One of the best parts of teaching is the cyclical nature of it, beginnings and endings. As the year comes to a close it is hard not to reflect on it: The highs and lows, successes and failures, new meetings and fond farewells. I know that for myself, it feels similar to a cycle of renewal. Don’t get me wrong, at the end of the year I am absolutely exhausted, but I am also filled with hope for the upcoming year. It is also a time to sit back and reflect on the year as a whole and see what was accomplished, and what work remains.


Typically, near the end of the year teacher evaluation is due and leaders often complete references for their staff. In this way, there is almost a forced reflection of others, but what about yourself? Self-Reflection is a critical component of success. Unfortunately for some of us, we are really good at identifying what we did wrong or could do better next time, but we aren’t as good at identifying those places where we shined. In Educator Bandwidth (Kise and Holm, 2022) they talk about the notion of Blameless Discernment. This happens when you can look at your habits, practices, etc through an objective lens and evaluate how well they are working for you (Are you spending enough time with family? Did the last lesson work for my students? Do I make enough time to exercise? Etc). The trick though, is that you do not assign guilt, feel bad about, or somehow confuse doing (or not doing!) these things with our personal identities, since that is not the point of the exercise. The point is to see what changes you can make to improve your professional practice or some other part of your life, because identifying an issue is the first step towards solving it and assigning guilt and blame is not productive. Also, chances are you would be kinder towards someone else in the situation, so why not be kind to yourself too?


Part of self-reflection involves collecting information. This year I asked my staff to complete an administrator report card for me to get some feedback. It is a practice that we often encourage in our teachers and I feel that leaders need to model those same things if they are promoting it. There is a level of vulnerability inherent in an activity like this so be prepared for the positive and negative feedback. Also keep in mind that feedback is meaningless if it doesn’t change behavior so be prepared to internalize it, and make changes going forward accordingly.


I try to hold myself to the standard that there is no excuse for continued poor leadership. Everyone has an off day or even week, but once that becomes considered a characteristic of your leadership I feel there is a problem. I often wonder if my thoughts and actions match; does what I think I am doing matches how others feel about what I am doing? While typically I dislike anonymous surveys for a variety of reasons, I feel this is one place where they might be valuable since you are asking staff to comment on your job performance, and because there is a level of hierarchy there that you can’t simply discount that an extra layer of psychological safety is important. I am not sure what feedback is coming but I know it is necessary for my professional growth but that’s part of leading with vulnerability.


It’s no coincidence that most effective processes are cyclical and that they contain a reflective and evaluative component and our own growth is no different. If we want to improve our practice, we need to ensure that this evaluative structure is a part of it. Ideally we engage in this on a regular basis throughout the year, but, at the end of the year, it is a chance to step back to view all of it as a whole. As a few parting thoughts to keep in mind when you are feeling self-reflective:



Our jobs are way too important to not to be continually getting better.