On Noticing

I have written about noticing before, but it is something that occurs and reoccurs in thinking and reflecting on my practice. What is noticing? What do you notice? What form does your noticing take? How do you attend to that which you notice?

And here is the rest of it. Have you ever been surprised by the multiple occurrences of something which you have only just spoken about? Does this happen very often? Is this just a co-incidence do you think? Perhaps there's something else? There is certainly something about this feeling: the fact that it happens to people so often (well to me anyway). I feel that it has something to do with what it is we "set ourselves to notice".

I noticed recently that a lot passes me by and that I notice very little, in the order of things anyway. It is so easy for someone observing to have seen something that we 'in the fray' didn't see at all. This is where reflection is very important: by setting ourselves to notice specific things, be they ways in which we react, patterns of behaviour in students, the intonation of our voice; we are much more likely to be able to attend to those things we want to change or at least notice.

The idea of being more in control of my own classroom behaviour seem to me to be empowering.