PhilosophyAs an educator, it is important that the students understand that, although we are the authority figure in the room, we are also still actively involved in learning as well. I think that when we, as educators, present ourselves as learners as well as educators, we show the kids that there is always an opportunity to grow and learn more. I believe that presenting myself as one who is willing to learn with my students rather than just tell them what is fact and fiction, they will be more willing to actively take part in the learning process in my classroom. I have been in far too many classrooms where the instructor acts as the dictator in the classroom and dominates all of the learning process throughout. In my opinion, those teachers fail to reach the entire class. The classes that I have participated in as a student and even as a teacher where the environment was rich with student engagement were the ones where teachers allowed the students to actively participate in discussion and debate and create their own knowledge based on their study process.
The empowerment of the students is another important part of my teaching philosophy. Once I have established myself in the classroom as one who is willing to learn alongside my students, I believe that they gain a sense of power in their own learning process and learn to appreciate it more. For example, in our most recent class with Dr. Cook, she could have sat us down and lectured us and asked us to take notes about the Civil Rights movement and the role that Columbia, South Carolina played in it. Instead, we were empowered as students to get out and actively research historical sites around Columbia and create ways to teach about those sites. In the process I learned more than I ever knew about the Civil Rights movement in the first place. It wasn’t the facts being given to me that caused me to learn. Instead, it was the empowerment of myself and my group to create our own knowledge after being pointed in the right direction by our instructor and set free to learn on our own. My belief on student learning is that all students are capable of learning. It is our job to find the spark that each and every student needs to learn. One of the hardest parts of internship A, in my opinion, was all the talk about the differences between CP kids and AP kids. There seems to be an underlying message that some kids are just better at learning than others. In my opinion, some kids just have less distractions and access to resources that assist them in the learning process. I was a CP student and have been in AP classrooms now during Internship A. The one thing I leave every AP class thinking is “Why could I not have taken that class in high school?” Shipley and Buller told us in one presentation that they really do not teach their CP or AP classes any different and they set all the same expectations. That spoke to me because I believe the same thing. If we tell CP kids that they are less capable than AP kids, maybe they will start to believe it. Instead, why not challenge the CP kids to achieve at the same level as AP kids and hold ourselves accountable in doing so and following through with it? It is my job as a teacher to facilitate the learning of all of my students and push them to succeed no matter what classification they are put into. I do not want to be a teacher who prepares a powerpoint outline of the textbook and goes over it with them for ninety minutes while they copy the notes down. My philosophy involves coming into the classroom fired up about teaching and having the opportunity each and every day to teach the kids something they will take with them forever. Without that type of motivation, all we are doing is going through the motions each day and missing the opportunity to be a life-long influence in the lives of very capable students. In no way do I feel like I have everything figured out going into my teaching profession. Like I have mentioned though, I believe a strength of mine is the ability to always be willing to learn new ways to do things and improve my craft. I also have the ability to come into the classroom and keep students engages because I am good at building relationships with my students and gaining their trust in the fact that I have their success as my number one goal in my classroom. As far as improvement is concerned, I believe that we can always gain more content knowledge in order to be better prepared for student questions. Sometimes I have already made up in my mind how I intend for the students to interpret content and then when they question me, I need to be better prepared for it. I also believe that I have to be better at clearly setting expectations for my students in everything we do. That means clearly explaining how to do an activity or something as simple as clearly explaining the complete lesson for each day so that kids know what they should be doing at all times. |