I believe that if it wasn't for communicating regularly with other educators in our school communities, we would lose the sense of connectedness and empathy between us all. Sometimes, educators feel as though they are not connecting with their students as best as possible, or maybe they notice that they are not as happy with the outcome of certain tasks or activities they had planned for their students.  This reflection piece is so necessary for all educators to engage in, even if it's as often as once or more each week. Forgiving ourselves without being too critical of our approaches is difficult to do since we most often want what is best in our teaching approaches and for students’ learning experiences.

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     Collaborative Inquiry, proposed and supported by the Ontario Ministry of Education (2010, 2014), is an approach to professional learning by encouraging educators to engage in personal, and professional research to better their practices (p.1). This practice is a provincial approach in research, and has been shown to be effective in professional learning experiences for all of those who have participated in the research (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014, p.2) . What I appreciate about this type of practice is how quickly you can learn about tricks of the trade due to the many perspectives that are involved when working together to reach a common goal. Additionally, collaborative inquiry can take place at any time during professional practice with both students and colleagues.

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   The most useful thing that I have found to help me become best at practice is to document what I have learned throughout the process of working with other educators, and what challenges I have overcome to develop a stronger pedagogical foundation for my practice (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014, p.3). Because of my understanding of my entire school community, I am better able to recognize the multiple factors that have influenced the way I instruct my students and the decisions I make to make my classroom work best for my practices. Even more importantly, I feel better about myself as a professional and as a teammate when I can share my successes and areas for improvement honesty and openly with other educators.