Teachers benefit from reflecting on the past before plunging into the future

The first assignment encountered by students of my new Student Media Advising online course -- just finalized in December and unlikely to be taught this spring -- is that they create a simple blog site and write a reflection of some sort at least once per week.

Reflecting on what happened recently and on what options MIGHT be pursued or what improvements might be made seems like the single most important action a practicing educator can embrace. But it likely takes some sort of external stimulus, like a class assignment, to force teachers to take those few minutes a week (or day, if you wanted to be really focused) to examine their practice.

From an instructor's point of view, such a series of blog posts helps me better understand each student's needs and experience level, with few expectations from the writers (who basically earn all the points available each week by participating) and with plentiful options for written dialog between us.

I spent most of my own teaching and advising career just scrambling from day to da and from challenge to challenge, rarely taking a few minutes to step back and analyze what I was accomplishing and how I conducted classes, built some sort of academic culture, etc. 

Teachers tend to beat themselves up, often based on a small body of evidence -- like a class discussion that never went anywhere and left the teacher confused and students frustrated. Many times I would stumble into the teacher's work area at Rock Canyon and calmly state, "My god, I suck at this." And I was the department chair with 30 years of teaching experience.

The one thing teachers need the most is a bit of time to think, to analyze, to decompress, and to refocus. Five minutes of passing time between third and fourth hours is not even close to enough of a breather. An entire planning period is not enough. Winter Break is not enough.

So the first thing I chose for the online advising course was the reflective blogging assignment. 

I have already started rethinking this, however, as I increasingly realize that this course is likely to get reasonable enrollment only through tightening its time span -- I'm looking at a four-week, intensive version right now.

That's the challenge right now. Can I create a version of the semester-long course, with its many opportunities to pause and reflect on what is happening in class, that can fit in a more attractive four-week course. 

Four weeks respects the need for teachers to both expand their skills and knowledge and find some downtime to relax and recharge.

My first thought is that the reflective blog has to go. Most classroom teachers will opt for a summer session and they won't have "live" students to work with, try ideas with, share stories about. The best we can do (maybe?) is to find ways to have advisers look back on the preceding semester or year and prompt some reflection. 

That may be a fine strategy for advisers who advised the previous year but one target audience for the course is the brand new adviser (maybe brand new teacher) who may not have experience from last year.

Lots of unknowns, obviously, and it is likely that all the debate and adjustments for this course must stem from me, as the author, trying to anticipate how to proceed.