Come for the Energy, Stay for the Growth: Teams Is Now Reflectivity

Over a decade, we’ve supported thousands of school initiatives, impacting 100,000+ teachers. 

Through it all, we’ve seen two challenges deter individual and organizational growth. 

First, educators are often asked to absorb too many ideas from top-down initiatives. In response, they deflect these new ideas, i.e. block them out. It’s a rational decision to conserve energy for their daily work. 

Second, bold exploration of new ideas often remains siloed, not shared across organizations.

On the other hand, magic happens when educators can identify and work on topics they care about. Focus and ownership energize teachers to face hard problems. When schools help colleagues learn from each others’ work, the effect is even greater. 

But teachers, coaches, and administrators know that this is a resource-intensive logistical nightmare. Until now.

Along with a new name, Reflectivity brings an exciting expansion to what we’ve already built with our hardware and software, but addresses the new problems we see educators face.

Reflectivity brings focus and clarity to educators’ work

Reflectivity includes all of our existing software’s features for deep written and video-based reflection. However, we’ve added a simple, energizing new way for educators to bring meta-cognition to their work. This process starts with educators identifying the Topic they’re working on, and describing their State. 

Why Topic and State? Reflection is powerful and necessary for professional growth. Video reflection, especially paired with coaching, may be its most effective form. But this deeper form of reflection is too rare to lead to improvement. 

Starting with reflection in its simplest form addresses this problem. 

With a few clicks, teachers gain clarity by identifying where they want to put their energy. When priorities or feelings change, updating Topics and States takes a minute or less. With more awareness brought to the daily work, reflecting more deeply becomes less daunting.

Educators share their topics with their organization, creating the energizing effect of Reflectivity Boards. This is the biggest and most impactful experience we are introducing.

Reflectivity Boards energize and inspire your organization

Reflectivity Boards give educators energy through a real-time, dynamic display of what your colleagues are working on. 

There are two Reflectivity Boards, each with its own purpose:

• New: Topics colleagues have recently added, i.e. started working on
• Popular: Topics that – you guessed it – are worked on by the most people in the organization

Reflectivity Boards give educators a view into how topics are developing in their organization. It is a visual rendering of where colleagues are putting their energy and improving their practice. 

By viewing the Boards frequently, educators can build excitement about the topics they may want to work on, and can discover new topics to explore on their own or with colleagues. Soon, the Reflectivity Boards will help educators connect with like-minded colleagues to collaborate and explore deeper thinking on a topic. 

Tools for deeper, more purposeful reflection

After educators have added topics and begun working on them, they can continue to reflect in ways that grow deeper over time.

• Refining Topics: Maybe it’s time to leave a topic behind in place of a new one that is more relevant to an educator’s circumstances. A topic can quickly be moved to the Backlog, where it is saved and can be reactivated later with just a click. 
• Written Reflection: After a lesson, conversation, or other learning experience, educators can reflect in writing to capture their thinking about a topic.
• Video Evidence: As part of a coaching program or to deepen one’s own reflections, educators can record or upload video evidence using our existing hardware and software tools.

We see many possibilities for expanding how educators and administrators interact with these reflections. Imagine giving educators a view into the deeper work happening on a given topic across their organization? What if administrators and coaches could have a real-time understanding of the topics their teachers needed the most support on, or were most excited to work on? This, and more, is what we’re excited to explore.

Experience Reflectivity in your organization

Adopting the name Reflectivity signals a renewed commitment to our identity as a reflective tools company focused on solving education’s most pressing problems. 

We’re excited to see how educators use Reflectivity to gain increased focus, motivation, and collaboration in their work by exchanging ideas and sharing their energy. And they can do it all while continuing to engage in deep video and written reflection when the time is right.