Mirror mirror on the wall, will I be able to see me at all?
I discovered self-reflection as an adult. At first, I found it challenging to look at myself from the outside and apply critical thinking to my way of thinking, feeling and actions. It doesn’t come naturally to evaluate yourself as if you are looking at someone else. It is not easy to be completely truthful with yourself. It can get uncomfortable.
You need to develop some distance from yourself, learn to let go of your ego to see and acknowledge your flaws, mistakes and lack of skills.
However, while it wasn’t easy to do, I discovered the power of performing this kind of exercise. Self-reflecting has helped me understand myself, helped me grow as a human being, helped me flourish professionally and develop many skills.
Getting children used to self-reflect from a young age brings many benefits. It will help them understand themselves, how they think, how they operate. What drives them, what triggers different emotions, reactions, and how they learn best. Getting used to self-reflect as part of their day-to-day will improve their emotional well-being, relationships, and academic outcomes.
So what can it look like in a classroom?
One way to go about it is to let students self-reflect on how they perform as team members. We all know how important it is to be a team player. To be able to communicate, collaborate and resolve conflicts. Therefore, this is a great opportunity to provide students with a tool that would help them develop all these amazing skills.
Once students finish working on a group task, they can self-reflect on how they work within a group. But before performing this task, the students need to discuss:
✅What is self-reflection?
✅What is the purpose of self-reflection?
✅What are the benefits of self-reflection?
✅What are the challenges in performing self-reflection?
Once students understand what self-reflection is and how to go about it, a few questions to self-reflect upon can be:
✅What was my contribution to the work we have done as a group?
✅How did I behave towards all group members?
✅When I explained my thinking to the team members, were they able to understand what I meant?
✅How did I react to a difference of opinions and ideas within the group?
✅What can I improve to become a better team member?
✅How can I better communicate my thoughts?
✅What can I do to resolve conflicts within a group better?
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