likely if you aren't good at it the students aren't going to learn as well. We need to first use our strengths and use them to get better in other areas that may need some work. We have to know ourselves before we can help others.
ReplyDeleteWe do need to find our strengths, but the more important role is to identify our weaknesses and learn how to improve them.
DeleteBecoming more self-efficient allows for us to recover from a failed lesson plan, teaching attempt, or anything else that goes wrong. Continually improving is key to success.
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ReplyDeleteYou are so right. If teacher do not think about what what and how they are teaching then they will not better themselves. Great post!
DeleteAfter reading the statement I believe that this should impact teachers and how they teach. I got that as teachers we need to make sure that we are looking at the way we are teaching and see if that style really does help our students. There are so many teachers that have been teaching the same way forever and won't change the way that they teach even if their students do not learn that way. I also got that the teachers that do this are considered the great teachers in a school because they are able to step back and reflect on what they teach and how they teach it.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth - I too believe that the way we teach should benefit our students. It is important to remember that change is a good thing in educating. I want to be the kind of educator that is easy going and likes to try new things, I want to show my students the importance of having an open mind.
DeleteElizabeth,
DeleteI enjoyed reading your response. I agree that reflection is a necessary trait for individuals in order for them to be an effective teacher. I believe that we need to self-reflect on a continual basis in both our personal and professional lives in order to be good role models for our students and to provide them with the best education we can.
Becky
Carl Jung describes a process that teachers (and most everyone) should perform in order to better themselves. Through self-examinations, people discover knowledge and create self-knowledge that translates in to a more complete schema. Asking ourselves “who I am” gives us a self-biased view of who we think we are. Actually digging deep into past experiences and the handling of situations provides a better portrait of “who I am”. Taking action or making a conscience effort to positivity change and correct deficiencies allows for greater self-efficacy. Increasing self-efficacy often creates a more persist goal setting teacher (person) who is able to recover from a failure.
ReplyDeleteThe other thought on asking ourselves who we are can also help us to not force our biases onto our students. If we truly know who we are and continue to reflect upon ourselves and what we are teaching - we can be sure to make sure we are not creating biases within the classroom.
DeleteI think Jung was saying that to succeed, we have to participate in constant self-evaluation to truly know ourselves and understand how our experiences have unconsciously shaped who we are. For teachers, if we know ourselves, we can focus on utilizing our strengths and improving our weaknesses to continuously strive to become a better educator. As we grow in our professions, our experiences will allow us to acquire new knowledge and skills that will change who we are and how we look at things. Consequently, the process continues resulting in renewed self-examination. Therefore, the need of self-examination never ceases, creating a continuous cycle of self-examination, experience, and self-improvement. Sarah O. and Christine M. both made great points saying that good teachers utilize this concept to self-reflect, analyze, plan, and adjust within the classroom. I agree that through self-reflection, educators can improve teaching skills and strategies to become more effective teachers. I also agree with John K. when he stated that individuals can use their strength to improve upon their weaknesses. Through constantly re-evaluating our strengths and weaknesses, teachers can engage themselves in a cycle of constant improvement. I also really liked what Bonnie S. said in her post about encouraging students to utilize self-reflection in order to help them grow. I looked at Jung’s statement purely from the perspective of growing as a teacher, but after reading Bonnie’s post, I recognized that like self-regulation and self-efficiency as discussed in our text, this concept can be used to help students mature and grow as learners as well.
ReplyDeleteI believe Jung is speaking about taking a good luck at yourself, What is it that you are doing, how can you do things better. As teachers, we are constantly looking at how we can improve in the classroom. We look at lesson plans, test, homework and assignments and see how these are reaching the students. Our ultimate goal is to reach out and teach the student so they can be successful. Through this process, and its always cycling, not only do the students grow and learn, but so does the teacher.
ReplyDeleteNo matter how old a person gets, there is always room for improvement. A person should know himself or herself well enough to understand they are always learning from their weaknesses is what I think Carl Jung was saying. As a teacher, we will have days when the lesson went great, and other days when the lesson was a flop. We need to be able to look back and figure out what worked and what did not, what needed to be changed and what should be added. Knowing if you need to ask for help or if you are able to solve your own issues is something else I thing Jung was referring to. As you get older, you realize, you don’t have all the answers, and students need to know you are human and need help too. We are all learning everyday academically, and emotionally.
ReplyDeleteI agree that showing you are a person doesn't make you a weaker teacher--it is important that students realize you are human. Admitting a mistake is okay, and so is fixing it. Especially because failures in teaching (for most of us) will be inevitable. Such an important point to make!
DeleteThe "unconscious experience" Jung refers to is coming to a sort of truth about oneself--by reflecting and critically examining yourself as a teacher, you do gain the psychological advantage of knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, as many people on this board have said, but by doing this examination, we also decide that we are worthy of "sympathetic attention and interest" as Jung says.
ReplyDeleteSo as teachers, I would agree that rigorous self-examination is a good idea--we need to know our own tendencies and need to cultivate an awareness of what we are very good at in the classroom as well as what we lack. I think of this in terms of student learning--some students may not learn with our lessons because we have a bias towards a specific type of teaching. I know that mine is definitely read-write! But some of my students really need visual learning and kinesthetic learning, so I have to examine myself and know when I am favoring that type of teaching so I can shift my methods to help include more students.
I do think that the "unconscious experience" also refers to us deciding our own worth as teachers and as people--if we are constantly doing this self-examining, we ARE critical, but we must also affirm ourselves--I am worthy as a human being of other peoples' attention and interest. I think this can be important because many teachers are so hard on themselves (especially in the first year, when some days just feel like a failure), that they forget that they are worthy of attention and interest. Sometimes it's easy to forget that teachers will have life outside of school where they will want that affirmation as a human, beyond being a teacher.
I like your definition of the unconscious experience. I agree this is the only way to truly reflect on ourselves. I like how you added critically examining, this is the most important yo have to realize your not perfect and accept failure at times. I was thinking about stating that, but couldn't find the word. Great blog!
DeleteAlyssa, I like your analysis here. good work. Splichal
ReplyDeleteI believe what Mr. Jung is saying to educators is that in order to know yourself as an educator you have live through those “unconscious experience.” It is the unconscious experiences that make us the teachers we become. We as educators have to know what we can handle in the classroom and what we cannot handle, we also have to let our students know what it is we expect of them in our classrooms. When each student steps into our classroom they are stepping into our lives. We as teacher give them a look at what their lives can amount to, and them as students give us a reason to continue in our lives of teaching.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that no matter the age of the student they can teach us the teachers a thing or two about life. I believe that no matter how old a person is they are still learning something new every day. It may be that they are re-learning something they learning a long time ago. But that day it is new to them and should be cherished.
Matraca,
DeleteI agree with you as teachers we need to make sure our students understand our expectations. We have to continually reexamine how we are teaching to see what we need to fix in order for our students to be successful. I also agree that you learn something new every day. I know as a mother of two incredible kids that i am taught something ever day at a minimum. Kids have so much to offer when we are willing to let the explore and tell us what they are learning about.
I think that Carl Jung is saying that we need to reflect on our work. For teachers this is reflecting on the lessons we do, how we teach it, and even the activities/worksheets we use. Everyday we are constantly growing and learning and it is necessary to recognize that. Even if we don't formally recognize our reflection we are thinking about the student responses.
ReplyDeleteI also think this goes a step further for teachers and we need to not only evaluate ourselves but to have the students learn to evaluate their own work. Looking back this is what we did in English class when we had to edit our own papers. We also did this in classes that made you give yourself a grade and then see if it matched with the teachers. Eventually I think this helps the students, academically they can see a rubric and see if their work matches the criteria and then it helps them to evaluate what they do later.
Samantha, Yes as teachers we have to reflect on our work in order to make improvements. I think this is why authentic assessments are so important to our teaching. Then help use see were we need to refocus our efforts and not loos valuable teaching time reteaching in a way that will not work. Rubrics are also tools that I love and think that they will be a huge part of my assessments in the future. It helps everyone involved if we all understand how the information being taught will be assessed.
DeleteI agree with my peers Carl Jung's message is to take a look at yourself. Self reflection is an important process for growth and success. I believe this means to have to not only evaluate what you are planning and teaching, but reflect on it. To truly reflect you have to look at what went right, what went wrong, where could you improve, and what to keep the same. This self reflection can be used any time for any situation. Allowing the teacher to grow from mistakes and strengthen their achievements. I had a tutoring session for the correcting reading disabilities course, and one of my biggest teaching strategies was self reflections and peer reflections. This allowed the students to pinpoint their own mistakes instead of giving negative feedback, and allowing them to reach their own solutions of how to improve. This worked wonders on my group they all improved by the end of our sessions.
ReplyDeleteI think that as others have said, as teachers we are constantly changing our methods and thoughts about teaching. What Carl Jung is stating it that we must look at ourselves first when we are trying to correct a problem or situation. We need to understand that who we are will affect our students in both negative and positive ways. If when look at ourselves in a critical manner we may be able to make adjustments that will lead us down a path of getting through to our students. Just like each of our students will have their own ways of learning we will have our own ways of teaching and we will need to be able to tweak our teaching strategies to meet the needs of all of our students.
ReplyDeleteI think that we all have unconscious attitudes towards certain subjects, learning styles or behaviors that will affect how we teach. The exceptional teachers are those that learn these unconscious factors and make a conscious effort to change them for the benefit of their students. Carl Jung is asking us to look at the attitudes or behaviors in a way that we can them make choices that will help use be better teachers.
We can’t change unwanted behaviors in our students until we understand how our own actions are contributing to those behaviors. For example, we were having a lot of “bulling issues” with my 10 year old foster daughter and when we fi9naly looked at all of the factors the majority of the problems were solved by regrouping the students in a way that the kids that were having difficulties working together were no longer in the same group. It did not fix every issue but it did stop a lot of the problems that were inhibiting the learning of many of her classmates. By the teachers being willing to reexamine how she had set up the class in the beginning of the year we were able to save some very valuable classroom time.
Teachers need to do this type of self reflecting often to see all of the ways that they can increase learning and decrease distractions that may take away from learning time.
I think that what Jung is saying is that we need to continue to reflect on the things we do in order to gain a better perspective of our strengths and weaknesses. The more we know about our strengths and weaknesses the better we can portray our strengths and work on our weaknesses. This is very important to us as teachers. In every teaching class that I have taken at FHSU, I have been asked numerous times to reflect on the learning that I have had throughout the semester. This not only helps me grow as a student and future-teacher it also helps me to grow as a person. I reflect on what I did well and what I should work on to better myself. All the reflecting that I am learning to do know will help tremendously and it will become second nature when I become a teacher. While reflecting on myself is important as a teacher it is also important for me to bestow those same skills upon my students so that they too are able to learn and grow from reflecting on learning experiences.
ReplyDeleteKristi,
DeleteIt is very important that we also teach students to self reflect! I am glad you mentioned that. What good does it do for us to self reflect if we don't pass that on to younger generations? One day we will all be gone and they will have to take charge of the world. The whole point of getting an education is to become independent and self reflection is an important part of that.
I agree with many of the previous comments in that it is very important that we as teachers continually reflect on our strengths and weaknesses. As we get to know ourselves we gain not only knowledge about ourselves but many times we gain confidence and a sense of self value as we work to highlight strengths and work to improve our weaknesses. This can make us better teachers because we have personally done the work to feel confident and comfortable in our role as an educator. The unconscious experience comes from this type of self-reflection, and the process of making changes and adaptations. As we go through the process personally we unconsciously model active and lifelong learning to our students. Another benefit of this type of reflection and self-examination is that it makes us aware of our biases and preferred methods of learning and instruction. This can bring to our awareness what changes and adaptations we need to make in order to reach more students.
ReplyDeleteJackie, I like your point on reflecting our strengths and weaknesses. We all can strive to improve and become stronger teachers. I also agree we can become to confident and need to stop and humble ourselves to make sure we are doing what is best for the students.
DeleteAfter thinking about this and reading other's posts all I can think is, "I'm pretty enough. I'm smart enough. And doggone-it people like me!" I'm not sure that the authors of Saturday Night Live were thinking about Carl Jung when they wrote this skit, but it's a fitting comparison.
ReplyDeleteOver the course of history there have been a lot of external forces that have demanded changes in education. However, every teacher - every year - makes a change that effects the way that students are taught. Evaluating and assessing: lesson plans, activities, field trips, room arrangement, classroom schedule, classroom rules and a dozen other pieces that put an entire school year together, are processes that teachers use to ultimately help, one day at a time, change the face of education. Teachers who are unable or unwilling to participate in self-examination may be good teachers today, but they are unlikely to be good teachers tomorrow. A teacher that is unable or unwilling to dig deep and know themselves as an individual is likely to become so entrenched in their "teacher mode" that they will be unable to relate to the world as it changes around them.
Self-examination and self-knowledge are about more than just being good teachers. They are important pieces to the puzzle of quality education and raising tomorrow's leaders.
Stacie, I like your comparison with the Saturday night skit and the quote. If we do not teach each class with the right tools than we will not be giving the best to our students. I keep thinking of hair dressers and how they need to stay informed and educated on the different styles of haircuts. If they never evaluated what they were doing then they would begin to loose customers. We as teachers are the same way. If we do not continue to examine our teaching strategies and keep on the changing dynamics in the classroom then we loose students. I enjoyed your post.
DeleteSwiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, said that individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience. For teachers, what does this mean?
ReplyDeleteSplichal
After a bit of research I found an interesting web site http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Carl-Jung.htm where I looked a little deeper; I was pretty confused by the “psychological advantage” and “unconscious experience” part of the statement above. Anyways I found this full quote that helped me, so maybe some of you will find it useful as well, “only when the individual is willing to fulfil the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge. If he follows through his intention, he will not only discover some important truths about himself, but will also have gained a psychological advantage: he will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest. He will have set his hand, as it were, to a declaration, of his own human dignity and taken the first step towards the foundations of his consciousness -- that is, towards the unconscious, the only accessible source of religious experience. (Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self)” I underlined what I thought was important in the quote. It may also help to know that Jung describes the unconscious as objective whereas conscious is subjective.
So, I believe that he means when we self reflect we will find the objective truths about our self, the beautiful and the ugly, our strengths and our weaknesses. We will see that we are worthy of attention and interesting – we are important and deserve ethical treatment (dignity.) This is important to keep in mind while we are teaching because we are important to students and we influence the future of the world. We should have a high self-efficacy and believe in ourselves! In addition we need to keep in mind that other people are just as important and they are just as interesting and deserving of attention. What Jung said applies to all of us, not just myself.
I greatly appreciated your break-down of the quote. You were able to help me in getting a much deeper understanding of what he was trying to say. You are exactly right, we need this definition in our lives, what exactly our strengths and weaknesses are because by knowing them, we will be able to better reach our students. We must understand that we ourselves must be looked at and analyzed before being able to successfully and meaningfully help our students. good work!
DeleteThis statement by Carl Jung makes me think about all of the reflections we are asked to complete throughout the Teacher Education program. From day one of the program we are asked to reflect on everything we do so we can figure out what we need to do to get better. If we taught lesson after lesson and never reflected on what worked or didn't work we would never make any improvements. We would never gain that advantage of becoming the best teacher that we can be. I can honestly say that writing all of those reflections have already helped me see what works for me and what doesn't and I haven't even been in the classroom for more than an hour and fifteen minutes at a time!
ReplyDeleteNot only do we need to constantly make self-evaluations, but we must teach our students how to do the same. We need to encourage students to think about maybe how they studied for a particular test - teach them to figure out what works for them and what doesn't. Teaching students to self-reflect at a young age lets them begin to figure out how to be the best they can be.
I agree with you about the reflections that we are expected to complete in the Teacher Education program. Not only do these reflections help us to understand what we need to improve upon, but they also help us to understand our feelings about teaching. I remember one of my high school teachers telling me that a lot of teachers get burnt out on teaching after only a few years. I sometimes wonder how often some of these teachers really reflected on why they became teachers or why they liked teaching. I've also heard stories about teachers who started out teaching one age group, only to discover afterwards that they did not really like this age group and would be happier with a different age group of students. I think self-reflection can really help future teachers realize some things that they may not discover until they are out in the field.
DeleteYes, by using the reflections we can self-regulate our teaching habits and see what works and what doesn't work with our group of students. Good connection.
DeleteI totally agree with Sara's statement above. I also immediately thought about all of our reflections, and how thinking about our experiences in the classroom helped me learn about myself and what I would do in certain classroom situations, how I will manage behavior, and how I will teach content. Even beyond that, I think the decision all of us made to earn our teaching degrees was the result of much self-reflection, especially since most of us seem to be non-traditional college students. I don't know about you all, but it took me about 10 years to decide to return to school for teaching, and I thought long and hard about myself on the way to making that decision. However, during that 10 years I had many experiences that enabled me to learn about myself, like travelling abroad, having children, and working at two different careers. I can talk about a lot of things I learned, but what Jung is referring to is the overall sense of self that we can't describe or put into words; it is just a feeling we have or a part of our personality that others see. For teachers, I think that giving students as many experiences as possible to learn, both about themselves and about others, contributes to the child's sense of self.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, by writing our reflections we are able to put ourselves in the shoes of the teacher. I liked your "reflection" on how most of us are "non-traditional" students, which most likely means that we did a lot of self-reflecting as people to decide this is where we want to be today. Giving students those opportunities to learn about themselves and others will ultimately make them into the person they will be. good post!
DeleteI never realized how important reflection was until I got further into my teacher education classes. I used to think it was just busy work, something for a grade. But I actually enjoy reflecting now and learn from it tremendously. I appreciate corrective guidance from peers and instructors because it really will help me to be a better educator!
DeleteAs teachers, self-examination is key to improving our methods. By examining both ourselves and our teaching, we can understand what our strengths and weaknesses are. Through examination, we gain knowledge into how we teach and how well we are doing. We can come to realize what methods we use frequently with success and what methods that we can improve upon in order to create a much more enriching learning experience for all students.
ReplyDeleteAlong with focusing on methods, we also gain personal insight into how we feel about our jobs. By examining our own feelings about teaching, we can address any negative feelings that arise. Many teachers start out with a great sense of purpose in their work. As the years pass; however, some of these teachers may lose this sense of purpose and begin to just "go through the motions" everyday. They may even come to hate teaching. By examining our feelings, we can hopefully confront these negative feelings and decide how we can alleviate them before they completely take over our professional lives.
Examining both our methods and our feelings can make us better teachers and feel great about our jobs. People who do well at something or are able to improve in an area they are weak in develop greater self-efficacy and generally feel good about their work. Likewise, people who feel positive about their work will persist in their work and find new ways to improve.
I think this means that in order for us to be successful and meaningful teachers to our students, we must first take a deeper look at ourselves. We must know ourselves inside and out, what and how we act in certain situations. Why do we act that way, what drives us to determine our beliefs? We must first get a good grasp of who we are as individuals and teachers within the classroom. If we don’t know where we stand, than how can we expect our students to stand for what they believe in? Carl Jung was right, we must take look at ourselves though “rigorous” self-examination. I think this means that we must not only look at our strengths, but focus on our weaknesses as well. We must learn how to better our weaknesses in order to be successful. Teaching our students to do the same, taking time to reflect on themselves is important. They must learn to reflect in order to grow as individuals. Someone mentioned above that in order for teachers to change with the world that is changing around them, teachers must be able to self-examine themselves and the ways in which they are teaching. The world is changing every day, if we aren’t in tune enough with society, and ourselves, than we aren’t going to be willing to make those necessary changes in favor of our students.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. To be able to guide our future students in education and in life we first must know how we are, how we stand and what our life means. This gets deep but also as a parent this is something that should be done to model for our our children along with our students.
DeleteThis is an interesting topic for me to discuss. Carl Jung had corresponded with Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous over a number of years. In December of 1938, Bill W. began writing the 12 Steps of AA that were then published in the original edition of the AA Big Book in 1939. Step 4 is “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves” and Step 12 is “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs”.
ReplyDeleteIn 1957, Jung published the book The Undiscovered Self in which he stated that the fundamental question that one must answer in life is: "Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving into the crowd?" "To this question," Jung pointed out, "there is a positive answer only when the individual is willing to fulfill the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge." (Thus, the necessity of taking, and continuing to take, a searching and fearless moral inventory of one's "self.") "If he follows through on this intention," Jung continues, "he will not only discover some important truths about himself, but will also have gained a psychological advantage: he will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest. He will have set his hand, as it were, to a declaration of his own human dignity and taken the first step towards the foundation of his consciousness - that is, towards the unconscious, the only accessible source of religious experience."
It makes me wonder if Jung’s statement “that individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience” were based on Steps 4 and 12 of Alcoholics Anonymous or if it was something Jung had corresponded to Bill W., which Bill W. used in writing Steps 4 and 12. Even if one of their writings were not based on that of the other, I believe they mean the same thing which is for individuals to CONTINUALLY undergo a fact-finding and fact-facing process in which we honestly search out our flaws, and without regret, make the necessary changes in our lives.
In response to what Jung’s statement “that individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience” means for teachers, I believe that in order to be an effective teacher, we need to continually self-examine ourselves and take stock of our self-knowledge. Using these self reflections will enable us to dismiss what is not working in both our professional and personal lives; which in turn, allows us to be good role models for our students and provide them with the best education we possibly can.
Becky
I think that this means to be a person who possesses higher psychological advantages you have to know yourself and understand the full scope of what you know. If you do not know yourself or your own knowledge then how as a teacher are you to shape the minds of other people when you yourself is unsure of your abilities. When you are able to know the full scope of yourself and your knowledge this leads to more self-assurance and therefore lead to the unconscious abilities to guide another in life and knowledge, because you are aware of yourself and believe in your own abilities.
ReplyDeleteI think that for teachers this means that we must be open-minded when it comes to self-reflecting in regards to our strengths and weaknesses in the education field. Take what we are learning about ourselves as educators, learn from it, and grow. Apply what works and learn from what doesn’t in order to become better educators. We all have something that we are good at and other things that we need to work on. Accept that, and do what you can to become better in those weaker areas. Be willing to continuously grow as an educator and seek out how you can become better within your classroom for your students. Continue to broaden your learning by going to professional workshops, and attending as many learning events as you possibly can. Take the time for self-improvement, and always approach your teaching by instructions by using as many different strategies as you can in order meet the needs of every student in your classroom environment. Most importantly, don’t just think of ways that you can improve to be a better educator, do the work that it takes to get there and stay there.
ReplyDeleteCharelle,
DeleteI agree with you completely that an open-mind is definitely a requirement for ongoing self-reflection. I like that you brought up the fact that we all have strengths and weaknesses going into teaching, and I think once teaching a year or so, will become even more aware of our shortcomings as an educator. I learned in my positive psychology class taught by Dr. Loomis at KU that if we spent as much energy improving our assets as we do trying to improve our weaknesses, we will be more successful and happy in the long term. Food for thought.
I agree with many of the ideas already posted. To grow and become stronger we must be willing to reflect on our values and beliefs and practices. This is an important process for teachers and cannot be forgotten to be a truely effective teacher. When we reflect on ourselves, we gain a deeper understanding of our motives and how we influence those around us. Not only will self-reflection lead to changes in our concious efforts, but will undoubtly lead to changes in our unconscious responses as we internalize our learning.
ReplyDeleteThis means, in my opinion, that we should always be looking at ourselves and be willing to accept we can learn more and we are always able to learn more about us and the knowledge we have. By constantly accepting to learn more we will be forever learners. We should realize that our students are looking to us for models and if we show them we are willing to be forever learners than they will be encouraged to keep learning also. Being open to new ways of teaching is necessary also to help any student learn. We as educators need to learn to help the students learn also. We need to learn new ways to teach to reach all children. without striving to continue our self-examination, we could be the teacher that teaching to only one style of learning instead of the whole class.
ReplyDeleteI agree our students are looking to us as role models and if we can be model students ourselves they will have someone to model after. I tell kids when I make a mistake, I will say things like boys and girls I goofed up, I did X, Y, Z and I should have done A, B, C, I will get that fixed I just wanted you to know I realize my error. They always tell me oh that's ok, people make mistakes. What I think is important here is that they see even adults goof up, it's okay to say, oops I goofed, and work to fix it with out a melt down or blow up. Knowing faults and errors helps you reflect and work on making things better.
DeleteFor me, this means you have to do three things: be a lifelong learner, be introspective with yourself, and reflect frequently over all of life's endeavors. For teachers, this means that you want balance in what you as an instructor teach with the amount of teaching you are doing for others. 50/50 is best, and requires a real commitment.
ReplyDeleteI love that you said be lifelong learners! I 100% agree with that statement. I don't think you can be a good educator with out continuing to learn yourself. I get bummed out when I see teachers that do just that. Not only do you gain knowledge, but you also remember what it's like to be a learner, the things you like and dislike are a great reminder of what your own students might like and dislike and to remember to do what you can to meet all your students needs.
DeleteYes Victoria, we must be willing to learn each day in every way to be totally effective!!
DeleteJust last week, I scheduled my formal evaluation of one of my coed PE classes by my administrator. In addition, I had the same class videoed for the FHSU T2T class evaluation. After I received the administrators’ feedback in writing I was feeling pretty good about myself as a teacher. My administrator asked me to also watch the video and to do a self-evaluation. At first, I was a bit take back because I thought I had done so well based on his evaluation. Talk about great timing, when I started reading this chapter and all of the blogs, I realized my administrator was only trying to help me to keep improving as a teacher through self-evaluation. When I watched the video of myself with this renewed understanding, I honestly couldn’t believe the number of things that I could have done better.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone in the class, we have to participate in constant self-evaluation to truly know ourselves and understand how our experiences have shaped who we are. I like what Stacie S. said in her blog, “By knowing ourselves as teachers’ through self-evaluation, we can focus on utilizing our strengths and improving our weaknesses to continuously strive to become better educators.” Continuously means that the need of self-examination never ceases and as a result we create a constant cycle of self-examination, experience, and self-improvement. I also liked what Bonnie S. said in her blog about encouraging students to utilize self-reflection to help them grow and mature as learners.
I can understand that about self evaluation. I make notes ton my lesson plans after every class. (I'm doing T2T in Art, so I teach the same lesson to 4 different groups of kids with 5 different lessons a day) I started doing this years ago when I went to work for a children's summer camp. I found that if I looked back at my notes and made changes things went smoother the next go around. I can really see this during my weeks teaching. My poor Monday kids,I feel for them, not because it's not a good lesson, but after three times of teaching the lesson my Friday kids get the benefits of all my notes and the lesson is very smooth (tho I make notes on it as well). So I loved this chapter because it's just plain true!
DeleteSelf evaluation is a great tool for us to see ourselves in action. It is easy to think that we are doing a great job teaching, but when we are able to watch ourselves we find ways to make it better!
Delete"individuals can only gain a psychological advantage by rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge that leads to the unconscious experience."
ReplyDeleteBasically for teachers this means you are always learning, always reflecting, always looking for a way to make the lesson better. In anything we do in life, there are things we can do to make the experience better. As educators we are dealing with individuals with different learning styles, home lives, experiences, behaviors, and the list goes on. It doesn't' matter if we have taught the lesson a million times, it will always be different to the learners we are educating. Because of this we need to constantly look at what we have taught and see where we can improve to better reach our students. By knowing ourselves and reflecting we can continue to grow and learn to better the educational experience for our students.
As teachers we cannot be too proud to ask for help or guidance. It is imperative that we rely on veteran teachers and utilize their expertise in planning our daily lessons. As teachers, we also must be good students. In order for us to gain a psychological advantage we must take courses, attend in-services and grow with the new technology that our students learn with. Our motivation to teach our students must remain strong and we have to continue to want more. The more we learn, the more they will know!!!
ReplyDeleteMichelle, I liked how you stated that we cannot be too proud to ask for help or guidance. All too often I feel as though adults (myself included) don't ask for this exact reason, too proud. Getting a teaching degree and having a classroom full of students, doesn't mean we aren't students anymore ourselves. It is truly crucial to continue with a constant 'self-examination' to better ourselves. The guidance and help of veteran teachers is a good thought as well! Good post!
DeleteFor teachers this means a great deal of constant self-reflection. This is the best way for teachers to make themselves better. Not only is it good for the teacher to know what went well and what needs to be improved on, but it is important to express that to the students. By expressing this to the students they get to see how important it is to self-reflect on a daily basis and learn from that self-reflection to grow.
ReplyDeleteFor teachers, this means that we need to first do some self examination. We need to recognize our strengths and weaknesses. We need to know what we are good at and use that to help what we are bad at. For me, I am a procrastinator but I am great with due dates. For this reason, as a teacher, I will always need to make a due date for myself. After we have examined our strengths and weaknesses, we then need to recognize how we are doing. After we teach a new lesson or do an activity, we need to look back and recognize how we did. We should see if there is room for improvement. This would be our self-knowledge.
ReplyDeleteAS everyone has stated in their blogs, a teacher must reflect upon him/her self. However, I also believe that children are the best lie detectors. A child can tell automatically if an adult is being sincere and genuine in their approach, or if the adult is simply attempting to manipulate them. As teachers we must know ourselves in order to communicate sincerely with our students. Being able to communicate sincerely and honestly with ourselves leads to the abiliby to communicate sincerely and honestly with our students and collegues. Without a clear idea of who we are and what we need, we cannot begin to help our students reach their full potential when we are not at our full potential.
ReplyDeleteThis means that a teacher that engages in rigorous self-examination will have an advantage over his or her counterparts because with this self-examination will come a strong knowledge and understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, attributes, and general disposition of that teacher. By using a strong sense of self-knowledge and self-reflection this teacher will have an advantage over peers that do not reflect on their teaching because they will better be able to place themselves in classroom situations that take advantage of their strengths and they will be better able to adapt to challenges in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI think it means that if you continually evaluate your performance in the classroom and your approach to each day, you will naturally start to correct the things you feel need improvement. If each time you teach you take time to reflect on what things you did right and wrong, you can come up with ways to fix them. If you continually do this you can start to notice right a way when you may have made a mistake and can unconsciously fix it.
ReplyDeleteFor educators, this means that the only way to continuously grow and get better is to continuously self-examine. We need to be able to reflect upon past experiences and determine our high and low points - thus leading us to be better in the future. In a classroom setting, it is important to continuously grow and improve - for the children - therefore constantly self-examining allows us to become more efficient educators, gaining greater, more worthy self-knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI believe this means that as an educator you must always be learning to become the best teacher you can be for your students. You must know yourself and the material you are teaching better than anyone else. If you are constantly striving for this perfection you will find that you will be able to fix problems that occur in the classroom at a moment’s notice without even thinking about it. If you know yourself and are constantly evaluating your teaching methods, you will only benefit from it and grow as an educator. You will notice when you make an error while teaching and be able to correct it in time. If you know the material you are teaching and are constantly researching new ideas, you will be able to know when an error occurs as well. You will unconsciously be a better overall teacher if you are striving to improve in both of these areas.
ReplyDeleteI feel this means that as teachers we always have to be learning just as much as our students are. We have to perform self-exams to make sure we are being effective teachers. If we simply say this is the way I was taught and I don't want to learn a new way then we are going to miss some of those students that just needed to be taught a different way. We also have to take into concideration what our students need to have as far as teaching methods. We have to realize that our way is not the only way and we need to do whatever we can to teach our students the material in the way that they can fully understand what we are teaching.
ReplyDeleteAs teachers we must know the material we are covering and be able to reflect on our lessons. We should be able to improve in areas where we may fall short and help our students see the importance of success. We should also maintain knowledge in our area by attending workshops and keeping up-to-date on new developments in our course areas. We can take new information along with methods that work and continue to develop better lessons and approaches to improve learning in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteWe must always find ways to improve upon our selves and our teaching. We should always question our lessons and our actions to see if there is a better way. This is not done only for our benefit but also for the benefit of our students. When we do not reflect upon our actions then we risk becoming stagnant in our teachings. The unconscious experience that Jung discusses is a developed reflective instinct. When we are constantly aware of our inner reflection then it will eventually become and an automatic teaching habit. The ability to reflect on any given teaching matter will improve the general teaching quality.
ReplyDeleteI believe that for teachers, we must also self examine ourselves to achieve a true self knowledge or awareness. Just like we are to evaluate our lessons for effectiveness and how we can be more effective, so must we examine ourselves. I believe as people we have ways in which we do things, schemas that guide our thinking and approaches, especially in the classroom. Not all students will be receptive to our styles or specific strategies while teaching but through self examination of who we are and how effective we are with regards to our students gives us self knowledge. Knowledge of ones weaknesses and strengths comes through rigorous self examination. This self knowledge allows us to modify and improve ourselves
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