Reflective Memo 1-Practicum
Reflective Memo 1-Practicum
Reflective Memo 1-Practicum
As a teacher, I believe that I play a crucial role in the success of every learning
process. To guarantee that learning will take place, I make sure to create a learning
environment that is relevant to the students’ background. Throughout my teaching
experience, I learned how to love my students, know them and gain their trust upon
growing their independence and intrinsic motivation. I use their prior knowledge and
experiences as a base to connect them to the concept they learn in class in order to
guarantee the transfer of what is learned in school to real-life situations.
I have learned a lot about myself throughout my life. I learned how to be independent,
successful and responsible for my own choices and decisions. As a teacher, I have
acquired many useful skills, techniques, and knowledge, which allowed me to
confidently pass them along to my students. I always thought that the students’
education was my top priority and only responsibility. Most of the time, I succeeded
in achieving my teaching goals, but other times there was something that fogged my
mind and gave me the feeling of dissatisfaction. I came to know later on that this
feeling was ignorance. I was passionate to get my students engaged in the learning
process and help them gain meaningful knowledge that would help them relate and
use in their future experiences.
The most surprising thing that happened to me through the certification process is
how far I have come in my ability to write reflective memos. Another aspect that I
found surprising in myself was my ability to encourage my students to reflect upon
the past learning experiences and take the opportunity to use those experiences for
current ones. My students are now capable to reflect on their learning, cognitive and
emotional experiences.
I am so proud that my students became more engaged in the learning process and
gained the habit of metacognition. They make more sense of the word problems,
investigate, ask questions, share their thinking, and suggest solutions. They have the
ability to monitor their own work through continuous reflection. Passing the habit of
reflection to my students, added meaning to the context I teach.
During my learning experience in AUD, I had the opportunity to re-skill myself and
learn new strategies to support my mission as a teacher. Recently, the Practicum
course has helped me live an authentic experience by transferring my learning and
understanding into reality. I share knowledge, experience, and communication, which
increase my awareness in a way to understand the change and implement new ways of
teaching. I came to believe that learning is better through critical reflection. As
described by Mezirow (1997), “Transformative learning occurs when individuals
change their frames of reference by critically reflecting on their assumptions and
beliefs and consciously making and implementing plans that bring about new ways of
defining their worlds (Hatherley, 2011).