There is a need to reflect on all activities that accompany teaching after macro teaching / out programme.
One may ask, “why should I reflect after supervision in my school of practice?”
Frankly, reflection helps the Teacher Trainee to take a tactical and professional look at what goes in, go on, and how activities turn out successfully or unsuccessfully.
In shaping your career on a professional path, you ought to reflect and work on the odds. Make sure your odds are put to order for a fruitful course.
Your reflections will guide to paint a complete image of what you have done in the classroom. Reflecting on the professional skills you exhibited in the classroom, your views, perceptions, and attitudes to teaching are all the vital elements that define a professional hence, your journal on reflection should capture all the above in a comprehensive way in order to assist you in making a perfect recall / reflection on your teaching.
Your reflections should follow the path of teaching and lace the reflection with all your experience from the classroom. How you treated or/ handled your learners should be captured in your journal because, learners are the business of a Teacher hence, the “customer” relation should be reviewed and worked towards its success in the ultimate positive medium.
It is a must that Teacher Trainees should ink their reflections on the following: Professional skills, views, perceptions, and attitudes to teaching, values in teaching.
Secondly, the reflection should cover inclusivity and gender differently. In writing about inclusivity and gender, your reflection should capture the different types of learners (average, less average, and the brilliant), handicapped learners, and how you planned a lesson to benefit of all those learners.
Moreover, on the side of gender, the balancing of questions among boys and girls during your teaching and learning process, how you distributed TLRs among them, treatment from cultural perspective towards the learners on gender basis also should be reflected on brief and comprehensively.
Furthermore, the teaching philosophy of the Teacher Trainee based on all their experience and reflection from their supported teaching in schools should be part of their reflective journal.
Every aspect of your macro teaching should contribute to your reflection. Your teaching philosophy(ies) should be guided by what you perceive(d) about teaching, what you ought to correct or/ change about the profession, what should be maintained, and what can you or/ will add to grow the passion and determination for teaching.
In addition to all the above points discussed, your experience from the supported teaching in schools right from level 100 to the final should inform you about the dos, don’t, and what must change about the teaching profession. Also, your new idea to correct the “shortfalls” in the chalk and talk fraternity should form part of your teaching philosophy for the great and ultimate output.
In conclusion, a good reflective journal or/ journal reflection must have all the above-mentioned elements in order to warrant its description as a comprehensive reflective journal.