Semester Reflection Guidelines, Criteria & Rubric to Assess
NOTE: For events such as Teaching Fellow seminars, service projects, trips, or Teaching Fellow events (Teacher Cadet Day, Recruitment Day, Regional Screening, Open House, etc.) the reflection is due the following week on Friday by 5 p.m. Any reflection on a summer Teaching Fellows activities (Discovery, Junior Enrichment, Junior Conference, Senior Conference, or the Freshmen Retreat) should be submitted no later than Friday of the second week of classes. Reflections on a semester long project such as tutoring should be submitted by email attachment no later than mid-November or mid-April at 5 p.m. Please check your Teaching Fellow calendar for the exact date each semester.
Receipt of each reflection will be acknowledged by email. Every effort will be made to send feedback within two weeks.
Learning to become a successful teacher is a complex, career-long process. The Appalachian Teaching Fellows program extends and enriches the experiences provided in an excellent Appalachian State teacher education program. Our Fellows program focuses on four prominent themes—leadership, community, diversity, and professionalism—that are enhanced by synthesis and reflection shortly after the event. Our program experiences and activities are designed to promote the development of outstanding teachers so that when Appalachian Teaching Fellows graduate from our program they are eager to enter their own classrooms and make a significant contribution to educating students in North Carolina.
Four main themes permeate the Appalachian Teaching Fellows program: leadership, community, diversity, and professionalism. Each contributes significantly to the development of outstanding teachers and has major implications for teaching and learning. Reflection is a critical habit for teachers to develop. As you engage in experiences related to our program themes, we want you to reflect upon these experiences in a timely manner. That is, to be persistently thoughtful about your experiences and to be able to use what you learn in future plans and actions. We also encourage you to think about your experiences and the implications for teaching and learning. The four themes do not occur in isolation and often experiences in our Teaching Fellows program contribute to knowledge and skill development related to multiple themes.
Engaging in individual activities and experiences can provide valuable learning opportunities but reflecting and synthesizing experiences over time can lead to more powerful learning. The process of synthesizing and reflecting about experiences provides an opportunity to develop new insights and deepen your learning and understanding particularly as it relates to the integration of ideas. Just as other skills must be developed and nurtured; learning to be a reflective professional requires opportunities to reflect and feedback from other professionals.
Each semester, you will submit one extended written reflection about one or more Teaching Fellows’ activity that explicitly focuses on one or more of our program themes. The reflection should include more than a description of the activity and your participation. It should include thoughtful analysis and evidence that you are stretching your thinking about the content of the reflection. You can use your reflection to raise questions that you would like to pursue related to the content or to identify ideas that you are wondering about related to the content. As you write a reflection you also should consider and make explicit the implications for teaching and learning. As a teacher, it is important to proof and spell check written documents since this will be a primary means of communication with parents in your future classrooms. A review of your semester reflections across time can provide a record of the growth you experience as you move through the Teaching Fellows program and your academic program of study.
The following rubric will be used to assess your semester reflection:
| Work in Progress | Meets Criteria (S.A.V.E.) |
This reflection may not include an analysis of a Teaching Fellow activity, an explicit connection to one or more Teaching Fellows program themes (leadership, community, diversity, professionalism) or implications for teaching and learning. The document may also have typographical or grammatical errors. If your reflection is assessed as a "Work in Progress", you will need to correctly revise and resubmit within one week to receive credit for the reflection. |
Summarize: This reflection includes detailed summary of a Teaching Fellow activity. Analyze: The reflection includes an explicit connection to one or more Teaching Fellows program themes (leadership, community, diversity, professionalism). Visualize: Implications for teaching and learning are described by giving specific examples. The document is free of typographical and grammatical errors. Evaluate: Reflect changes in your thinking over time. |
Late reflections are not accepted. Please send your reflection summaries as an email attachment to Janice Koppenhaver at koppenhaverj@appstate.edu. To help keep reflections filed correctly, please use the following document names for your reflection:
- Fall: ReflectFall_LastNameFirstInitial (e.g., ReflectFall_jonesj).
- Spring: ReflectSpring_LastNameFirstInitial (e.g., ReflectSpring_jonesj).
If the number of required reflections is not submitted by the deadline, the number of reflections is doubled and added to the requirements for the following semester. If you do not complete all reflections by the following semester, you can be on probation without funds.
