The Circle of Self Reflection was an activity where you identified what roles you see yourself. The roles were tied to our family and professional lives. The two roles that I got rid of first was easy since they were tied to my professional life. That left with roles in my family that I saw myself. To take one role off my plate was difficult but to take two off eventually was really difficult to identify. It made you think of what role do you want to have for the present time or in the future with your family. I can see where it can vary from different seasons in our lives.
The roles that our students see themselves as would be similar to how we selected our roles. I would see the students pick friends and family over being a student because that is a small part of their lives and the values of family would trump the importance of being a student.
The lessons that I would take away from this activity would be the importance of what we teachers want the students to learn. At times, it is not the most important thing in the world since people struggle with the importance of family issues and our own personal issues. When students are struggling with their schoolwork, teachers will need to reflect and ask the students if things are fine at home first before emphasizing the importance of their homework. Then I can help them learn and grow as they struggle with balancing family life and modify the schoolwork to make them feel successful in my class.
