Program Goal 1

Graduate students must demonstrate the ability to become a more

reflective decision-maker
Being a reflective teacher means constantly looking back on your
teaching practices, analyzing your teaching for strengths and
weakness, and thinking about how those practices could be improved.
This program continuously worked at shaping me into a reflective
teacher with article reflections, journal reflections based on the literacy
learner with whom I worked in EDC 619 and EDC 620, and reflections
on literacy programs. Whether I choose to be a literacy specialist,
classroom teacher, or literacy researcher, being a reflective decisionmaker will help me be a more informed, responsive professional. In
Zeichners (1996) book, he explains that reflective teaching must
include the teacher questioning her/his goals and values, considering
the context in which she/he is teaches, and continuously examining
her/his own assumptions. Dewey (1998) discussed reflective action as
needing three attitudes: open-mindedness, responsibility, and
wholeheartedness. Being open-minded refers to the ability to be open
to finding weaknesses in your own teaching practices. Being
responsible suggests the ability to careful consideration of the
consequences of your teaching, and being wholehearted would be the
act of being reflective all the time, not only when it is convenient. It is
about taking full control of your own teaching. Throughout this

program, I feel like the act of reflecting on my teaching and my

decision-making has become second nature.
I have included my program evaluation from EDC 777 as an
artifact that demonstrates my ability to be a reflective practitioner. For
this assignment, I had to complete a comprehensive evaluation of a
local elementary schools actual reading program. This involved
interviews with the principal, a classroom teacher, and the literacy
specialist; observations; and a collection of artifacts. Once I collected
this data, I reflected on what I found, and made recommendation
decisions for the program based on weaknesses I found in it. Lastly, I
reflected on the process as a whole. This was my first program
evaluation, but throughout the assignment, I was reflecting back on
the experience and using those reflections to make my final decisions
on recommendations.
In section C, I evaluated the reading program using IRAs 10
Exemplary Reading Program Guidelines. I went through each guideline
and described where I saw the guideline being met, and where I saw a
need for more work to effectively meet the guideline. Section D is
where I discussed my recommendations based on my reflection of the
program, and section E is where I discuss my reflections on the reading
program and the experience of evaluating a reading program.
Throughout the artifact I discuss my reflections on the reading program
and on the process of evaluating the reading program. Within section

C, I was continuously questioning what I valued in a reading program. I

discussed things I was expecting to see and aspects I would have
wanted to see, but the lack of those aspects that I value are not
necessarily going to be great in every reading program. I was open to
finding weaknesses in my own thinking and teaching as a result. In
section D, I consider the context in which the reading program is being
taught when I recommend a literacy night for the school. I examined
my own assumptions when I realized how much work and data
collection goes into a thorough evaluation of a reading program as
mentioned in section E. Through continuous and thorough reflection
throughout the process, I learned a lot more goes into a reading
program. For example, the fact that I observed parents freely signing in
to read to their childs class may not seem like its part of the reading
program, but when you consider what kind of literacy atmosphere that
is setting in the school, it definitely is part of the reading programs
culture. Therefore, I feel this is an artifact that demonstrates my
ability to be a reflective decision-maker.
References
Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (1996). Reflective teaching: An
introduction. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Dewey, J. (1998). How we think: A restatement of the relation of
reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin.