A. Annotations to becoming a reflective teacher - my A to Z of things...

A. 

Teachers who on a regular basis think about why, what, and how they teach, are reflective educators (Killen, 2016). There is no better way to start my reflection than by looking at Roy Killen and his views on education. His vision from four years ago still resonates and drives me to become a better teacher. 

But, let's not put all of our eggs in the same basket. There are others who have influenced my thinking about education and teaching as well. The best thing about my learning has been the discovery of teaching-ideals from Dr Roberto Parada at Western Sydney University. All of the knowledge he has passed on to preservice teachers, such as the fundamentals of pedagogy and the notion that all of what we learn at university, will only become real in the staffroom of a school and not in the classrooms with pupils.

Why is this the case?

Well, as Roberto tells us, all theory is good in theory, but what we learn in the classroom from the students themselves is what will shape us as teachers... ...well, not as teachers but as facilitators of education and knowledge. The challenge is to understand that we don't teach but facilitate students to learn and the art of teaching is in how we do this. 

Incredibly inspirational has been reading "Positive learning environments - Creating and maintaining productive classrooms" by De Nobile, Lyons and Arthur-Kelly (2017) who have simply told the story on why, what, and how pre-service teachers can become better at what they do by applying PLEs to their methods of teaching. This is the book:

https://research-management.mq.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/38552512/LM_Nobile.pdf

Learning is about sharing and collaborating, so I am facilitating the process via the Macquarie University portal where this book is found, even though I don't study there.

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