Undergraduate medical teaching is not new to me. Presently I have taught over a hundred sessions of the Art and Science of Clinical Medicine, numerous other small group lessons and a multitude of individual mentorships and observerships. Logging and reflecting these sessions felt novel to me. INTAPT required us to complete six teaching sessions, feeling quite trivial to me, given my involvement with the Mississauga Academy of Medicine. Logging these sessions and reflecting was not.

Self-reflection has been an instrumental aspect to my perception of why I believe I am good teacher. After ever session with my students I spend some time informally reflecting about the successes, the challenges and the opportunities for the future. These reflections however have never been done by myself in a formalized manner. Although I feel I continue to improve as teacher, it is challenging for me to reflect on actions after the fact because I have no catalogue of my reflections in action. My reflections in action conglomerate into a fuzzy haze with no record. Although I do make changes based on surprises I experience, with some of the surprises students place on me have lasting impact, it is difficult for me to look back at patterns. Furthermore smaller modifications and ideas may become lost with time. When I do the same session again in a year in the future, I wonder to myself am I making the same mistake twice? Without formalized reflections this is impossible to answer.

Completing the teaching logs required for this course took less than three weeks. I purposefully chose a wide variety of settings and courses to reflect and log on. After completing this I was struck the power of formalization the process of reflection. In a year’s time from now I will be able to look back on my documented reflections in action and be able make alterations to ensure continuous improvement. The other striking thing about these reflections was what was missing – the voice of the learner. As such next week I will have a discussion with my group about whether they wish to join me for the rest of the year and have their reflections post alongside my own.