Upon Reflection

One of the things that I am supposed to teach my students is how to reflect upon their learning. It's a not unheard of task in an American classroom, although depending upon the other standards bearing down upon the teacher (based -- of course -- upon their inclusion in various standardized tests) and the teacher herself, reflection can have a greater or lesser role in the classroom.

It is something that was an essential element of my own Master's program. And all you teacher- and teacher-education-program-haters can say what you will, but it is an essential component of being a teacher. Reflection was reinforced through my work with BTSA in California. Reflection is what I do at the end of each lesson, and each day, and each week, and each year, as I plan to improve myself the the experience that my students experience.

I assigned my students a reflection, and they were a bit overwhelmed. Confused might be a better term. They had no idea what a reflection was. Oh, I frontloaded the thing. I talked about mirrors and actual reflections and getting ready for a big date. I compared that with taking a look at yourself on the inside and your faults and weaknesses (and strengths) and what can be done to cover or fix the bad and draw attention to the good. But... reflecting is just not a part of their culture.

Ooooh. There, I said it. As I was walking home, I realized just how central reflection is to the entire idea of Western education. There is a profoundly individual role in the process of acquiring and keeping knowledge. It is up to me to think about how I learn and how I've done and then do better the next time. It's rather inner-directed, actually. Perhaps the last bastion of innter-directedness in our culture? (Don't force me to get too theoretical here, I neither have with me or can gain easy access to The Lonely Crowd nor Bowling Alone. I am not writing a thesis here, just a blog post.)

My students do tend to love praise from the teacher; they are rather other-directed. There is less a sense of a job well done for oneself, and more a sense of a job well done because of a grade or a comment from an authority. And this is a "Duh!" moment because we've all been told that an Eastern education is founded on learning what authorities have to say and memorizing it (Confucianism, anyone?). But this one activity really brought it into focus. They don't know how to analyze and evaluate their own learning.

(They also tend to relate good looks with good teachers, as in, "If you look good, you must also be a good teacher." Granted, I make out pretty well under this policy, but I do find it a bit odd that students are so concerned by -- and the Chinese staff tends to encourage their conern -- the appearance of their teachers. Anyhow.)

This is all a bit rambling, and I meant to write this about a week ago, but sometimes life gets in the way. (It's tough living in a town where the bars never close and you have to help other people figure out how to get home.) The experience made me reflect upon my own education and really start to see some of the essential differences between how I learn and how my students learn.

I guess we'll see if I get far in opening them up to evaluating themselves.