Journal

An easy way to keep a teaching or leadership journal is to simply include it into your teaching or leadership plan.  In your teaching or leadership plan you write down what you plan to cover and how.  Then, after class or after your leadership experience, you can quickly note down 200-300 words about the lesson.
There are many ways that you can reflect on teaching and learning or leadership and we will show you a few ways to do this in our workshops […/teachers].  For now, you might find these questions useful:
⦁ What worked well, and why?
⦁ What didn’t work well, and why not?
⦁ What should I keep doing?
⦁ What changes should I make to how I teach this subject or my approaches to teaching and learning or to school leadership?

That’s it!  Easy and short.

A teaching or leadership  journal is an essential component of a teaching or leadership portfolio. Keeping a daily or weekly journal can help you to stay happy on the hard days and help you to discover things that will improve your approaches to teaching and learning or school leadership.
Here are some tips to make the most of keeping a journal:
Make regular entries
get into the habit of writing often – at least once a week, but every day is better.
Set aside a certain time of the week or day for journal writing
Give yourself time out of class and after school to write without interruptions and in private.
Anything goes
At first, you may want to use your journal like a diary and complain about how difficult your job is, that’s ok. Once that’s off your chest, you’ll probably be able to think and write about what’s going wrong and how to improve in future. You’ll probably even start noticing that you are doing many things very well.
Record your growth and look at small successes
take the time, every day, to pat yourself on the back for all the things you are doing well and all the things you are learning to do even better. Here are a few examples:
My classroom control seems to be improving. I followed the class rules and used the Time-Out corner to help calm the situation. It worked…I am becoming more confident as a teacher.

or as a leader

…the teacher in the class I’ve been observing is now doing things differently…classroom control is improving. I notice that the teacher is doing what I have been recommending now and …
I’m remembering to get each student’s attention before talking or I can see teachers I’ve been observing doing things differently and children are paying attention and learning more…
I’m smiling more.
As a leader, I am feeling more comfortable with the teachers at my school. The teachers are very supportive, and I am becoming more confident as a leader.

Try to target different aspects of your teaching or leadership to study in detail
eg. are you interested in offering equal time and attention to all students? Or do you spend more time with certain groups of students? Then why not keep track of your personal interactions each day? Make a list of the students you enjoy being around and those you don’t. What are the characteristics you like? Write down those you don’t. What are the characteristics you like or dislike? Write about it. Get it down in black and white where you can see it. Then try to assess where you can change.

Or as a leader, keep notes on the teacher observations for each person. Are you making progress with teachers who have significant issues in their classroom work? What suggestions have you provided for improvement? Are these teachers now implementing the new strategies suggested? If not, why not?

Reread your journal entries occasionally
— it’s instructive, sometimes amusing, and usually encouraging to see how your concerns have changed over time.