Educational Philosophy
My philosophy of education begins with the establishment of its goals. I will encourage critical thinking and action in my students first and foremost. To that end, students should be provided with basic skills in reading, writing, and research, which will help them be prepared for full participation in adult life. The general curriculum will have a primary focus on reading and writing skills, since they are the bedrock of success in all academic areas. Research skills will also be heavily weighted; the ability to find reliable information on a topic opens the world to students. The academic content areas will be integrated into this framework.
Teaching would center around motivating students and putting each student’s experiences and talents to its best use. In this way, I believe that teaching is a dialectical process, and that teachers learn from students at least as much as students learn from teachers. Teachers should always connect the material to students’ lives and individualize the curriculum to the degree it is possible. The main teaching methods I rely on, therefore, are discussion, debate, guided questioning, and social learning in which students learn from each other. Direct instruction and lecturing will be used only as needed, with material that is completely foreign to all students.
Evaluation will be focused on giving each student constructive feedback which can help them improve their understanding of the material. Tests will be authentic and valid, by offering mainly short answers or essay questions, or exams that integrate oral and visual skills for those students who have different learning styles and strengths. Group projects will also help students understand the material in a different way, by incorporating teamwork and the different points of view of each student.
What Skills Make an Outstanding Teacher?
Throughout my education and experience in teaching, I have learned many helpful skills and ways of thinking about education. As a student teacher, paraprofessional, and as a substitute, I have been able to identify those skills which are the most vital for a teacher to have in order to succeed. Constant re-evaluation of one’s teaching, exhaustive planning and preparation, and collaborating with co-workers and families are the skills that an outstanding teacher must have. Without these three skills, a beginning teacher such as myself would be less likely to help his or her students achieve meaningful learning.
The skill of re-evaluation, or reflection, has been built into my teaching skills from the beginning of my education classes. At the end of each lesson plan I have designed, there is a section for the post-lesson reflection. Even when teaching a five-minute mini-lesson to my classmates during a class, I have reflected on what went well and what could be done differently. This skill has become automatic, and it has helped me immensely as a student teacher. My cooperating teacher debriefed each day and sometimes each class period with me, to help identify the good and bad points of my teaching and how to adjust for the next time. Reflecting on and adjusting my teaching methods will help me to continuously improve as an educator.
The aspect of teaching that took up most of my time as a student teacher is planning and preparation. For every hour-long lesson I taught, I spent probably three hours or more finding sources, writing lesson plans, and preparing materials. In order to differentiate my lessons for learners with different learning styles or special needs, I searched for imaginative ways to supplement the information in the textbook. Mainly, I focused on finding primary sources, images, video or audio clips, and activities that will help illustrate the topic for my students. Outstanding teachers have to be willing and able to spend that extra time finding the right materials that will help students achieve a fuller understanding of the content. Without this effort, many students will come away with a negative feeling about the content, and may not experience meaningful, long-lasting learning.
The skill of collaboration is a very important key to success in teaching. As a student teacher, paraprofessional, and as a substitute, I collaborated with other teachers, support staff such as the school librarian, special education teachers, ESL teachers, and literacy support teachers. These colleagues helped me differentiate my instruction according to the best abilities of each student. I have also found that parent contact can help student performance significantly. The contact I have had with parents has helped reinforce conversations with students regarding missing work or other suggestions about improving their grades. When grades have improved, I have made sure to contact the parents again to share the good news. Outstanding teachers make an effort to include the families of students on an ongoing basis.
In this current era of economic crisis, paired with an approaching paradigm shift regarding education, I have recognized the importance of becoming not just an adequate teacher, but an outstanding one. As teachers are increasingly held accountable for the success of their students, I feel fully prepared to take on that responsibility. Using the skills I have described above, I will have the ability to help my students both enjoy my classes and achieve success in school. Despite the fact that I have had little professional teaching experience, my development of these three skills has enabled me to begin the process of becoming an outstanding teacher.
Differentiation
The practice of designing lessons that meet the needs of students with various skill levels and learning styles has been a part of my teaching experience from the beginning. A big part of the differentiation I provide comes from finding the right materials to supplement the textbook, such as pictures, primary sources, and video or audio clips. In addition, Literacy and Special Education were the first education courses I took as a student preparing for teacher certification. As a result, I have strived to integrate literacy skills and individualization into each lesson.
For example, with my 9th grade World History class, I had a wide range of skill levels, including students with Special Education IEPs, several ELL students, and many who were receiving extra literacy support. In addition to collaborating with the SPED, ESL, and literacy support staff, I began using a new way to approach vocabulary as we learned about the Industrial Revolution. We began using a concept map in which students create a definition of the word, as well as identifying two examples of the word, two connections to other concepts, and one non-example. This approach improved all of the students’ understanding of the topic, since they were spending the time to really think about the vocabulary words and what they meant.
Another way I have addressed students’ various skills and strengths is by offering an element of choice to homework assignments. For the same 9th grade group, I would assign at least three options after doing a reading or other activity in class, as a way for them to demonstrate their understanding. For example, I would let them choose between a creative writing exercise (for the Opium Wars, they could pretend they were a British soldier and write a letter home describing how China differed from England), a drawing (a political cartoon illustrating the effects of opium addiction on the Chinese people), or a vocabulary exercise (such as using five vocabulary words in a sentence). This group of students (who would often forget or fail to do other guided reading assignments) responded well to these choice assignments. Their understanding of the material increased as they got more opportunities to express it in different ways.
As a teacher, I will continue to provide ways for students of different ability levels and interests to connect with the material. I want my students to feel that the things they are learning in history class are relevant to them, and if I can get them to build a deeper understanding by drawing a picture instead of answering a reading comprehension question, then I will let them do that. Overall, I think that differentiation consists of finding the best way for each student to learn the material, while offering tools (such as the vocabulary concept map) that will help all students, not just the ones with special needs, excel in school.
