My Philosophy of Education
My philosophy of education is a complex network of my own personal beliefs and different theorists ideas. I have combined the two together in a way that I feel will best encourage my students to be not only great achievers in school, but also great human beings in life. However, I don’t anticipate sticking to the same set of theories my entire teaching career. My philosophy and teaching techniques will change, ideally for the better, as I advance as a teacher. I plan to grow and develop over time, much like my students. I hope for my relationship with my classes to be mutualistic, where we all benefit and learn from each other. Not only will I learn from my students, but also from mentorships with other teachers, principals, and my surrounding community. Time will only evoke more change in our education system; after all, it is a pendulum of reform and adjustment. Laws and government regulations may test our moral fibers and urge us to questions our own philosophies. As a teacher, it is key to recognize when our philosophies are being challenged and to always stand up for what we feel is right. We may disagree with new developments in education, but it is our job to accommodate the ‘new’ into our already established curriculum. At the end of the day, we are never done learning; as a country, a state, a community, and as individuals, we are never done learning.
I have always believed that children are born a blank slate, a sponge per se. Their actions, emotions, and development are heavily influenced by the environments in which they grow up. That being said, by the time a child reaches grade school, or even pre-school, they are already at an advantage or disadvantage to learn. It is the responsibility of every teacher to recognize his or her students’ differences and assimilate their individual learning needs. Children are going to learn best when they are engaged and aided in understanding, especially when that aid is tailored to their preferred learning preferences. I strongly believe in Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. It is important to challenge student’s beyond what they may learn on their own, while not boring them with inherent knowledge or expecting them to grasp information that is too developmentally complex. Instead of providing our students the answers, teachers should provide background knowledge and scaffolding support until a student deducts the answers themselves. Why just give students a list of all the state capitols, when you could provide them an encyclopedia or internet resources to discover the capitols themselves? This exploratory learning process can also be achieved in student-to-student settings, where group work and collaboration is encouraged.
Social interaction is key to student success, and collaborative learning is a great way for students to socialize with their peers. Our understanding of language stems from socialization, which is why it is so important to expose children to social learning scenarios early on. I myself am invested in elementary education because I believe the foundations of learning are best established when a child’s mind is most vulnerable. Teaching empathy, for example, is a passion of mine because I feel that it is crucial to a student’s social and emotional growth. Understanding why we feel a certain way and how we influence the feelings of others allows us to make appropriate, acceptable decisions and grow emotionally as individuals. Children are going to learn these traits best when their teachers model it and their classroom community is supportive of everyone’s differences. A classroom environment should embody and promote characteristics like: creativity, collaboration, variety, asking questions, constructive feedback, effective goal communication, and so on.
We cannot expect developing young students to learn in a stagnant, standardized environment. Education should prepare students for the real world, and the real world is far from stagnant and standard. What good does a doctorate in mathematics do for a person who has complex cognitive issues and low self esteem in their everyday life? I do agree that educators need to follow some set standard for teaching, but why must those standards dictate all core academic curriculum? I feel that a flexible curriculum, with loose benchmarks for student achievement by age and grade, is a much more practical and beneficial solution. However, I also feel that it is important for student’s to learn a sense of self and how they relate to the world around them; a critical aspect to human development that new policies and requirements are failing to consider. Students should be taught using real life examples and exciting, thought-provoking curriculum. They should be taught as individuals and not as a product of their institution. Teachers should foster moral development and cultural responsiveness in their students, and do so through leading by example. How all generations are taught to interact with the world around them is so pivotal to their success. We should be preparing them for far more than how to pass a myriad of standardized tests.
If standardized tests are supposed to be a measure of our intelligence, but intelligence is relative to every person, then how can accurate can this testing really be? How we learn and how our brains function are all factors of our ‘intelligence’. Personally, I am a poor test taker. I have never felt that tests are an accurate representation of my knowledge base or understanding of a topic. Not to mention, I tend to spend far too much time over thinking the content. Regardless, throughout my schooling and professional careers, I have been told by so many that I am intelligent. Jerome Bruner emphasizes the importance of the process in education, and I cannot agree more that it is not what you learn, but how you learn it. How we get there, or the process in which we reach the final product, is just as important as the product itself, if not more. The deep intrinsic structure of learning speaks louder than the extrinsic surface structure. So many students are fed information and coaxed into memorizing and repeating it in order to achieve exemplary scores on various ‘intelligence’ tests; but, what good does this do us if we don’t understand the why and how we got there? Students should be motivated to learn and embrace the process, rather than stress about the end-product.
My graduate program prompted me to start questioning everything I ever thought about teaching and how I personally want to be as a teacher. I grew up thinking that reward and punishment were successful tactics for eliciting positive behavior, like gold star charts and detention. This has since changed, as I see now how these strategies are doomed to fail. Much like the process of learning new information, a student cannot be expected to learn new behavior by means of simply hammering it into their head with praise and discipline. They require intrinsic motivation and an understanding of the hows and the whys to truly grasp and exhibit appropriate behavior. This is just one of many examples I could give to describe my new found knowledge for teaching. Not only have I collected numerous applicable teaching theories, but I have also enjoyed every minute of it. My philosophy, as it stands now, is a complex network of accommodation, collaboration, exploration, individual growth, and process. Although some realities of teaching are difficult to digest, I still find myself hopeful that I will be able to make a positive impact on my students’ lives, no matter how small. I know that this is my purpose, and I feel like most teachers are motivated by this reason alone.
Thank you.