Reflective Teaching: Simple Questions that can Transform Your Classroom

Have you ever finished a class and realized you were teaching almost on autopilot? You know the content, the objectives were covered, you had time for the exercises — the same teaching routine and activity types repeated every class.

Many teachers reach this stage where the routine feels comfortable, yet you realize that you are no longer growing. Reflective practice — taking time to question what works, what doesn’t, and how we can improve – was the simple shift that helped me redesign my classes, reconnect with my students, and rediscover my inspiration for teaching. And I hope it can do the same for you.

When I first became a teacher, I thought a repetitive routine meant I was doing just fine. I could manage everything, hit the objectives without issue, and pace everything to finish on time — therefore I’m a good teacher. It took a while before I realized that this mentality was limiting not just my students, where I was treating every group basically the same way; but also myself. I was disconnected from my classes, and from my own joy in teaching.

Is just helping students complete the objectives to pass a course really the purpose of being a teacher?

It’s typical for teaching, as a profession, to be taken for granted — but we might take the profession for granted ourselves. Did you know that over the course of their career, the average teacher teaches over 3,000 students? That is a lot of lives to impact! And, as the saying goes, “Teaching is the one profession that makes all other professions possible.” With that in mind, is it ever really okay to be “on autopilot?”

The pressure to achieve institutional expectations, prepare coursework, and keep on top of grading can leave us too busy to find techniques to refresh our teaching. But this can lead to burnout, too. Finding support in small reflective processes before we reach that state is essential.

The good news is that reflective teaching doesn’t require complex processes or extra hours of work. Sometimes it simply begins with asking the right questions. Start with the questions and strategies below!

Make time for peer support

So, how did I refresh my approach? To start, talk with a fellow teacher. The first time I did this, it was requested by my coordinator as part of a “peer-review”, but I happened to be assigned to a good friend at the time. Our chat became such a valuable moment that we ended up repeating it every week afterwards! During our “feedback session”, we talked about one main aspect that we both had in common – we were bored! So we put our heads together and started asking each other questions and sharing ideas for simple tweaks. We created a process that I still try to imitate today: look at your class with the eyes of another, and question everything, while being open to changing anything.

Here are a few of our peer review questions for you to try. Find a colleague, sit down with a coffee, and spend a few minutes asking yourselves these questions:

1. What went well today, and why do we think it worked?
2. What didn’t work as we’d hoped, and what might be the reason?
3. When were students most engaged? What was happening?
4. What activities did we do that took students beyond the textbook? How did they respond?
5. What small changes could we try out to improve this lesson for next time?

Give it a try, and I hope you will find that this process allows you to make significant advances in engaging your classroom. Even a short conversation can uncover insights you might not notice on your own.

Try meeting again in a week or two, perhaps including other teachers, and sharing these moments of inspiration together. 

Reflect on your personal identity formation

I’ve found that sometimes the most powerful insights come from looking back at our own experiences as learners. So for the next step in your reflective teaching journey, I’d like you to join me in remembering the teachers who shaped your own educational journeys:

1. Can you remember the teacher who most positively impacted your learning experience?
2. How did you feel in their classroom? What aspects did you enjoy the most?
3. Did a teacher ever present you with a new interest or curiosity in the world?
4. Who was the teacher who first inspired you to identify your own passion?

Please feel free to share your experiences in the comments!

In my case, Mr. Williams was my 4^th grade primary school teacher, and a passionate birdwatcher. As such, he believed in wild spaces, protecting the world around us, and always considering your impact on nature. This showed every day in his classes. From history to math, he always shared anecdotes that connected to his love for the natural world, which opened our eyes to seeing the world around us through his same lens. It is because of him that I later became a Biologist. I began to wonder: How was I honoring those teachings that had supported my own identity formation?

Define your teaching identity

Remembering Mr. Williams’ impact on my own identity made me realize that the lessons we share with students are often so much more than the content we teach. And this had me open a new line of reflection. Give it a try:

1. What was it about my teacher that I still remember today?
2. How did they influence me in becoming who I am?
3. How might my students remember their time in my classroom?
4. What could I change in my classes to encourage my students to discover their own interests and passions?

Remember that many of us impact over 3,000 students during our time teaching—what influence do you leave on all of them? This is perhaps the deepest privilege of being an educator. And the privilege of being an ELT educator goes even further — we have the freedom to explore anything in our classes, as long as we are developing English language competency appropriately along the way. So why not share our inspirations? And why not open up the world to our students so that they can identify their own?

Through this process, I learned to look for more opportunities for my students to follow their own ideas and curiosities, to research things for themselves and decide how they wanted to express their findings, and to gently develop their own lines of questioning into a more autonomous space. Now it wasn’t just me who felt alive and challenged — it was my whole class.

Conclusion

With reflective teaching, you do not need to start with anything complex to achieve impactful results in your classrooms. Even five minutes after class to jot down a few thoughts, or discussing one question with a colleague, can begin to change the way you see your teaching. Every opportunity we have to question and challenge our practices is another step away from autopilot and towards becoming the intentional teacher who makes learning meaningful and enjoyable, while genuinely inspiring our students.

Teachers: Which questions will you start with to transform your own classrooms?

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Author: Sara Rehman

Sara Rehman is a National Geographic Learning Academic Consultant for Peru. Originally from the U.K., she graduated as a biologist from the University of Manchester before traveling to Peru to participate in ecological fieldwork and project coordination. After obtaining a TESOL certification, she has taught English in Peru for over 10 years in various institutions and universities, as well as specialized courses for English learners and teachers related to the Global Goals and STEAM Education. She has a passion for uniting education and sustainability and believes that through effective, integrated education in a globalized world, we can create impactful initiatives for a better future.