Teaching Philosophy

      When looking back at the reason for going into teaching I reflect on the teachers I had throughout my educational journey. The teachers I had inspired me to become an educator and the type of educator I want to become.  I was once told, “teachers impact the type of person a student becomes in their future.” This is something I carry as I study to become an educator. This is why teaching is important to me. Because as an educator you have a responsibility to your students by helping them develop in their education as a people. I think back to those teachers that help me become the person I am now. They taught me the importance of compassion, trust, respect, responsibility, and more. Teaching is supposed to be understanding your students and being a person that they can approach in anything. The goal of teaching is to create a comfortable and active environment for your students to prosper. Such as allowing them to be able to feel they can speak their ideas and have open discussions about the ideas and lessons.

       Thinking of the many theories I learned through my time in the education program I’ve learned many different instructions. When learning instructions there are always those that stand out to you and connect with and know you will use in your classroom. I like the idea of guided instruction in the classroom. Where I believe it is important as an educator to guide students in learning while allowing an open discussion environment. This is by guiding students by motivating participation, positive attitude, and reasoning. This is by giving them the information they can use and showing them the correct way to participate in these discussions. Teaching them that their ideas matter, however, and how to respect other ideas as well. This is by creating an active thinking environment in which the students can always be thinking critically or recalling what they learn. I also think cooperative learning is important. The students learn from each other but as well guided in the discussions and activities to do with one another. Cooperative learning is important because it helps create a community in the classroom rather than solidation. Last but not least the use of different learning methods, such as hands-on, visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and reading and writing. In using these methods to best the ability so each student can be able to grasp the subjects being taught to the best of their abilities. This is by creating situations such as having body movements to create a way to learn things or having pictures and models of the ideas of the lesson. When teaching there are many different methods and theories that can be used to create a good educational environment.

       When accessing the learning students experienced it by giving tests and projects. As a future educator, I know it is important to assess student learning to understand where students need more guidance and review. I believe that informal assessments are important when it comes to teaching and understanding where students are in their understanding. I like to think students panic and get nervous when given a formal assessment and don’t truly show if they have learned the topics being taught. On the contrary, I feel like they try to memorize as much as they can. It should be about learning and not memorizing subjects. However, I understand formal assessments are important for educators to be able to be an unbiased opinion of a student's understanding and can be used as an overview of the knowledge they can get at the end of a lesson. I also think projects can be used to help understand where students are in the class and help with collaborative learning. Having students work on projects and presents shows that they have to be responsible for their learning as well. Doing this allows a teacher to know if they are understanding and allows space to further explain the subject the project was done. An example of this can be when giving them sections of a textbook to create a presentation and then as a teacher further explaining the topic of the presentation.

As said in the previous paragraphs, I believe that the classroom has to be an open environment where students can lead discussions.  For an educator, it is important to be able to use your students to reflect the type of teaching and environment you create in the classroom. This is by the way you see the students interact in the classroom through discussions and the way they show their knowledge. Therefore, this can help you as an educator to see what changes can be made to help the classroom have an active learning environment. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that teaching is always changing and the education system is as well. This can be seen as the use of technology in the classrooms. Due to this, it is important to always be studying and taking courses to see how you can change and see the new methods can improve the classroom. I know there are always ways to see how you can improve your way of teaching and then assess if it is going to work in the classroom by understanding how your students think. As I mentioned technology has a great part in our society at the moment. It has reinvented the way people interact and learn. This is by knowing that technology can help students learn as long as it is monitored and done correctly. As well, as knowing that plenty of schools hand out technological devices to students to use in the classroom. Therefore, as an educator, you have a responsibility to find out what websites can be used to correctly teach students. And how they can be used for students to grasp the subjects being taught.