The Importance Of Metacognitive Thinking

“Improvement begins with I,” Says Arnold H. Glasow. As a student leader, I am aware that I have my own personal strengths and weaknesses, and that there is always room for improvement. There will be moments in which things won’t go as planned, and that’s okay. An example of a situation like this is during the council qualification meeting, and being told that I have not met the minimum requirements based off of my application, interview points, or teacher recommendations.

The first step I would take immediately is to ask my interviewers, “what caused me to not reach the minimum requirements?” Being able to have the courage to ask where you went wrong shows that you are a person with self-initiative who cares about their self-improvement,

Being self-aware of one’s self is important because it shows that you are able to identify what needs to be improved on, and being able to action. How I would be able to do is with the help of metacognitive thinking. Metacognitive thinking is the process of being aware of one’s thought process, and being able to understand it. Some metacognitive strategies are to reflect on your thoughts and actions, self-evaluate it, and plan what to do next. For example, if one of the criteria I was lacking in was being able to communicate properly with people, the first thing I would ask myself is, “what did I do this school year? What negative and positive things did I do that affected my points on my teacher evaluations?” Being able to identify is the first step in improving, because now, at least you are able to work from that. The second thing I would ask myself would be, “why did I do this? Why did I think it was appropriate to do at this time?” Being able to understand why I did things, both good and bad will help me understand why my ideas and actions stem from, and that will allow me to change from that. This would lead me to my next step, which would be to take action. We always say that we will do this, and do that, but do we actually do so? Most of the time it’s a no, because we say things that we don’t mean and just for show. Although, if it’s something that you really want, you would go for it. My goal would be to improve from the previous year, and work my way up so that I will be able to qualify for next year’s election. I would keep track of myself on the daily, by maybe logging down everyday what I did good/bad in terms of communication, for example. Doing so will help me physically visualize if I am doing better, or if I need to step my game up. After all, I can’t improve if I don’t start somewhere, and today is that