As you take this course, we encourage you to keep a journal that can serve as a place for you to gather your thoughts and ideas and to think through the steps necessary to make adjustments to your teaching practice. A journal can be used as a private writing space for reflection, but its function can extend beyond organizing your thoughts from unit to unit of this course on inclusive teaching.
Once completed, you will have a valuable resource at your disposal that serves as:
- a personalized reference guide with key strategies and takeaways to help improve your inclusive teaching practices
- documentation of your increased capacity for self-reflection on issues related to inclusive teaching
In this course, we will encourage you to record your responses to reflection activities in a journal. You can consider using the following tools, or others that would work best for you:
- Google Docs
- Microsoft Word
- Blogging platform (for example, Wordpress, Blogger, and others)
- Evernote or other note-taking tools
- Paper notebook and pen
When deciding which journal tool to use, consider whether you want to work online or offline, how you will organize it, and whether you’d like to keep your reflections private or share with a particular audience. All of these decisions will depend on what you feel will best contribute to your critical reflection practices. Keeping your own journal will also help provide you with guidance about what instructions to share with your students should you decide to use a similar tool in your classroom.
Happy reflecting!