Week 3: Forming a Habit of Critical Reflection
How do you reflect—and when? This week, uncover how to build reflection into your teaching rhythm so it becomes practice, not just reaction.
Listen to the Week 2 podcast for more about why critical reflection matters, and my responses to each of the reflection prompts from last week. Later this week, I’ll also have a special bonus episode where I speak with Alden Jones, assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College, award-winning author of The Wanting Was a Wilderness and editor of a new collection of essays, Edge of the World: An Anthology of Queer Travel Writing. Our conversation touches on what means to align your teaching with your values, how classroom silence can be a form of self-protection, and why vulnerability might be one of a teacher’s greatest strengths.
In their Harvard Business Review article, Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection, James R. Bailey and Scheherazade Rehman identify three common triggers for leadership growth: surprise, frustration, and failure. These are moments when expectations break down, communication falters, or mistakes are made publicly. And while they’re often uncomfortable, they’re also rich with opportunity—if we pause to reflect.
Surprise arises when assumptions go unmet, forcing us to question the predictions we make based on past experience.
Failure stems from visible missteps, often leading to “errorful learning” and course correction.
Frustration comes when obstacles block progress—like unclear goals, miscommunication, or systemic delays. With reflection, frustrations catalyzed growth in areas like problem-solving, patience, and innovation.
These insights resonate deeply with teaching. A lesson that flops, a misread student interaction, a pattern of disengagement—these are familiar forms of emotional friction. And just as in leadership, they can become turning points when we step back to reflect.
Surprise, frustration, and failure may ignite reflection—but they are just the entry point. What matters most is what happens next. Do we move on, or do we pause? Reflection becomes transformative when we build a habit of returning to those moments—not just reacting in the moment, but circling back, questioning our assumptions, and letting the learning deepen over time.
This week, we explore how reflection actually works—not as a one-time fix, but as a recursive, social, and sustained practice. How do we enter into reflection? What keeps us coming back? And how can we make it a rhythm, not just a rescue plan? This week’s prompts invite you to explore your own reflection habits and begin cultivating a deeper, more intentional practice.
🔎 INQUIRE
Start your week with a few questions to prompt deeper thinking.
When and how does reflection show up in your teaching life? Is it planned, spontaneous, ongoing, or only occasional?
What usually prompts you to reflect—a moment of success, discomfort, feedback, or something else?
What patterns do you notice in how you reflect (internally, through writing, in conversation)? What patterns do you not often notice—because they go unexamined?
These questions can help surface the rhythms, habits, and blind spots in your current approach—and prepare you to explore them more intentionally.
✏️ APPLY
Engage in a short reflective practice to explore this week’s theme.
Create a sketch, map, or list that captures your current reflection process. When and how do you typically reflect on your teaching? Is it spontaneous or scheduled? Do you reflect only when something goes wrong—or also when things go well? Is your process mostly internal, or do you write things down?
Take a few minutes to notice patterns. What prompts you to reflect? What kinds of questions do you ask yourself? What parts of your teaching rarely get reflected on, and why? Use this exercise to bring awareness to how you currently engage with reflection—and where there may be room to shift or expand your practice.
💬 CONNECT
Take a moment to share and listen.
Pair up with a colleague and exchange your reflection maps or lists. What stands out about how each of you engages in reflection? Are there practices you admire—or habits you hadn’t considered? Talk about what prompts your reflection and what tends to get overlooked.
Then, design one small reflective routine you can try together: a weekly check-in question, a shared journal prompt, or a monthly coffee chat to talk about a recent teaching moment. What might shift if reflection became not just a personal habit, but a shared one?
🧩 SCALE
While ‘Connect’ focuses on individual collaboration, this section invites faculty developers to think about how to embed critical reflection more broadly across programs and structures.
Map how and when critical reflection shows up across your center’s programs. Are there opportunities to build it in more intentionally, or to help faculty return to it cyclically? Start small: what’s one routine you could introduce (or reinforce) to make reflection a habit rather than a one-off?
As you explore your current habits, remember: meaningful reflection isn’t just reactive - it’s a practice we can grow. The goal this week is to begin noticing your existing reflective process - to recognize when and how you pause, what prompts you to reflect, and what might be possible if you made that practice more intentional, more regular, and more shared. Like any meaningful habit, critical reflection builds over time. It starts with small moments of curiosity, and grows through connection, courage, and repetition.
If you listen to the podcast that will be published later this week, I’ll share my responses to these prompts there. For access to the weekly podcast - and to support the work of Tips in providing free faculty development opportunities - consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Next week, we’ll examine - and start to name - the assumptions we hold about the role of power in the classroom. Who has it, how it shows up, and what it means to share it thoughtfully and equitably.
