Reflecting on your day, actions or words is an important part of personal growth. It allows you the opportunity to ask yourself if you would have acted differently, used a different tone or words, put in more effort or accept responsibility. It is not always easy. I am one of those people who replays conversations in my head. I wonder if outcomes would be different if I had said this or had done that. I find I do it more when the event is a “cringe moment”, you know the ones where you are like, “I did what? OMG” . I then try to observe the moment in my mind, reserving judgement or commentary – it’s definitely not easy! What is the point? It gives me the opportunity to learn about myself and how I can behave differently next time, be a better leader, educator, wife, mum, daughter, sister or friend. There are always moments that present themselves where its an opportunity for growth and to be a better human being.
The ability to reflect on these moments helps to shape the person you are. It is important when our students are having issues – whatever the nature, that we encourage them to reflect on their behaviour. It is not always easy. Our college, is working with families to help develop the whole human being. An extreme discipline code controls but what does that teach? We want our students to think about what it is they are doing, why they are doing it, the effects they have on others and how life for them could be different if they chose different actions or words. It is not always easy to reflect on yourself and it is quite confronting and accepting responsibility is easy for some, but harder for others. Not only do we encourage personal reflection, we encourage our students to reflect on their learning.
Reflecting on learning is so very important. Its important to be able to recognise what works for you and what doesn’t. It is about recognising your strengths and giving yourself credit. It also is about identifying strategies to help overcome weaknesses. Both of these two things are not always easy. Our teachers and coaches meet each day to discuss elements of the day, and their discussions revolve around what worked well, and on what could be done better. The easiest thing, sometimes is to admit defeat, blame other factors or other people. By accepting the responsibility of teaching and coaching your children, there is much to be said about the value and power of daily reflection.
Reflection is about being open to change and working on ways to be a better learner and a better person and with both staff and students putting these skills into practice, what a wonderful college culture we are working together to create!
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