Episode Transcript
Brent Warner (0:00): Hello everybody. Welcome to the DIESOL podcast, where we talk about developing innovation in English as a second or other language. If you listen to the last episode, you will know that we had a shared episode with the teacher think aloud podcast, and this is part two of that conversation. We’re kind of excited about this one because we’re switching formats, and so Shè and Anna are taking care of the editing and doing it in their show style. And so we’re excited to kind of have a little bit of a mix up and see how things go. So with that, we’re switching over to DIESOL 126 or the teacher think aloud podcast episode 74.
Shè Riel (1:07): Welcome to the teacher think aloud podcast, a podcast for reflective practice for teachers of English around the world. I’m your co host, Shè.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (1:16): And I’m Anna.
Shè Riel (1:17): And today we’re picking up our conversation with our friends at the DIESOL podcast.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (1:23): That’s right. A few weeks ago, we released part one of our conversation about what it means to be a reflective practitioner. We covered some of the foundational theories of reflective practice, and we talked extensively about why we should reflect and how we can make reflection meaningful. And now in part two, we’re shifting our focus to practical strategies and tools for reflection.
Shè Riel (1:47): Yes, definitely make your way to part one of the conversation if you hadn’t had a chance yet, and if you did have a chance to listen to part one, you know that it was produced by DIESOL in their signature format.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (1:59): And what you’re about to listen to will be in our signature narrative style.
Shè Riel (2:03): Which just means more interruptions, really. Just kidding, just kidding. We’ll pause and reflect at different points of the conversation, and we invite you to join us.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (2:14): Let’s meet Brent and Ixchell and pick up where we left off.
Brent Warner (2:17): My name is Brent Warner. My pronouns are he/him and I am a professor of ESL at Irvine Valley College in Southern California.
Ixchell Reyes (2:27): My name is Ixchell Reyes. My pronouns are she/her. I’m a teacher trainer and an English for special purposes instructor. So not all reflection happens during scheduled planning time. Sometimes we get sudden flashbacks in those in-between moments like we’re walking to our car or cooking dinner and suddenly reliving parts of a lesson oftentimes at night, right? Can you recall one of those unplanned golden moments and how it compares to structured reflection?
Shè Riel (3:01): You know, Ixchell, you mentioned at night – you’re reliving parts of a lesson. My brain has a really hard time turning off. So often, my best ideas come to me when I’m dreaming. I run through whole classes in my brain. I don’t know if they’re dreams or my subconscious sort of working things out, but a lot of the time, I’ll wake up and I’ll be like, “Okay, I know what I’m going to do.” That sort of subconscious reflection is very different than when you’re awake, right? So I don’t know that I have anything more specific than that, but this idea of reliving parts of a lesson, I think we take it a step further, and sometimes we’re teaching while we’re sleeping. I don’t know how healthy that is, maybe.
Brent Warner (3:40): Probably not very.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (3:44): Yeah, work life balance out the window. Maybe that’s another argument for making reflection intentional. I mean, I do think that those are golden moments right there, right? Just getting inspiration in a dream and waking up and having that inspiration. I think that’s a wonderful way to get ideas. Some of the best ideas come from not a moment when you are explicitly trying to work through that problem, right? But I do think setting aside time to reflect can help lessen the dreams and nightmares about teaching perhaps by letting you process it in a moment when you are able to just sit down and think through it. Just a thought. What about you? I’m going to throw the question back at you.
Ixchell Reyes (4:26): I have insomnia. I love reflecting, and I love teaching about reflection and how it transforms the way you approach things, right? And oftentimes, in the middle of the night, I won’t have a dream, but I’ll wake up and think, “Oh my goodness, that’s the thing I need to do tomorrow.” It didn’t come in a dream. It came moments after I woke up, and then I have to get up and get whatever I was gonna do or write it down, because I’ll forget. It happens to me all the time, and those are my golden moments, because I’ve had amazing things probably wouldn’t have thought at the end of the day when I’m decompressing or my reflection at the end of the week.
Shè Riel (5:02): Your brain has more space to breathe, and the creativity is awakened. And I am a major procrastinator, much to my chagrin being my thing, but I think that my brain works best under pressure. Ten minutes before class starts, I’m gonna have that idea that’s gonna change everything. Why couldn’t you have come to me last night, when I was prepping, or even an hour ago, and make this more manageable?
Brent Warner (5:29): That’s the same for me. Like every time I’m at a presentation, it’s like, “Oh, I’m not watching anybody else’s sessions, because I’m completely redesigning the entire presentation,” you know, 30 minutes before we go on. And that happens in classes as well, right? And people love it. The thing for me is stepping out and doing things that are not teaching related. It could be as simple as going on a walk, spending time in nature, or, you know, it can’t be where I’m like distracted, like going to the movies doesn’t help me with this stuff, but going out and just letting my brain wander. I know there’s like, a psychological phenomenon for this. Coming back to, you know, the last time we talked about Abbott Elementary, now I’ll talk about 30 Rock. One of the episodes in 30 Rock was Alec Baldwin. He was doing putt putt golf in his office, and he’s talking about, like, how doing things like that are about pulling your brain out of the focus that it’s trying to work on, and then it gives room for ideas to come in. That’s always resonated with me. You can’t be overly focused. You won’t create as good work if you’re always in it, right? And so that time to give yourself and get out of it and get your head in your own space. Ixchell, I know does like running and all these things, and like trying to get the fresh head thing, right? So whether it’s yoga or whatever else it is, it’s like that time where your brain is not doing and not active. It really helps me get more aha moments as well.
Shè Riel (6:50): I think a hybrid approach, neither formal nor spontaneous reflection, is better than the other, necessarily. But you know, just knowing where that sort of fertile ground for creativity exists in you and knowing yourself. Maybe you go on a hike, but you sort of preface the hike by saying, “Here’s something that’s on my mind, and can I allow that to be sort of like a more structured, creative hike?” You know, I don’t know. Maybe that’s a little too woo-woo, but kind of a combination of the two.
Brent Warner (7:21): Yeah, if you have one idea and you but even if you not force it, you just tell yourself, “Let this hang out and see what happens.” It could still work out. I also have my own openness to woo-woo opportunities as well, and it’s like, “Okay, let’s see what happens with that.” It’s just slight intention added on to whatever you’re doing without necessarily a focused goal. I think that would work well, too.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (7:41): Well, and I like that you brought up the word intention again, because I think that intention and then creating the space right, creating space in your brain for reflection, whether that is just saying, “Okay, I’m gonna leave it and I’m gonna let my brain wander into a different area and not focus on this,” or creating actual space in your day. Because if we’re relying only on like the lesson is happening, I am here, I gotta go to my next class, right? That’s not necessarily gonna get us where we need to go. Teachers are burnt out. A lot of times that is all we have. But if we’re able to kind of build in that creative space by going on a walk, going on a run, doing something that takes us away from it, or creating a space where we sit down and we just let ourselves free write about whatever we just did in class or what we did throughout the week. It doesn’t have to be a session by session. That’s really important. We call it within the realm of reflective practice, we call this reflection in action versus reflection on action. So reflection in action being that in the moment practice, we are shifting our lessons as we go along. We’re making, you know, mental notes about things, but building in that reflection on action right after the fact, whichever form it takes, is key to building that practice. In their first episode – go back and listen to episode one, everybody, if you haven’t – in our first episode, we talked about reflective practice as a practice. That reflective practice component is building in some form of reflection on action after the fact.
Shè Riel (9:24): And that’s the hardest part, right? We all pivot in the classroom when we need to. We notice when students, you know, eyes are glazed over and we’ve lost them. We change. We have to. We’ve been trained to do that. But this idea of pausing after the fact, carving out that time for what happened and why is really the key component, and I think the hardest to really make space for.
Ixchell Reyes (9:46): So one of the things I often tell my teacher trainees is that, yes, we’re reflecting on what has happened, but it also should be a point that helps you to plan or see what might be next, right? How do you guys use reflection to make small tweaks for either following lesson? I know you mentioned suddenly in your dreams, you get the answer, but what about bigger, long term goals?
Shè Riel (10:13): Yeah, well, so you’ve just described another type of reflection, Ixchell, reflection for action, which is essentially based on what has – you know, what I’ve seen or what I’ve done, what’s next. And previously, Anna, you and I have talked about reflection in action or on action. But there’s actually another preposition, because English is just that fun with prepositions. Yeah, yeah, reflection for action. So it’s exactly that you Ixchell. So, I mean, if we’re thinking about longer term professional goals, the idea is to break that down into smaller, manageable chunks. The name of the game for reflection is making it the least intimidating as possible, right? Because it’s already, you know, we’ve got all of our classes, we’ve got our evaluations, we’ve got to do observations, we have our PD and so reflection, I think, for a lot of teachers, can feel like yet another thing that, you know, I’m being encouraged to do. So, you know, first it’s like, we’ll go back to that framing right? That it is this opportunity to learn yourself. So frame it that way, but then also use it to your advantage. What is it, you know, let’s not go too crazy. Let’s say, a year from now, what’s one thing you’d like to see change within your teaching practice, and then start to break it down into smaller chunks, backwards engineering how to get to that end goal, working backwards?
Anna Ciriani-Dean (11:31): Well, yeah, I’m just thinking because you and I, Shè, at TESOL 2025 our whole session was on, essentially building reflection into goal setting.
Brent Warner (11:42): Oh, I’m an expert on this. I forgot.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (11:46): Using reflection as a tool for goal setting. The workshop we did was really focused on goal setting. The whole process of that workshop was figuring out what reflective practice is and then focusing on how to make it actionable. And what we did with participants in that workshop was have them reflect on how they reflect best. We’ll talk about strategies in a minute here for reflection. But then the end piece there was, we had them set a goal for the conference right the next couple of days, a month from now, a year from now, and five years from now, all of that coming out of reflection. The focus was using reflection to figure out areas of professional development they want to pursue and target, right? So, so I think that’s exactly what you were saying, Shè. Just unbeknownst to you, we’d already talked about this. We talked about SMART goals. I mean, who’s not going to talk about SMART goals for everything but breaking it down, making it time bound, making it relevant was really that’s the way that I think works best, at least that’s how we presented it to people. Different people work differently. So they might decide that in their reflective practice, they want to structure their reflection so that they answer the same three questions each time: what went well, what wasn’t so great, and what do I want to change next time, or maybe add on to that, what is it that I want to pursue to become a stronger teacher in this area? Right? So I think the questions you lay out for yourself, you can create your own rubric. Each teacher is going to want to ask themselves different questions. So it really is about shaping the questions that you ask yourself in your own reflection and figuring out what system works best for you.
Brent Warner (13:28): Yeah, and I’d also say, like, we’ve all got long careers ahead of us, so it’s not that you have to get it right the first time right. It’s a iterative process. And you start saying, “Hey, this part worked for me. I didn’t really, you know, vibe with these questions or these ideas. I’m going to ditch them, but I’m going to turn into my own thing here.” And so that ability to say, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s just about taking those steps to move into it. I think for so many of us as teachers, it’s like, “I gotta get it right the first time” right. It’s that perfectionism thing that comes in, or whatever. And so the ability to let go of that and say, “Let me get this part here. Let me test it out. If I don’t like it, it doesn’t mean the whole thing’s a failure. It means that this is not aligning for me. Let me try the next step or version,” especially if it’s not a huge amount of time. It’s not like I gotta spend an hour every day after my classes doing this stuff or whatever else it is, right? And you can really bring that quite down, to get yourself started.
Shè Riel (14:23): I appreciate Brent’s point that creating a reflective practice means being iterative and finding out what works best for you might take some time.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (14:33): I think one of the greatest perks of establishing a reflective teaching practice is that you’re carving out specific time to focus on your practice, on your interests and needs as a professional. Sometimes, you know, life gets in the way of you time. And while I’m not condoning reflection on your teaching as your primary form of self care, I think there’s value in spending time with yourself in that way.
Shè Riel (14:57): Absolutely. Well now that I remember that I presented at TESOL this year. My gosh, I traveled to like, five countries in two months right around TESOL time for work.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (15:07): It was no wonder you didn’t remember it. Yeah, it was just a total blur.
Shè Riel (15:10): But thankfully, I have you to remind me of things, Anna. Well, I remember this comment from one of our workshop attendees who told me that she had been teaching for nearly 50 years, and in that time, she had never thought that PD could be for her, that now she hopes to share that more positive framing with her trainee teachers.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (15:30): Yeah, I do think many teachers get stuck in that kind of thinking that it’s just another task for them to tick off, rather than having the space to see value in PD.
Shè Riel (15:42): And I think that value is especially apparent within the context of self directed PD, which is really our jam.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (15:49): Yeah, our jam. So let’s dive a little deeper into some of the guiding questions we ask teachers to get them closer to that headspace.
Shè Riel (15:57): Yeah, one of our leading questions for teachers is, how much time realistically do you have to devote to PD? That’s a really important starting place. Because, you know, I remember Anna and I, you know, during the pandemic, we launched this podcast, but you all remember everything went online. Everyone was like, “We can do this webinar that we can join everything we possibly could” in that first month of the pandemic. And we realized really quickly, like this is not sustainable, like I’m tired and I’m not even leaving my house. What’s going on? So I think being really honest with yourself, your bandwidth, looking at your life from a holistic perspective, and saying, you know, Anna, for example, has – you’ve used this example before, but you have, you know, you have a one year old. That’s really challenging. You know, your time is different than it was before you had that child, right? And not just parents, but your emotional state. Maybe you moved to a new city, maybe you had a loss in your family. All of that impacts your professional capacity. And we’re not machines, and I think we have to remind ourselves of that sometimes.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (16:57): Yeah, Shè, you hit the nail on the head. The first step in using reflection to direct our professional development, is figuring out what goals are feasible, how much time we have, but then also thinking about, how do I want to structure my own practice? And then also, what are the ways that I learn best? Right? Our audience at our TESOL workshop came up with a lot of different options for things they do, and it’s going to be different for everybody. Journaling is a huge one. It doesn’t have to be an essay every time. It can be bullet points, having a rubric where you just simply keep in check how things went during a lesson or over the course of the week. One person in our workshop was a big fan of voice memos, because it’s a quicker and easier way of saying what’s on your mind and not having to craft it into written form, which can feel very formal. But the most important thing really is trying to build a routine, whatever that looks like, thinking of your bandwidth. How often am I going to do this? How am I going to remember to do this? Calendar notifications, time boxing. This is the time I reflect each week or each day, scheduling prompts to send to ourselves with a question. What was the teacher talk time like during your lesson today, and scheduling that prompt to pop up on your phone at a certain time of day so you can take a quick moment to be like, “Oh yeah. Well, I guess this person talked a lot, and I talked a lot during that segment,” whatever it is, just to prompt yourself to do it, because we’re busy people and we need some kind of external support to help build that routine. And those are just some simple ways. But since we’re on the DIESOL podcast, I’m also curious you know, if you two have any ideas for these kinds of formats, how could we integrate tech into reflection? Does tech even have a place in reflection? We’ve been talking very woo-woo. Like, is tech part of this conversation? Yes or no? I mentioned your thoughts.
Ixchell Reyes (18:51): So again, as a pre-service teacher trainer, I have my students – you talked about emails and journals, but I like a tool called – it’s kind of an old, very simple, rudimentary website. It’s called Dear future me.org.
Brent Warner (19:06): Future Me, future me, or just…
Ixchell Reyes (19:10): Future me. I think it’s future me. Yeah, cool. And I like it because you’re reflecting, but you’re also talking to the future. You don’t need to enter anything except your email. You’ll forget about it. I have my students as they’re finishing the course, and they’re like nervous about going back to their nation and starting this journey, right? And one of the things I tell them is you’ve got to be gentle with yourself. You’ve got to be kind, because there’s going to be many challenging moments, right? And I want my teachers, anybody from my training to have longevity. We need good teachers that don’t quit after three years or five years, right? We already have enough challenges in our ESL field. Talk to your past self, talk to your future self, and schedule that email. You’ll forget about it. Schedule it to the very last day when they graduate and on that last day, they say, “Oh, I got a funny email today. Oh, from WHO? From myself.” Inevitably, someone will schedule it for a year later. I forget to change the year, and I’ll get an email a year later. “Teacher, Miss Reyes, I got this email. I can’t believe it,” and some of them have cried. They’ve told me stories of how they thought they couldn’t teach English, but now they look back and they realize how important it is to again reflect. I think that’s a big part of my methodology. I like it to be simple. Because of that, it is overwhelming. And so futureme.org is not a calendar reminder. It’s not going to pop up. You just write it down or write two sentences. I say whatever you want to write down, a poem, a word, three adjectives, write it.
Shè Riel (20:43): I love it. Oh, it’s so feel good too. I feel warm and fuzzy right now.
Brent Warner (20:51): And future me is great for assignments too, right? Because the reflection place and like, “Hey, what do you think you’re going to get done by this time?” So it works for students, but it also works for us as teachers, to consider, what are we doing? What are we thinking about? What are we wanting to get done? I would say for me, in terms of, like, the tech, there’s a ton that can be really powerful. So I think everybody who’s listening probably did their teacher training in a time when you could get at least a video camera going, right, recording yourself teaching, like, doing the actual process. Now, you know, you’re like, “Oh my god, am I going to do this thing right? Am I going to watch myself?” But I will say that the times that I’ve done have been really high value turnaround. And so it’s like, “Do I have to watch myself? Do I have to criticize, you know, whatever it is,” but at the same time, you’re like, “Okay, just having that video, being able to sit down and separate yourself from the moment and look at that” is a huge one. So that, and it’s so easy, because you can just set up your phone in the corner at this point, you know.
Ixchell Reyes (21:45): When was the last time you recorded your lesson?
Brent Warner (21:48): It’s been a while, because it’s that intimidation factor. Yeah, you know, I have recorded myself doing presentations and gone back on the presentations, but my classroom teaching I haven’t done for a little while, and I do need to. But I will also throw in this is a non-tech one that a friend of mine, when I got early into, like the PD stuff, shared this idea with me. I just thought it was so cool. I’ve only done it once, but it was really interesting. Very low tech. Have someone come into the room to observe you, and their total observation is, this is a different kind of observation. Their job is they have a map of the room, and they have a pen, and they just trace where you walk during your teaching time in the class. And it’s like, where are you spending your time? Where are you moving? And all they do is just trace you for 30-45 minutes, whatever, and they show you the map, and then you get a sense of how you actually move, who you’re paying attention to in the class, who you’re ignoring. What the reasons for that might be. It might just be because it’s hard to walk behind one of the students, or it might be because you have a bias against that student, or whatever else is going on, right? And so I thought that was a really, you know, one of the most innovative ways to understand your process and your relationship with the physical classroom, which is just a really powerful way of understanding. And then the third one for tech I would talk about is the chat bot, reflection, talking to AI, putting in your intentions. You can set it up, of course, to say things like, “Hey, just be Socratic. Just ask questions. Don’t give me feedback on my responses directly, but play the role of a, you know, considerate listener,” right? And you can ask follow up questions, etc, but not really, like, “Oh, you’re such a brilliant person for thinking of that,” you know, like, these kind of nasty things that it does and gives you a false sense of power or confidence that isn’t necessarily deserved when you’re really just trying to figure out what’s going on, right? The goal is different. Here one video I’ve always wanted to make, and I haven’t made it, is, if you’re commuting to work, put your phone on the dashboard and have it be your chat partner that you can talk to while you’re on your road to class. And so one of the ways that you can actually reflect on that you’re putting your lesson plan from the last time and just say, “Let’s talk about how it went” right. “Let’s have the conversation. This was the lesson plan. Maybe, if it works out, you could say, these are some of what my students said about it.” Just gonna pop it in there as text, and then later, I’ll move into the voice mode on chat, GPT or whatever, and then we’ll just talk about it on the drive. So you can use your driving time to talk about that as well. So there’s lots of room for tech in there. Time saver.
Ixchell Reyes (24:26): One more in there. Ooh, it just reminded me of Marco Polo. I don’t know if you use that.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (24:30): Oh, I used that. Oh, so much. Yeah.
Ixchell Reyes (24:33): Okay, so Marco Polo. My sister and I live in different states, and I am always talking about my students to her. She’s also a teacher, but she works with preschoolers. I work with adults. It has helped me tremendously, and I didn’t think of it that I’m already – it. I’ll tell her an idea. She doesn’t respond because essentially, Marco Polo, as you record a video, somebody else is going to receive it. They can watch whenever they want. It’s like this video stream, and it gives you the time to think and listen without responding in a conversation or a video call, it doesn’t mix text messages, so you don’t have to go search for that video, so you end up becoming a better listener, and you’re not able to respond right away. You’re able to actually think. Oftentimes, I’ll run an idea by her, because sometimes preschoolers have similar behaviors to adults, and vice versa. So later on, I’ll get the answer myself, and I do that when I’m driving, you know, safely, and I’ll just be talking, and we just chat back and forth. And then I’ll listen and get an idea. So that actually is how I’ve reflected many times. I didn’t realize I was doing it. So Marco Polo is free, and it works well for that, actually.
Shè Riel (25:54): Yeah, and it’s not as intimidating as recording yourself and looking at your face. Yeah, I love that. And I love the asynchronicity of that. You know, that’s forced pause. It’s great, cool.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (26:01): I mean, maybe we’ll get to this in a second, but you were making me think of just the importance of an accountability partner or a sounding board. A sounding board. That’s how Shè and I came to be. We were accountability partners. We were working in the same Intensive English Program in New York City at the time, and we just started doing that in person. I love that you’re using tech for making that collective reflection with your sister, even though it was different learners.
Ixchell Reyes (26:30): And speaking of accountability partners, Brent and I worked together at some point. And I remember when I had this goal of going 70% paperless, I went semester by semester. Okay, let me see what I can turn into paperless and digital without compromising the content of my class. I would always say, “Guess what? I’ve done this, this, you know,” but he was my and he still is my accountability partner.
Shè Riel (26:55): And now you have a podcast, and other people are also benefiting from you guys reflecting together, essentially.
Brent Warner (27:02): I mean, that’s the big secret about a podcast, right? When you run the podcast, you’re getting the benefit of all the PD that you’re building and sharing with everybody, right?
Anna Ciriani-Dean (27:10): 100%. I just want to highlight for listeners that we’ve added the tech tools mentioned here to this episode’s show notes. And since this conversation, Shè and I have been throwing around a few more ideas for tech enabled reflection. Want to share a few.
Shè Riel (27:24): Yeah. Well, something I noticed when I was teaching in China last year was that I had this desire, especially after a tough class, to have a colleague right there to bounce ideas off of.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (27:35): This burning desire, that moment of what just happened in there and no one’s around to process with you. I totally get it.
Shè Riel (27:45): Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was lucky enough to be teaching next door to my partner, but a chat bot can serve that purpose too, not to replace colleagues, of course, but as a reflective partner, and it can be something as simple as pasting a short note from your lesson into chat, GPT, for example, or another tool, and asking, “What might I do differently next time?”
Anna Ciriani-Dean (28:08): All right, so like a critical friend, one who’s always available and doesn’t get tired of your rambling or your insecurities, right?
Shè Riel (28:18): And you know they can generate reflective questions too. So say you had a group discussion that just fell flat. You could ask that the AI give me some questions to help me reflect on why that didn’t work, and then it comes back to you with prompts like, “Well, how did my instructions shape the outcome? Were the students clear on their roles and their purpose in the activities?”
Anna Ciriani-Dean (28:40): I love that. That feels powerful, especially for new teachers who don’t yet know what to ask themselves, and maybe, you know, don’t have that person to talk to right next to them. The chat bot helps them move from “that didn’t work” to “here’s what I can learn from it.”
Shè Riel (28:57): And for more experienced teachers, you can ask the chat bot to play sort of the devil’s advocate. For example, you could say, “Push back on how I used group work in this lesson.” That kind of challenge can help to surface blind spots that we might not notice ourselves.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (29:12): But I mean, then, what about evidence? Though? Right? Because reflection isn’t just feelings, right? It’s also about looking at what actually happened in the classroom.
Shè Riel (29:23): You’re right. It isn’t just feelings. I think people maybe get hung up on that idea. It’s like, “How did that feel to me?” But it’s more than that. And so for me, that’s where transcription tools come into play. So you could record, you know, 10 minute activity, run it through an auto transcriber, and then suddenly you see the classroom talk. Maybe you notice that you’re speaking 80% of the time, or maybe you notice even that your questions are mostly closed questions as opposed to open ended.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (29:51): Yeah, I also love that that doesn’t involve like, video necessarily, right? Because you’re kind of getting that feel of the classroom and some input from the classroom without, you know, putting yourself and putting your students on the spot with a video, sure. But I mean, I think that would really be a wake up call. And for someone newer to reflection, they could start with just teacher talk versus student talk. But for someone more advanced, they might look at tone and wait time and how students take up each other’s ideas. There’s so much.
Shè Riel (30:25): Right, right? And you know, once you’ve got those transcripts or those journal entries, data analysis tools can help. So instead of combing through, say, 20 reflections that you took over the course of the semester, you can ask your generative AI to find your recurring themes, like maybe you highlighted pacing issues or student engagement, maybe dropping or sort of going off the rails during tech use.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (30:48): Yeah. So it’s not just one snapshot, but trends over time.
Shè Riel (30:53): And that’s where a tool like NotebookLM really shines. That’s one of my favorites. You can upload a whole semester’s worth of plans, reflections and even transcripts, you can ask it questions to sort of drill down on certain components or curiosities that you have, which is a really cool feature. But what I love most is what it can do at the macro level. The tool surfaces patterns with its overview functions, including both audio and video overviews, like, it generates them based on the content you feed it, and it also generates things like mind maps and FAQs.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (31:27): That sounds like a really cool bird’s eye view teachers rarely have time to create on their own. Yeah? Gives you perspective. Yeah, absolutely.
Shè Riel (31:35): Yeah. And, and just to be clear, because I know I’ve gotten, like, super excited talking about these tools. Like I started this and I was like, “Anna, I’m sick. My voice is going to be awful.” Now I’m like, sweaty and excited. Here we are again. Well, even though I’m excited, there’s a lot that you can do. None of this is replacing human reflection or mentoring, but I think it does help to extend it. You know, we can think of AI as a sort of scaffolding in the reflection process, you know, it’s asking the questions, it’s surfacing the patterns, and it’s giving us sort of a head start so that our deeper thinking can really kick in.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (32:09): So in a way, generative AI, in this case, can help us spend less time finding the reflection questions and more time answering those questions. And you’ve always got someone to reflect with.
Shè Riel (32:21): Yeah, and that’s great. I mean, of course, we do want to consider the other side of the coin too. We can’t be reckless in how we’re engaging with AI. We have to be, you know, careful, mindful of what we’re sharing, especially if we’re, you know, adding any sort of student information, demographic information. We want to make sure we’re protecting our identities and our students, and that we’re adhering to guidelines provided to us by our institutions.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (32:47): Right and just our moral compass right. So very important, and as you alluded to a moment ago, no AI can beat reflecting with a real, live human. So let’s hear more about how to facilitate shared reflection.
Shè Riel (33:02): We’ve talked a lot about individual reflection, and we’ve started to move into accountability partners. I’m just trying to think of you know, are there other collective reflection avenues we could discuss? Are you guys involved in groups like professional learning networks or communities? Have you ever participated in sort of a mentor relationship? You are mentoring teachers. Tell us a bit about that.
Brent Warner (33:24): Both of us have been deeply involved in CATESOL. Both of us were doing a lot of work around there. TESOL. When she moved to Texas. I’ve been heavily involved with CUE. So CUE, so CUE in California is the big one for ed tech related things, not language related, but ed tech. My book just came out for ISTE, so that’s a language related thing. I’m kind of tying into that community more. So, yeah, being part of those learning communities. And then back when Twitter and teacher Twitter was a great thing, highly involved with that as well. Like, really trying, you know, getting a lot of value. The micro chats, yeah, the like, all of those things were so powerful. It’s a real, true loss. I used to tell people, and people get a little bit upset with me about it, but I would say, like, “Oh, I learned more from Twitter than I did from my masters.” For so many people sharing so many great things. And it’s a true, tangible loss to not have that community anymore. We mourned it on an episode when both of us decided to step away. I remember that episode, but, you know, at the same time, there are ways to connect with people, share ideas. I spend more time on LinkedIn for my digital communities now. It’s fine to go a little bit smaller. It’s fine to kind of work with your little crew and your team. You don’t have to be out there blasting all the time. It can be, you know, individual local communities. And so I find that I have these really powerful conversations, one on one with people quite a lot, just over coffee or something like that too. So do maintain some level of connection, although, I’ll say, like in the last six months or eight months or so, and it’s been a little stressful and hard to just be like, “Okay, I need my own space,” and it’s okay to step in and out of these things too.
Ixchell Reyes (35:05): So I would say that I was so involved online with technology, PLNs online. But there came a point probably marked with what I call the death of Twitter, the very hard death of Twitter. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t create my own PLN. I remember talking to Brent about that I felt so disconnected and like I wasn’t growing. But I also realized that I did have plenty of people around me, not necessarily my colleagues where I work, but people that I’d met through other places. And I had to make the effort to say, “Hey guys, we really want to talk about AI and know your perspective.” And so I have like, about five colleagues that on and off, I’ll bounce ideas with, and that’s a PLN. And I also do include people that may not think the same as me. So I’m very much into technology and educational technology and just innovation and trying to get innovation even in a low tech environment. And so oftentimes that means I have to stay connected to people who aren’t, you know, the ed tech – what do you call them? The people who – I forgot. I’m tired today.
Brent Warner (36:12): Non-techies.
Ixchell Reyes (36:13): Non techies won so many people over because it was like, little by little. And then they started coming, coming, coming, and then, sort of, like, finding their way with something now that you can’t really escape technology, so again, staying connected with people that you might find common ground with.
Shè Riel (36:30): Yeah, I’m lost in our notes right now. We have jumped all over. Everyone’s really tired. I’m sure my eyes are getting pretty heavy. So I wonder, Anna, what are you thinking? Where are we? Where are we, and what else do we need to cover?
Anna Ciriani-Dean (36:48): Yeah. I mean…
Ixchell Reyes (36:50): Avoiding burnout.
Shè Riel (36:51): Yeah, let’s go there. Yeah. I think I should tell our listeners we’re recording this two part episode in one sitting at the end of everybody’s work day. So we are definitely not practicing what we’re about to preach. Yeah, we’re going, we’re gonna burn ourselves out like we are burning ourselves out.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (37:09): Now, this is almost two hours, right? Yeah, yep, yeah. Well, I think, like you mentioned, burnout, and we’ve also talked about being gentle with yourself. The most important thing with reflective practice, for me is speaking to ourselves as a good friend would speak to ourselves when we’re reflecting and also accepting that reflection can’t be another thing that just we have to do that makes us more stressed and anxious, right? That’s all for me on that.
Ixchell Reyes (37:41): I often tell myself something my mentor teacher told me when I was at my first student teaching experience – it was with kindergarten, so I remember her telling me, “Remember, right now it’s not your time to shine. Right now, you’re an apprentice, so take little bite sized steps and deal with that, because eventually you’re gonna shine.” As I’ve developed as a teacher, and again, this is the whole lifelong learning practice that every year you’re sort of an apprentice at something right? And celebrate that, celebrate the things that you’re about to embark as an opportunity. There are challenges. You’re not going to have the answer, but maybe you don’t need to have the answer every time, and, you know, don’t need to solve it. But look for the things that are worth honoring. If you had a hard class, if you had a hard semester, I’m having a hard year, who isn’t right? Celebrate that you got through the day. Celebrate that the student was able to give you a complete sentence, celebrate that your lunch wasn’t interrupted, celebrate that someone found what you shared was useful. Those things help to avoid burnout. It is important to honor those moments.
Shè Riel (38:54): Especially as teachers working in this field, where we do experience compassion fatigue, we have to really make sure that we’re taking care of ourselves so that we can show up for our students. So just again, that sort of taking a holistic look at what you’re doing and remembering that being a teacher is just one hat you wear. You are more than your profession.
Brent Warner (39:18): Yeah, and I would connect to that too. So going back to the idea I said earlier about like, “Hey, make sure that you – you know if you’re going on the walk, if it’s just not a teaching related thing, give yourself hobbies or interests outside of the realm,” right? So whatever it is, “Hey, I want to learn how to play guitar,” right? I am terrible at it, but it’s not about being good at it. It’s about having an interest to pursue. And this one’s super important. Can’t say it enough. Make friends with people who are not teachers and do not want to talk about teaching. Yeah, I have a couple of bar buddies, and we always have great conversations, and they’re totally unrelated things, and it does help me from not burning out. Because I’m connected to other parts of the world in other ways, and so even just ensuring that you’re doing something about that, proactively doing it. I mean, there are websites like meetup.com is still out there, or some of these ones out there where it’s like, “Hey, I’m interested in playing board games. I don’t have any friends in the area, but there’s a group that meets up. I’m gonna go meet up with those people,” right? So I get it too. It’s like, “Hey, I’m a shy person. I don’t want to jump out and do these things and meet a bunch of strangers,” but at the same time, it’s like, you recognize that, like, once you meet strangers, maybe you’re okay with becoming friends with one or two. It might take some time, don’t get me wrong, but all I’m saying is, like, what are you doing? What are you being proactive about in order to protect yourself that is, you know, like it or not, that’s our responsibilities individually. We need to figure out ways to make sure that we are connected to the fullness of the world and not just the lens that we normally look at it through, which is teaching so often.
Shè Riel (40:54): Yeah, I love them. Brent, I’m saying that as my partner is a teacher, and at first it was really exciting. I was like, “Yes, someone gets me and I can talk about assessment.” And really quickly I realized, like, “Well, we talk about teaching too much,” right? And so you do have to carve out that space. I appreciate that advice.
Brent Warner (41:12): Brent, my wife, is like, “Uh-huh, yeah, awesome.”
Anna Ciriani-Dean (41:22): We’re so grateful to Brent and Ixchell for modeling vulnerability and joy for teaching in this conversation. We hope this episode reminds you that reflection isn’t just about improvement, it’s about connection, care and honoring your growth. That’s right, listeners, we want to hear from you. What strategies do you use to reflect on your teaching? What tools or tips have helped you sustain reflection over time?
Shè Riel (41:47): And if you’re a reflection newbie, or at least, you haven’t carved out a practice for yourself yet, let’s get you started. We challenge you after your next class to record a 60-second voice memo. Just say what surprised you, what challenged you, and what you’d do differently.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (42:05): Sounds pretty easy to me. Reflection doesn’t have to be polished people. It just has to be honest, and that’s really how you’re going to get the most out of it in the future.
Shè Riel (42:14): Before we go, we want to highlight a few resources you can use to help spark inspiration and sustain your practice. First, check out our YouTube Playlist, an introduction to reflective practice. It’s a compilation of all of our episodes related to reflective teaching.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (42:30): Yes, and it features two of my personal favorite episodes. Episode 28 – a holistic approach to PD with Ramin Yazanpana and 56 – building a sustainable PD practice with Yulia Kharchenko.
Shè Riel (42:46): Those are my favorite of the bunch, too, Anna. We’ve also created a few reflection tools over the years to help you figure out how you reflect best, including an interactive quiz and a quick start guide with some targeted thematic listening you can do with our previous episodes.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (43:01): Lots of resources, lots of reflecting, all of it on our show notes. If you found this episode helpful or inspiring, please share it with a friend or colleague and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
Shè Riel (43:16): If you’re feeling generous, you can even support the show by buying us a coffee. At buymeacoffee.com/thinkaloudpod, thanks again to our friends at the DIESOL podcast for this collaboration.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (43:28): So much fun. Yeah, and here’s to many more. Thanks so much for joining us on the teacher think aloud podcast. Until next time, friends happy Teaching.
Shè Riel (43:40): And happy reflecting.
Shè Riel (1:07): Welcome to the teacher think aloud podcast, a podcast for reflective practice for teachers of English around the world. I’m your co host, Shè.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (1:16): And I’m Anna.
Shè Riel (1:17): And today we’re picking up our conversation with our friends at the DIESOL podcast.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (1:23): That’s right. A few weeks ago, we released part one of our conversation about what it means to be a reflective practitioner. We covered some of the foundational theories of reflective practice, and we talked extensively about why we should reflect and how we can make reflection meaningful. And now in part two, we’re shifting our focus to practical strategies and tools for reflection.
Shè Riel (1:47): Yes, definitely make your way to part one of the conversation if you hadn’t had a chance yet, and if you did have a chance to listen to part one, you know that it was produced by DIESOL in their signature format.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (1:59): And what you’re about to listen to will be in our signature narrative style.
Shè Riel (2:03): Which just means more interruptions, really. Just kidding, just kidding. We’ll pause and reflect at different points of the conversation, and we invite you to join us.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (2:14): Let’s meet Brent and Ixchell and pick up where we left off.
Brent Warner (2:17): My name is Brent Warner. My pronouns are he/him and I am a professor of ESL at Irvine Valley College in Southern California.
Ixchell Reyes (2:27): My name is Ixchell Reyes. My pronouns are she/her. I’m a teacher trainer and an English for special purposes instructor. So not all reflection happens during scheduled planning time. Sometimes we get sudden flashbacks in those in-between moments like we’re walking to our car or cooking dinner and suddenly reliving parts of a lesson oftentimes at night, right? Can you recall one of those unplanned golden moments and how it compares to structured reflection?
Shè Riel (3:01): You know, Ixchell, you mentioned at night – you’re reliving parts of a lesson. My brain has a really hard time turning off. So often, my best ideas come to me when I’m dreaming. I run through whole classes in my brain. I don’t know if they’re dreams or my subconscious sort of working things out, but a lot of the time, I’ll wake up and I’ll be like, “Okay, I know what I’m going to do.” That sort of subconscious reflection is very different than when you’re awake, right? So I don’t know that I have anything more specific than that, but this idea of reliving parts of a lesson, I think we take it a step further, and sometimes we’re teaching while we’re sleeping. I don’t know how healthy that is, maybe.
Brent Warner (3:40): Probably not very.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (3:44): Yeah, work life balance out the window. Maybe that’s another argument for making reflection intentional. I mean, I do think that those are golden moments right there, right? Just getting inspiration in a dream and waking up and having that inspiration. I think that’s a wonderful way to get ideas. Some of the best ideas come from not a moment when you are explicitly trying to work through that problem, right? But I do think setting aside time to reflect can help lessen the dreams and nightmares about teaching perhaps by letting you process it in a moment when you are able to just sit down and think through it. Just a thought. What about you? I’m going to throw the question back at you.
Ixchell Reyes (4:26): I have insomnia. I love reflecting, and I love teaching about reflection and how it transforms the way you approach things, right? And oftentimes, in the middle of the night, I won’t have a dream, but I’ll wake up and think, “Oh my goodness, that’s the thing I need to do tomorrow.” It didn’t come in a dream. It came moments after I woke up, and then I have to get up and get whatever I was gonna do or write it down, because I’ll forget. It happens to me all the time, and those are my golden moments, because I’ve had amazing things probably wouldn’t have thought at the end of the day when I’m decompressing or my reflection at the end of the week.
Shè Riel (5:02): Your brain has more space to breathe, and the creativity is awakened. And I am a major procrastinator, much to my chagrin being my thing, but I think that my brain works best under pressure. Ten minutes before class starts, I’m gonna have that idea that’s gonna change everything. Why couldn’t you have come to me last night, when I was prepping, or even an hour ago, and make this more manageable?
Brent Warner (5:29): That’s the same for me. Like every time I’m at a presentation, it’s like, “Oh, I’m not watching anybody else’s sessions, because I’m completely redesigning the entire presentation,” you know, 30 minutes before we go on. And that happens in classes as well, right? And people love it. The thing for me is stepping out and doing things that are not teaching related. It could be as simple as going on a walk, spending time in nature, or, you know, it can’t be where I’m like distracted, like going to the movies doesn’t help me with this stuff, but going out and just letting my brain wander. I know there’s like, a psychological phenomenon for this. Coming back to, you know, the last time we talked about Abbott Elementary, now I’ll talk about 30 Rock. One of the episodes in 30 Rock was Alec Baldwin. He was doing putt putt golf in his office, and he’s talking about, like, how doing things like that are about pulling your brain out of the focus that it’s trying to work on, and then it gives room for ideas to come in. That’s always resonated with me. You can’t be overly focused. You won’t create as good work if you’re always in it, right? And so that time to give yourself and get out of it and get your head in your own space. Ixchell, I know does like running and all these things, and like trying to get the fresh head thing, right? So whether it’s yoga or whatever else it is, it’s like that time where your brain is not doing and not active. It really helps me get more aha moments as well.
Shè Riel (6:50): I think a hybrid approach, neither formal nor spontaneous reflection, is better than the other, necessarily. But you know, just knowing where that sort of fertile ground for creativity exists in you and knowing yourself. Maybe you go on a hike, but you sort of preface the hike by saying, “Here’s something that’s on my mind, and can I allow that to be sort of like a more structured, creative hike?” You know, I don’t know. Maybe that’s a little too woo-woo, but kind of a combination of the two.
Brent Warner (7:21): Yeah, if you have one idea and you but even if you not force it, you just tell yourself, “Let this hang out and see what happens.” It could still work out. I also have my own openness to woo-woo opportunities as well, and it’s like, “Okay, let’s see what happens with that.” It’s just slight intention added on to whatever you’re doing without necessarily a focused goal. I think that would work well, too.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (7:41): Well, and I like that you brought up the word intention again, because I think that intention and then creating the space right, creating space in your brain for reflection, whether that is just saying, “Okay, I’m gonna leave it and I’m gonna let my brain wander into a different area and not focus on this,” or creating actual space in your day. Because if we’re relying only on like the lesson is happening, I am here, I gotta go to my next class, right? That’s not necessarily gonna get us where we need to go. Teachers are burnt out. A lot of times that is all we have. But if we’re able to kind of build in that creative space by going on a walk, going on a run, doing something that takes us away from it, or creating a space where we sit down and we just let ourselves free write about whatever we just did in class or what we did throughout the week. It doesn’t have to be a session by session. That’s really important. We call it within the realm of reflective practice, we call this reflection in action versus reflection on action. So reflection in action being that in the moment practice, we are shifting our lessons as we go along. We’re making, you know, mental notes about things, but building in that reflection on action right after the fact, whichever form it takes, is key to building that practice. In their first episode – go back and listen to episode one, everybody, if you haven’t – in our first episode, we talked about reflective practice as a practice. That reflective practice component is building in some form of reflection on action after the fact.
Shè Riel (9:24): And that’s the hardest part, right? We all pivot in the classroom when we need to. We notice when students, you know, eyes are glazed over and we’ve lost them. We change. We have to. We’ve been trained to do that. But this idea of pausing after the fact, carving out that time for what happened and why is really the key component, and I think the hardest to really make space for.
Ixchell Reyes (9:46): So one of the things I often tell my teacher trainees is that, yes, we’re reflecting on what has happened, but it also should be a point that helps you to plan or see what might be next, right? How do you guys use reflection to make small tweaks for either following lesson? I know you mentioned suddenly in your dreams, you get the answer, but what about bigger, long term goals?
Shè Riel (10:13): Yeah, well, so you’ve just described another type of reflection, Ixchell, reflection for action, which is essentially based on what has – you know, what I’ve seen or what I’ve done, what’s next. And previously, Anna, you and I have talked about reflection in action or on action. But there’s actually another preposition, because English is just that fun with prepositions. Yeah, yeah, reflection for action. So it’s exactly that you Ixchell. So, I mean, if we’re thinking about longer term professional goals, the idea is to break that down into smaller, manageable chunks. The name of the game for reflection is making it the least intimidating as possible, right? Because it’s already, you know, we’ve got all of our classes, we’ve got our evaluations, we’ve got to do observations, we have our PD and so reflection, I think, for a lot of teachers, can feel like yet another thing that, you know, I’m being encouraged to do. So, you know, first it’s like, we’ll go back to that framing right? That it is this opportunity to learn yourself. So frame it that way, but then also use it to your advantage. What is it, you know, let’s not go too crazy. Let’s say, a year from now, what’s one thing you’d like to see change within your teaching practice, and then start to break it down into smaller chunks, backwards engineering how to get to that end goal, working backwards?
Anna Ciriani-Dean (11:31): Well, yeah, I’m just thinking because you and I, Shè, at TESOL 2025 our whole session was on, essentially building reflection into goal setting.
Brent Warner (11:42): Oh, I’m an expert on this. I forgot.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (11:46): Using reflection as a tool for goal setting. The workshop we did was really focused on goal setting. The whole process of that workshop was figuring out what reflective practice is and then focusing on how to make it actionable. And what we did with participants in that workshop was have them reflect on how they reflect best. We’ll talk about strategies in a minute here for reflection. But then the end piece there was, we had them set a goal for the conference right the next couple of days, a month from now, a year from now, and five years from now, all of that coming out of reflection. The focus was using reflection to figure out areas of professional development they want to pursue and target, right? So, so I think that’s exactly what you were saying, Shè. Just unbeknownst to you, we’d already talked about this. We talked about SMART goals. I mean, who’s not going to talk about SMART goals for everything but breaking it down, making it time bound, making it relevant was really that’s the way that I think works best, at least that’s how we presented it to people. Different people work differently. So they might decide that in their reflective practice, they want to structure their reflection so that they answer the same three questions each time: what went well, what wasn’t so great, and what do I want to change next time, or maybe add on to that, what is it that I want to pursue to become a stronger teacher in this area? Right? So I think the questions you lay out for yourself, you can create your own rubric. Each teacher is going to want to ask themselves different questions. So it really is about shaping the questions that you ask yourself in your own reflection and figuring out what system works best for you.
Brent Warner (13:28): Yeah, and I’d also say, like, we’ve all got long careers ahead of us, so it’s not that you have to get it right the first time right. It’s a iterative process. And you start saying, “Hey, this part worked for me. I didn’t really, you know, vibe with these questions or these ideas. I’m going to ditch them, but I’m going to turn into my own thing here.” And so that ability to say, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s just about taking those steps to move into it. I think for so many of us as teachers, it’s like, “I gotta get it right the first time” right. It’s that perfectionism thing that comes in, or whatever. And so the ability to let go of that and say, “Let me get this part here. Let me test it out. If I don’t like it, it doesn’t mean the whole thing’s a failure. It means that this is not aligning for me. Let me try the next step or version,” especially if it’s not a huge amount of time. It’s not like I gotta spend an hour every day after my classes doing this stuff or whatever else it is, right? And you can really bring that quite down, to get yourself started.
Shè Riel (14:23): I appreciate Brent’s point that creating a reflective practice means being iterative and finding out what works best for you might take some time.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (14:33): I think one of the greatest perks of establishing a reflective teaching practice is that you’re carving out specific time to focus on your practice, on your interests and needs as a professional. Sometimes, you know, life gets in the way of you time. And while I’m not condoning reflection on your teaching as your primary form of self care, I think there’s value in spending time with yourself in that way.
Shè Riel (14:57): Absolutely. Well now that I remember that I presented at TESOL this year. My gosh, I traveled to like, five countries in two months right around TESOL time for work.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (15:07): It was no wonder you didn’t remember it. Yeah, it was just a total blur.
Shè Riel (15:10): But thankfully, I have you to remind me of things, Anna. Well, I remember this comment from one of our workshop attendees who told me that she had been teaching for nearly 50 years, and in that time, she had never thought that PD could be for her, that now she hopes to share that more positive framing with her trainee teachers.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (15:30): Yeah, I do think many teachers get stuck in that kind of thinking that it’s just another task for them to tick off, rather than having the space to see value in PD.
Shè Riel (15:42): And I think that value is especially apparent within the context of self directed PD, which is really our jam.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (15:49): Yeah, our jam. So let’s dive a little deeper into some of the guiding questions we ask teachers to get them closer to that headspace.
Shè Riel (15:57): Yeah, one of our leading questions for teachers is, how much time realistically do you have to devote to PD? That’s a really important starting place. Because, you know, I remember Anna and I, you know, during the pandemic, we launched this podcast, but you all remember everything went online. Everyone was like, “We can do this webinar that we can join everything we possibly could” in that first month of the pandemic. And we realized really quickly, like this is not sustainable, like I’m tired and I’m not even leaving my house. What’s going on? So I think being really honest with yourself, your bandwidth, looking at your life from a holistic perspective, and saying, you know, Anna, for example, has – you’ve used this example before, but you have, you know, you have a one year old. That’s really challenging. You know, your time is different than it was before you had that child, right? And not just parents, but your emotional state. Maybe you moved to a new city, maybe you had a loss in your family. All of that impacts your professional capacity. And we’re not machines, and I think we have to remind ourselves of that sometimes.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (16:57): Yeah, Shè, you hit the nail on the head. The first step in using reflection to direct our professional development, is figuring out what goals are feasible, how much time we have, but then also thinking about, how do I want to structure my own practice? And then also, what are the ways that I learn best? Right? Our audience at our TESOL workshop came up with a lot of different options for things they do, and it’s going to be different for everybody. Journaling is a huge one. It doesn’t have to be an essay every time. It can be bullet points, having a rubric where you just simply keep in check how things went during a lesson or over the course of the week. One person in our workshop was a big fan of voice memos, because it’s a quicker and easier way of saying what’s on your mind and not having to craft it into written form, which can feel very formal. But the most important thing really is trying to build a routine, whatever that looks like, thinking of your bandwidth. How often am I going to do this? How am I going to remember to do this? Calendar notifications, time boxing. This is the time I reflect each week or each day, scheduling prompts to send to ourselves with a question. What was the teacher talk time like during your lesson today, and scheduling that prompt to pop up on your phone at a certain time of day so you can take a quick moment to be like, “Oh yeah. Well, I guess this person talked a lot, and I talked a lot during that segment,” whatever it is, just to prompt yourself to do it, because we’re busy people and we need some kind of external support to help build that routine. And those are just some simple ways. But since we’re on the DIESOL podcast, I’m also curious you know, if you two have any ideas for these kinds of formats, how could we integrate tech into reflection? Does tech even have a place in reflection? We’ve been talking very woo-woo. Like, is tech part of this conversation? Yes or no? I mentioned your thoughts.
Ixchell Reyes (18:51): So again, as a pre-service teacher trainer, I have my students – you talked about emails and journals, but I like a tool called – it’s kind of an old, very simple, rudimentary website. It’s called Dear future me.org.
Brent Warner (19:06): Future Me, future me, or just…
Ixchell Reyes (19:10): Future me. I think it’s future me. Yeah, cool. And I like it because you’re reflecting, but you’re also talking to the future. You don’t need to enter anything except your email. You’ll forget about it. I have my students as they’re finishing the course, and they’re like nervous about going back to their nation and starting this journey, right? And one of the things I tell them is you’ve got to be gentle with yourself. You’ve got to be kind, because there’s going to be many challenging moments, right? And I want my teachers, anybody from my training to have longevity. We need good teachers that don’t quit after three years or five years, right? We already have enough challenges in our ESL field. Talk to your past self, talk to your future self, and schedule that email. You’ll forget about it. Schedule it to the very last day when they graduate and on that last day, they say, “Oh, I got a funny email today. Oh, from WHO? From myself.” Inevitably, someone will schedule it for a year later. I forget to change the year, and I’ll get an email a year later. “Teacher, Miss Reyes, I got this email. I can’t believe it,” and some of them have cried. They’ve told me stories of how they thought they couldn’t teach English, but now they look back and they realize how important it is to again reflect. I think that’s a big part of my methodology. I like it to be simple. Because of that, it is overwhelming. And so futureme.org is not a calendar reminder. It’s not going to pop up. You just write it down or write two sentences. I say whatever you want to write down, a poem, a word, three adjectives, write it.
Shè Riel (20:43): I love it. Oh, it’s so feel good too. I feel warm and fuzzy right now.
Brent Warner (20:51): And future me is great for assignments too, right? Because the reflection place and like, “Hey, what do you think you’re going to get done by this time?” So it works for students, but it also works for us as teachers, to consider, what are we doing? What are we thinking about? What are we wanting to get done? I would say for me, in terms of, like, the tech, there’s a ton that can be really powerful. So I think everybody who’s listening probably did their teacher training in a time when you could get at least a video camera going, right, recording yourself teaching, like, doing the actual process. Now, you know, you’re like, “Oh my god, am I going to do this thing right? Am I going to watch myself?” But I will say that the times that I’ve done have been really high value turnaround. And so it’s like, “Do I have to watch myself? Do I have to criticize, you know, whatever it is,” but at the same time, you’re like, “Okay, just having that video, being able to sit down and separate yourself from the moment and look at that” is a huge one. So that, and it’s so easy, because you can just set up your phone in the corner at this point, you know.
Ixchell Reyes (21:45): When was the last time you recorded your lesson?
Brent Warner (21:48): It’s been a while, because it’s that intimidation factor. Yeah, you know, I have recorded myself doing presentations and gone back on the presentations, but my classroom teaching I haven’t done for a little while, and I do need to. But I will also throw in this is a non-tech one that a friend of mine, when I got early into, like the PD stuff, shared this idea with me. I just thought it was so cool. I’ve only done it once, but it was really interesting. Very low tech. Have someone come into the room to observe you, and their total observation is, this is a different kind of observation. Their job is they have a map of the room, and they have a pen, and they just trace where you walk during your teaching time in the class. And it’s like, where are you spending your time? Where are you moving? And all they do is just trace you for 30-45 minutes, whatever, and they show you the map, and then you get a sense of how you actually move, who you’re paying attention to in the class, who you’re ignoring. What the reasons for that might be. It might just be because it’s hard to walk behind one of the students, or it might be because you have a bias against that student, or whatever else is going on, right? And so I thought that was a really, you know, one of the most innovative ways to understand your process and your relationship with the physical classroom, which is just a really powerful way of understanding. And then the third one for tech I would talk about is the chat bot, reflection, talking to AI, putting in your intentions. You can set it up, of course, to say things like, “Hey, just be Socratic. Just ask questions. Don’t give me feedback on my responses directly, but play the role of a, you know, considerate listener,” right? And you can ask follow up questions, etc, but not really, like, “Oh, you’re such a brilliant person for thinking of that,” you know, like, these kind of nasty things that it does and gives you a false sense of power or confidence that isn’t necessarily deserved when you’re really just trying to figure out what’s going on, right? The goal is different. Here one video I’ve always wanted to make, and I haven’t made it, is, if you’re commuting to work, put your phone on the dashboard and have it be your chat partner that you can talk to while you’re on your road to class. And so one of the ways that you can actually reflect on that you’re putting your lesson plan from the last time and just say, “Let’s talk about how it went” right. “Let’s have the conversation. This was the lesson plan. Maybe, if it works out, you could say, these are some of what my students said about it.” Just gonna pop it in there as text, and then later, I’ll move into the voice mode on chat, GPT or whatever, and then we’ll just talk about it on the drive. So you can use your driving time to talk about that as well. So there’s lots of room for tech in there. Time saver.
Ixchell Reyes (24:26): One more in there. Ooh, it just reminded me of Marco Polo. I don’t know if you use that.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (24:30): Oh, I used that. Oh, so much. Yeah.
Ixchell Reyes (24:33): Okay, so Marco Polo. My sister and I live in different states, and I am always talking about my students to her. She’s also a teacher, but she works with preschoolers. I work with adults. It has helped me tremendously, and I didn’t think of it that I’m already – it. I’ll tell her an idea. She doesn’t respond because essentially, Marco Polo, as you record a video, somebody else is going to receive it. They can watch whenever they want. It’s like this video stream, and it gives you the time to think and listen without responding in a conversation or a video call, it doesn’t mix text messages, so you don’t have to go search for that video, so you end up becoming a better listener, and you’re not able to respond right away. You’re able to actually think. Oftentimes, I’ll run an idea by her, because sometimes preschoolers have similar behaviors to adults, and vice versa. So later on, I’ll get the answer myself, and I do that when I’m driving, you know, safely, and I’ll just be talking, and we just chat back and forth. And then I’ll listen and get an idea. So that actually is how I’ve reflected many times. I didn’t realize I was doing it. So Marco Polo is free, and it works well for that, actually.
Shè Riel (25:54): Yeah, and it’s not as intimidating as recording yourself and looking at your face. Yeah, I love that. And I love the asynchronicity of that. You know, that’s forced pause. It’s great, cool.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (26:01): I mean, maybe we’ll get to this in a second, but you were making me think of just the importance of an accountability partner or a sounding board. A sounding board. That’s how Shè and I came to be. We were accountability partners. We were working in the same Intensive English Program in New York City at the time, and we just started doing that in person. I love that you’re using tech for making that collective reflection with your sister, even though it was different learners.
Ixchell Reyes (26:30): And speaking of accountability partners, Brent and I worked together at some point. And I remember when I had this goal of going 70% paperless, I went semester by semester. Okay, let me see what I can turn into paperless and digital without compromising the content of my class. I would always say, “Guess what? I’ve done this, this, you know,” but he was my and he still is my accountability partner.
Shè Riel (26:55): And now you have a podcast, and other people are also benefiting from you guys reflecting together, essentially.
Brent Warner (27:02): I mean, that’s the big secret about a podcast, right? When you run the podcast, you’re getting the benefit of all the PD that you’re building and sharing with everybody, right?
Anna Ciriani-Dean (27:10): 100%. I just want to highlight for listeners that we’ve added the tech tools mentioned here to this episode’s show notes. And since this conversation, Shè and I have been throwing around a few more ideas for tech enabled reflection. Want to share a few.
Shè Riel (27:24): Yeah. Well, something I noticed when I was teaching in China last year was that I had this desire, especially after a tough class, to have a colleague right there to bounce ideas off of.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (27:35): This burning desire, that moment of what just happened in there and no one’s around to process with you. I totally get it.
Shè Riel (27:45): Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was lucky enough to be teaching next door to my partner, but a chat bot can serve that purpose too, not to replace colleagues, of course, but as a reflective partner, and it can be something as simple as pasting a short note from your lesson into chat, GPT, for example, or another tool, and asking, “What might I do differently next time?”
Anna Ciriani-Dean (28:08): All right, so like a critical friend, one who’s always available and doesn’t get tired of your rambling or your insecurities, right?
Shè Riel (28:18): And you know they can generate reflective questions too. So say you had a group discussion that just fell flat. You could ask that the AI give me some questions to help me reflect on why that didn’t work, and then it comes back to you with prompts like, “Well, how did my instructions shape the outcome? Were the students clear on their roles and their purpose in the activities?”
Anna Ciriani-Dean (28:40): I love that. That feels powerful, especially for new teachers who don’t yet know what to ask themselves, and maybe, you know, don’t have that person to talk to right next to them. The chat bot helps them move from “that didn’t work” to “here’s what I can learn from it.”
Shè Riel (28:57): And for more experienced teachers, you can ask the chat bot to play sort of the devil’s advocate. For example, you could say, “Push back on how I used group work in this lesson.” That kind of challenge can help to surface blind spots that we might not notice ourselves.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (29:12): But I mean, then, what about evidence? Though? Right? Because reflection isn’t just feelings, right? It’s also about looking at what actually happened in the classroom.
Shè Riel (29:23): You’re right. It isn’t just feelings. I think people maybe get hung up on that idea. It’s like, “How did that feel to me?” But it’s more than that. And so for me, that’s where transcription tools come into play. So you could record, you know, 10 minute activity, run it through an auto transcriber, and then suddenly you see the classroom talk. Maybe you notice that you’re speaking 80% of the time, or maybe you notice even that your questions are mostly closed questions as opposed to open ended.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (29:51): Yeah, I also love that that doesn’t involve like, video necessarily, right? Because you’re kind of getting that feel of the classroom and some input from the classroom without, you know, putting yourself and putting your students on the spot with a video, sure. But I mean, I think that would really be a wake up call. And for someone newer to reflection, they could start with just teacher talk versus student talk. But for someone more advanced, they might look at tone and wait time and how students take up each other’s ideas. There’s so much.
Shè Riel (30:25): Right, right? And you know, once you’ve got those transcripts or those journal entries, data analysis tools can help. So instead of combing through, say, 20 reflections that you took over the course of the semester, you can ask your generative AI to find your recurring themes, like maybe you highlighted pacing issues or student engagement, maybe dropping or sort of going off the rails during tech use.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (30:48): Yeah. So it’s not just one snapshot, but trends over time.
Shè Riel (30:53): And that’s where a tool like NotebookLM really shines. That’s one of my favorites. You can upload a whole semester’s worth of plans, reflections and even transcripts, you can ask it questions to sort of drill down on certain components or curiosities that you have, which is a really cool feature. But what I love most is what it can do at the macro level. The tool surfaces patterns with its overview functions, including both audio and video overviews, like, it generates them based on the content you feed it, and it also generates things like mind maps and FAQs.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (31:27): That sounds like a really cool bird’s eye view teachers rarely have time to create on their own. Yeah? Gives you perspective. Yeah, absolutely.
Shè Riel (31:35): Yeah. And, and just to be clear, because I know I’ve gotten, like, super excited talking about these tools. Like I started this and I was like, “Anna, I’m sick. My voice is going to be awful.” Now I’m like, sweaty and excited. Here we are again. Well, even though I’m excited, there’s a lot that you can do. None of this is replacing human reflection or mentoring, but I think it does help to extend it. You know, we can think of AI as a sort of scaffolding in the reflection process, you know, it’s asking the questions, it’s surfacing the patterns, and it’s giving us sort of a head start so that our deeper thinking can really kick in.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (32:09): So in a way, generative AI, in this case, can help us spend less time finding the reflection questions and more time answering those questions. And you’ve always got someone to reflect with.
Shè Riel (32:21): Yeah, and that’s great. I mean, of course, we do want to consider the other side of the coin too. We can’t be reckless in how we’re engaging with AI. We have to be, you know, careful, mindful of what we’re sharing, especially if we’re, you know, adding any sort of student information, demographic information. We want to make sure we’re protecting our identities and our students, and that we’re adhering to guidelines provided to us by our institutions.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (32:47): Right and just our moral compass right. So very important, and as you alluded to a moment ago, no AI can beat reflecting with a real, live human. So let’s hear more about how to facilitate shared reflection.
Shè Riel (33:02): We’ve talked a lot about individual reflection, and we’ve started to move into accountability partners. I’m just trying to think of you know, are there other collective reflection avenues we could discuss? Are you guys involved in groups like professional learning networks or communities? Have you ever participated in sort of a mentor relationship? You are mentoring teachers. Tell us a bit about that.
Brent Warner (33:24): Both of us have been deeply involved in CATESOL. Both of us were doing a lot of work around there. TESOL. When she moved to Texas. I’ve been heavily involved with CUE. So CUE, so CUE in California is the big one for ed tech related things, not language related, but ed tech. My book just came out for ISTE, so that’s a language related thing. I’m kind of tying into that community more. So, yeah, being part of those learning communities. And then back when Twitter and teacher Twitter was a great thing, highly involved with that as well. Like, really trying, you know, getting a lot of value. The micro chats, yeah, the like, all of those things were so powerful. It’s a real, true loss. I used to tell people, and people get a little bit upset with me about it, but I would say, like, “Oh, I learned more from Twitter than I did from my masters.” For so many people sharing so many great things. And it’s a true, tangible loss to not have that community anymore. We mourned it on an episode when both of us decided to step away. I remember that episode, but, you know, at the same time, there are ways to connect with people, share ideas. I spend more time on LinkedIn for my digital communities now. It’s fine to go a little bit smaller. It’s fine to kind of work with your little crew and your team. You don’t have to be out there blasting all the time. It can be, you know, individual local communities. And so I find that I have these really powerful conversations, one on one with people quite a lot, just over coffee or something like that too. So do maintain some level of connection, although, I’ll say, like in the last six months or eight months or so, and it’s been a little stressful and hard to just be like, “Okay, I need my own space,” and it’s okay to step in and out of these things too.
Ixchell Reyes (35:05): So I would say that I was so involved online with technology, PLNs online. But there came a point probably marked with what I call the death of Twitter, the very hard death of Twitter. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t create my own PLN. I remember talking to Brent about that I felt so disconnected and like I wasn’t growing. But I also realized that I did have plenty of people around me, not necessarily my colleagues where I work, but people that I’d met through other places. And I had to make the effort to say, “Hey guys, we really want to talk about AI and know your perspective.” And so I have like, about five colleagues that on and off, I’ll bounce ideas with, and that’s a PLN. And I also do include people that may not think the same as me. So I’m very much into technology and educational technology and just innovation and trying to get innovation even in a low tech environment. And so oftentimes that means I have to stay connected to people who aren’t, you know, the ed tech – what do you call them? The people who – I forgot. I’m tired today.
Brent Warner (36:12): Non-techies.
Ixchell Reyes (36:13): Non techies won so many people over because it was like, little by little. And then they started coming, coming, coming, and then, sort of, like, finding their way with something now that you can’t really escape technology, so again, staying connected with people that you might find common ground with.
Shè Riel (36:30): Yeah, I’m lost in our notes right now. We have jumped all over. Everyone’s really tired. I’m sure my eyes are getting pretty heavy. So I wonder, Anna, what are you thinking? Where are we? Where are we, and what else do we need to cover?
Anna Ciriani-Dean (36:48): Yeah. I mean…
Ixchell Reyes (36:50): Avoiding burnout.
Shè Riel (36:51): Yeah, let’s go there. Yeah. I think I should tell our listeners we’re recording this two part episode in one sitting at the end of everybody’s work day. So we are definitely not practicing what we’re about to preach. Yeah, we’re going, we’re gonna burn ourselves out like we are burning ourselves out.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (37:09): Now, this is almost two hours, right? Yeah, yep, yeah. Well, I think, like you mentioned, burnout, and we’ve also talked about being gentle with yourself. The most important thing with reflective practice, for me is speaking to ourselves as a good friend would speak to ourselves when we’re reflecting and also accepting that reflection can’t be another thing that just we have to do that makes us more stressed and anxious, right? That’s all for me on that.
Ixchell Reyes (37:41): I often tell myself something my mentor teacher told me when I was at my first student teaching experience – it was with kindergarten, so I remember her telling me, “Remember, right now it’s not your time to shine. Right now, you’re an apprentice, so take little bite sized steps and deal with that, because eventually you’re gonna shine.” As I’ve developed as a teacher, and again, this is the whole lifelong learning practice that every year you’re sort of an apprentice at something right? And celebrate that, celebrate the things that you’re about to embark as an opportunity. There are challenges. You’re not going to have the answer, but maybe you don’t need to have the answer every time, and, you know, don’t need to solve it. But look for the things that are worth honoring. If you had a hard class, if you had a hard semester, I’m having a hard year, who isn’t right? Celebrate that you got through the day. Celebrate that the student was able to give you a complete sentence, celebrate that your lunch wasn’t interrupted, celebrate that someone found what you shared was useful. Those things help to avoid burnout. It is important to honor those moments.
Shè Riel (38:54): Especially as teachers working in this field, where we do experience compassion fatigue, we have to really make sure that we’re taking care of ourselves so that we can show up for our students. So just again, that sort of taking a holistic look at what you’re doing and remembering that being a teacher is just one hat you wear. You are more than your profession.
Brent Warner (39:18): Yeah, and I would connect to that too. So going back to the idea I said earlier about like, “Hey, make sure that you – you know if you’re going on the walk, if it’s just not a teaching related thing, give yourself hobbies or interests outside of the realm,” right? So whatever it is, “Hey, I want to learn how to play guitar,” right? I am terrible at it, but it’s not about being good at it. It’s about having an interest to pursue. And this one’s super important. Can’t say it enough. Make friends with people who are not teachers and do not want to talk about teaching. Yeah, I have a couple of bar buddies, and we always have great conversations, and they’re totally unrelated things, and it does help me from not burning out. Because I’m connected to other parts of the world in other ways, and so even just ensuring that you’re doing something about that, proactively doing it. I mean, there are websites like meetup.com is still out there, or some of these ones out there where it’s like, “Hey, I’m interested in playing board games. I don’t have any friends in the area, but there’s a group that meets up. I’m gonna go meet up with those people,” right? So I get it too. It’s like, “Hey, I’m a shy person. I don’t want to jump out and do these things and meet a bunch of strangers,” but at the same time, it’s like, you recognize that, like, once you meet strangers, maybe you’re okay with becoming friends with one or two. It might take some time, don’t get me wrong, but all I’m saying is, like, what are you doing? What are you being proactive about in order to protect yourself that is, you know, like it or not, that’s our responsibilities individually. We need to figure out ways to make sure that we are connected to the fullness of the world and not just the lens that we normally look at it through, which is teaching so often.
Shè Riel (40:54): Yeah, I love them. Brent, I’m saying that as my partner is a teacher, and at first it was really exciting. I was like, “Yes, someone gets me and I can talk about assessment.” And really quickly I realized, like, “Well, we talk about teaching too much,” right? And so you do have to carve out that space. I appreciate that advice.
Brent Warner (41:12): Brent, my wife, is like, “Uh-huh, yeah, awesome.”
Anna Ciriani-Dean (41:22): We’re so grateful to Brent and Ixchell for modeling vulnerability and joy for teaching in this conversation. We hope this episode reminds you that reflection isn’t just about improvement, it’s about connection, care and honoring your growth. That’s right, listeners, we want to hear from you. What strategies do you use to reflect on your teaching? What tools or tips have helped you sustain reflection over time?
Shè Riel (41:47): And if you’re a reflection newbie, or at least, you haven’t carved out a practice for yourself yet, let’s get you started. We challenge you after your next class to record a 60-second voice memo. Just say what surprised you, what challenged you, and what you’d do differently.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (42:05): Sounds pretty easy to me. Reflection doesn’t have to be polished people. It just has to be honest, and that’s really how you’re going to get the most out of it in the future.
Shè Riel (42:14): Before we go, we want to highlight a few resources you can use to help spark inspiration and sustain your practice. First, check out our YouTube Playlist, an introduction to reflective practice. It’s a compilation of all of our episodes related to reflective teaching.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (42:30): Yes, and it features two of my personal favorite episodes. Episode 28 – a holistic approach to PD with Ramin Yazanpana and 56 – building a sustainable PD practice with Yulia Kharchenko.
Shè Riel (42:46): Those are my favorite of the bunch, too, Anna. We’ve also created a few reflection tools over the years to help you figure out how you reflect best, including an interactive quiz and a quick start guide with some targeted thematic listening you can do with our previous episodes.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (43:01): Lots of resources, lots of reflecting, all of it on our show notes. If you found this episode helpful or inspiring, please share it with a friend or colleague and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
Shè Riel (43:16): If you’re feeling generous, you can even support the show by buying us a coffee. At buymeacoffee.com/thinkaloudpod, thanks again to our friends at the DIESOL podcast for this collaboration.
Anna Ciriani-Dean (43:28): So much fun. Yeah, and here’s to many more. Thanks so much for joining us on the teacher think aloud podcast. Until next time, friends happy Teaching.
Shè Riel (43:40): And happy reflecting.
We’re teaming up for a shared episode with the Anna and Shè from the Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast to talk about the what reflective teaching is and how to start finding ways to incorporate it into your work.
This is part two of a two-part experimental mini-series, continuing where we left of and moving into conversations about practical strategies to implement Reflective Teaching.
The previous episode was done the DIESOL way, and this episode is done the Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast way. If you liked this episdoe, please check out more of Anna and Shé’s work as they do excellent work contributing to the field.
Show notes: www.DIESOL.org/126