Community of Practice for Reflective Teaching
Join a community dedicated to thinking about teaching as a regular practice!
About this CoP
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This CoP's structure
Time segments below are estimates, not requirements!
10 minutes per week:
- Receive a weekly [Friday] email prompt for you to journal about, or you can elect to use our General Prompts.
- Do this whenever you have the time. Does not have to happen on Friday mornings!
5 minutes per week - optional, but this is the "community" part!:- Post an insight or primary thought from your journaling on our Fall 2026 Padlet.
- Reply to others (anywhere in the Padlet).
Twice per semester:- As you are able (not required for joining the Community), join us for an in-person gathering, where we will participate in a reflective activity and support one another's teaching journeys.
- Fall 2026 dates:
- Friday, 10/9: 9:30 - 11:00, light breakfast
- Friday, 12/11, 2:00 - 3:30, afternoon tea
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Benefits of Joining
- Engage in a semi-structured activity that helps you consider various aspects of teaching.
- Develop personal insights that can inform your teaching practices or designs.
- Identify areas of teaching where you might wish to explore further professional development.
- Receive support from others on this reflective teaching journey. Build connections & community.
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Additional Notes
- Join at any point during the semester - we welcome newcomers!
- Email prompts are for the current semester. Sign up again if you wish to continue into next semester.
- First-time joiners receive a CTE journal and pen for their journaling practices.
- Prompt emails are sent on Friday mornings; however, responses to the prompts can happen
at a time that is best for you.
- "When can you find alone time to reflect or grow as a learner? What time works best for you?" (Czyz, The Four O'Clock Faculty: A Rogue Guide to Revolutionizing Professional Development)
- We encourage you to build a regular, 15-minute dedicated time block into your calendar to help you develop this habit.
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Reflective Prompts
Weekly prompts
- ...Are sometimes brief and sometimes a bit more complex. We try to keep the ask within what can be reasonably addressed in 10 minutes of journaling.
- May come with a very short reading of a few paragraphs.
- Might address something about your current teaching, your course design, practices to encourage deeper reflection, or the broader concept of - or issues in - teaching.
General prompts (if you don't wish to address the weekly prompt, select from among these):- Something that went well for me this week with my classes was ...
- In a teaching context, I made a difference for someone this week when I ...
- Something I learned this week (related to the teaching context) was ...
- Something about [my teaching context] that surprised me was...
- Based on my observations this week, one thing I am thinking of doing differently (this semester or the next time I teach this class) is...
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Padlet Community
- Our Padlet will be set up so you can enter your insights under the week in question, whenever you happen to go in to add your post
- Posts are meant to be brief summary thoughts or questions, rather than full journaling entries
- Post only what you wish to share
- We encourage interaction among posters
- We support the time in our Padlet being short - interact, but don't let it take away from your other important daily activities!
- It's OK if you miss a post (or choose not to post) - jump back in when you can!