Hello Barry,
I have only been in the teaching environment for 2 months. I was hired to be a lab instructor because of my knowledge in the field of Dental Assisting. I am going to utilize a journal to help me improve my teaching skills. After each class I will record ways in which I could have improved my class and I will also record what worked and what was positive about that class.
I feel that this will be the best way to be honest to myself and show me my strenghts and weaknesses so that I can evolve into the best teached I can be.
If you have any suggestions, I would be happy to hear them.
Kyle,
The format is as varied as there are instructors. Electronic documentation makes retrival easy to access and manage (i.e., transfer to other places). A notebook is good, but I find this method most useful for long term notations, more than quick reminders about what to do differently next time. The best result is over time, to measure and observe growth, improvement, and maturity as an instructor.
Barry Westling
I can definitely see the value in this. Any tips for making this a regular routine as I think it could easily be forgotten or allowed to go by due to time constraints?
Virginia,
I agree. I think we experience many things during the course of instructing a class, and a teaching journal can be a great tool for documenting interesting or useful observations about those classes. Somehow, when it written (or documented), it helps recall.
Barry Westling
Rochelle,
Great. I agree there are many benefits to using a journal, some of which you touched on. The teaching journal can also be a great way to observe improvement over time, and an interesting reflection on the growth an individual makes while teaching similar topics, and their adjustments to their approach to instructing these topics.
Barry Westling
A teaching journal can help you by writing down things that work and don't work in class. It can also help when speaking with other instructors, because you should be open to other ideas.
The teaching journal can be a great source for instructional improvement because it provides a real-time resource for comparing expected outcomes to actual outcomes.
While preparing lesson plans and deciding on criteria for determining if students successfully learned the objectives, the journal can allow the instructor to measure if the class activities were as successful as planned, if at all. Journal notes can allow for necessary revisions of activities and methods that didn't work as expected and also reinforce planned activities that DID work.
Teaching journals can also allow for opportunties to incorporate new and/or uplanned strategies that may present themselves during classroom instruction which can be incorporated in the future. They can provide a method of tracking student feedback as well.
Tim,
Yes, and review of these notations makes us better instructors. I think reflection on our observations about class activities gives a unique perspective about ourselves, our struggles, our successes, and improvement over time. The ability to see growth and muturity over time is a great feature of teaching journals.
Barry Westling
Keeping a journal will allow you to review not only day to day successes, but challenges and problems. As you review these events, you can formulate solutions to the challenges and problems, plus enforce the things you did that were successful.
Vincent,
Teaching journals are very personal and individual in their format. Early on, I had a large notebook which, along with written notes on the lined pages, was filled with post-it notes on most every page. The post-it notes were on-the-fly thoughts written in real time. I think my original idea was to transfer the thoughts onto the page, but they remained. So, as just for example, the format can be quite varied.
Barry Westling
I personally have never done this. I have made mental notes of what did work, what didn't work and what I need to work on. I think would help in the overall scheme of how things run on a daily or even hourly basis. Making notes on positive and negative things and reasons why they did/didn't work, could be more helpful for development.
Tina,
Great. Journals help teaches in many ways, and what nice is that each journal is individual and personal to individual instructors. In a way, what I think is important for my class, I can journalize, and that may be something different for another instructor.
Barry Westling
Keeping a teaching journal can help with instructional improvement because it allows you to write down events happening in the present and then later you can reflect on how things can be improved or how situations may be handled differently.
Keeping a teaching journal can also help you to keep different student learning styles and techniques used with those learning styles accessible when you encounter a student who exhibits similar characteristics.
Torsten Sven,
Great. I think this is a perfect use for a teaching journal - something personal and useful for the individual instructor to benefit by.
Barry Westling
It causes me to be intentional. I tend to be much more attentive when I know that I will have to write down a permanent log of what I did and how it affected the class. Furthermore, upon reviewing these results periodically, I learn much about myself and from my mistakes/successes.
W,
Yes, responses, (good and bad), observations, planning strategies for the next class - these are some of the nice things a teaching kournal provides for. The biggest benefit is later on, when reading and reflecting on the notations produces changes or adjustments to the class that ends up with improved student outcomes.
Barry Westling
A teaching journal can help you to track of what presentations styles work and how the students responded to that particular style
Cynthia,
Looking back always is useful for planning forward. In a nutshell, I think that is the main benefit to using a teaching journal.
Barry Westling
By evaluating your success or lack of success when teaching a lesson, you can keep successful aspects and improve upon less successful aspects. Teaching journals help to enhance your teaching success by tweaking and improving your lessons!
W.Lweis,
Yes, reflection on past activities is a good barometer for review prior to beginning that same topic at later time.
Barry Westling
