SELF-REFLECTION 1

Self-assessment of Social and Emotional Competences

Through this semester I have been a witness of multiple experiences that have tested

my competences in the field of socio-emotional capabilities. Considering that perspective, my

intentions through this piece of work is to reflect upon those experiences to extract aspects

that can be helpful for my future practice. In order to do so, I will start by explaining the main

strengths and weaknesses that I could identify in regards to my experience. Therefore, I will

go through describing the critical aspects that I need to improve thinking at the same time in

alternative scenarios with the main objective of uplift my personal development. At this

point, I will examine the decisions and actions that I had taken so far and coherently backup

what I described in the document of self-assessment. Finally, I will consider the importance

of the current socio-political conflict that we are going through for my teacher persona.

Moreover, to reach that purpose I will connect it with the above-mentioned reflection in

sequence to find connections and relevant aspects that as teachers we should consider for the

upcoming challenges.

Most of my strengths come from abilities such as building strong relationships,

respecting other's opinions and taking responsible decisions. I could realize about that,

because I always tried to establish a dialogue with students since I consider it a responsible

decision that benefits them and myself. The dialogue was useful to demonstrate that we care

about them, most importantly was a useful tool to engage students with the class.

Nevertheless, I consider relevant to focus more on the main weaknesses that I could identify

so I can work on them throughout the next year. The first weakness that I identified was the

lack of effective conflict negotiation. Furthermore, I consider it a weakness because of two

reasons: A) I consider that even though college provides us tools to deal with challenging

situations. This considering that I still have issues when moving from theory to practice. I

think that it happens because we are just receiving the first introduction to the world of
SELF-REFLECTION 2

methodology but most importantly because I rush on my decisions. For the reason that I can

prevent possible student disruptions, however, it is not always effective.

Going deeper into my weaknesses, I consider relevant to remark some issues that I

had regulating my emotions. For the reason that sometimes I got too attached to student's

personal problems, which I do not think is wrong but still affected my performance in other

areas besides ELAB. This aspect is something that I want to work on since I am aware that

we teachers cannot solve student's problems. Nevertheless, we can help students by offering a

comfortable environment for learning, moving from negative thoughts to motivation and

participation. This is an aspect that I think most teachers fail to address, considering the

current educational situation that focuses on results only. The above-mentioned issue is

linked to another aspect that I think I should work on, this is the limits set. I noticed that I

tend to over help those students who did not like the English subject, which resulted in

negative scores in standardized tests later on. After considering the previous problem I

concluded that next year I should change the way I address student's doubts in order to clarify

their incertitude while motivating them to integrate the content into their knowledge.

After analysing my three weaknesses I concluded that I could have done something

different. For that reason, I thought of alternative ways of addressing the identified issues.

First, in regards to my first vulnerable point, I think that I fail to coordinate better with my

host teacher. From that point, I think that is suitable for the context that I was inserted to plan

proactive strategies such as Socratic circles, role plays or having a plan B in case that the

main activity does not work. In that way instead of confronting conflictive situations, we can

avoid them. Secondly, about my second weakness, I considered a valid option to suggest

students to look for a specialist from the school to guide them into solving their personal

problems. It is hard but I cannot do more about it. Lastly, about the third weakness, I think

that a good strategy to address the issue of over guidance is to take advantage of dead time.
SELF-REFLECTION 3

For the reason that sometimes students finished their activities and started to do something

else, this led to misbehaviour most of the time. Taking advantage of those valuable minutes

will allow me to clarify doubts about the content and explain again what the teacher may

have mentioned incorrectly or not so clearly.

In relation to my experience as trainee teacher, I must admit that this semester was

quite an experience in relation to the socio-political crisis that we are going through. During

these two months of conflict I have observed and read lots of experiences from teachers that

attend to demonstrations frequently. From all of them, I learned about dignity and

perseverance. Therefore, I am aware that in chile, the government has done nothing more

than impoverish the educational system by segregating hundreds of families. Nevertheless,

those teachers are still standing against an unequal system that only cares for the interest of

little entrepreneurs groups. For that reason, I think that as a trainee teacher, I want to maintain

that legacy and transmit it to future generations. Because in education there is no space for

neutrality.