Respect Before Reflection

 Grant and Zeichner discuss three important attitudes of a reflective teacher: open-mindedness, responsibility, and wholeheartedness. I agree that all three are important, but I also believe that they are deeply influenced by the teacher's own values. Even when we try to be open-minded, it is still us to decide what is worth questioning and what kind of development we value for our students in the end. For me, RESPECT should come before these three attitudes. We first need to understand students and respect their learning purposes and life goals before deciding what is “better” for them. For example, I once reflected on why many students do not want to take my AP Physics C course. After talking with them, however, I found that many of them do not plan to study engineering or physics, or they have not finished calculus yet. Should I then try to persuade them to choose engineering or take a more difficult physics course? I do not think I should. In this case, being open-minded also means questioning my own assumption about what students should want. I am still not sure how a teacher can balance respecting students' choices with helping them realize possibilities that they may not yet recognize, and I hope this course can give me more insight into this question.

I also strongly agree with the authors' idea of responsibility. Different expectations and teaching methods can have very different long-term consequences for students. Since I mostly teach Grade 11 and 12 mathematics and physics, I often meet students whose foundations are weaker than I expected. Some cannot clearly explain what a function is or the relationship between a function expression and its graph. When I ask them about their earlier learning, some tell me that these ideas were never emphasized as long as they could solve the questions. As a result, mathematics becomes much more difficult for them in later grades, and some begin to believe that they are simply “not good at math.” This has made me think more seriously about what knowledge students will need later, especially in university, instead of only asking what they need for the next test. For me, responsibility and wholeheartedness therefore mean more than teaching the required curriculum well. A good teacher should try to understand what each student wants, genuinely care about those goals, continually reflect on how to help the student reach them, and develop the ability to make a meaningful contribution along that path.