Teaching Philosophy
The first aspect of education that attracted me to pursue it as my lifelong career is the ability it gives you to positively impact the lives of others. My experiences as a Sunday School teacher, a summer camp teacher as well as an afterschool program homework help instructor all taught me the importance of effective motivation for children to want to learn and grow as well as the importance of patience, giving each child the attention they deserve to serve their learning needs best.
As Rosenblatt states, English Language Arts is a “live circuit”, one which I hope to energize in my classroom. Including traditional methods, I would incorporate diverse assignments and lessons in order to accommodate the different learning preferences of each student. Through providing effective and dynamic assignments, I hope the students will engage with the text, not only creating a personal response to it, but extracting something from their experience that they can take back to their community. I want my students to be empowered by their knowledge, whether it is through reading about characters that are similar to themselves or through learning the different literacies that make them better individuals in our society. A more educated person will be more confident in their place in the world, and I want my students to leave my classroom each day radiating with pride and enlightenment.
While English classrooms can have a boring reputation for being stuck in the era of the classics, I want to show students that reading and writing does not have to be boring. I plan to make each text come to life for my students, banning rote memorization and drilling for test taking skills in my class. I am confident that I can effectively prepare my students for their exams simply by making them desire to go to their English class and letting their creativity flow.
Following through with empowering my students, instead of making their differences disappear, I would like to celebrate them in my class. Through educating students about their differences, whether it is race, gender or life experiences, I believe a healthy dialogue which can steer them away from ignorance can be helpful in the class. To ignore controversial topics is doing a disservice to our students. In her book Making the Journey, Leila Christenbury writes, “To ignore or avoid what literature often addresses- the world of ethics and moral choices- is to eviscerate the English class and make what we read and what we discuss divorced from reality” (Christenbury, 275). I hope my class has everything to do with the reality that my students live. Especially with an ever increasing diverse student population, teachers should take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to explore different cultures and societies through the innovative technological techniques we have available.
With that being said, the importance of continuously educating ourselves as educators is vital if we are to be successful educators for our students. I vow to always seek new literature, new blogs and new information regarding a new teaching technique that has been shown to work with the new generation. I will keep in contact and keep conversing with my colleagues regarding our ideas on education and how a teaching method could be improved.
I want to be the teacher that the students still remember after they have graduated college. I want them to be able to look back on what I taught them and see how they were able to use it in their high school and college careers, perhaps even their professional careers. In this I hope that I would not be the only person in my classroom to find this self-fulfillment. I would also hope that my students would discover their own self-fulfillment as well.
As Rosenblatt states, English Language Arts is a “live circuit”, one which I hope to energize in my classroom. Including traditional methods, I would incorporate diverse assignments and lessons in order to accommodate the different learning preferences of each student. Through providing effective and dynamic assignments, I hope the students will engage with the text, not only creating a personal response to it, but extracting something from their experience that they can take back to their community. I want my students to be empowered by their knowledge, whether it is through reading about characters that are similar to themselves or through learning the different literacies that make them better individuals in our society. A more educated person will be more confident in their place in the world, and I want my students to leave my classroom each day radiating with pride and enlightenment.
While English classrooms can have a boring reputation for being stuck in the era of the classics, I want to show students that reading and writing does not have to be boring. I plan to make each text come to life for my students, banning rote memorization and drilling for test taking skills in my class. I am confident that I can effectively prepare my students for their exams simply by making them desire to go to their English class and letting their creativity flow.
Following through with empowering my students, instead of making their differences disappear, I would like to celebrate them in my class. Through educating students about their differences, whether it is race, gender or life experiences, I believe a healthy dialogue which can steer them away from ignorance can be helpful in the class. To ignore controversial topics is doing a disservice to our students. In her book Making the Journey, Leila Christenbury writes, “To ignore or avoid what literature often addresses- the world of ethics and moral choices- is to eviscerate the English class and make what we read and what we discuss divorced from reality” (Christenbury, 275). I hope my class has everything to do with the reality that my students live. Especially with an ever increasing diverse student population, teachers should take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to explore different cultures and societies through the innovative technological techniques we have available.
With that being said, the importance of continuously educating ourselves as educators is vital if we are to be successful educators for our students. I vow to always seek new literature, new blogs and new information regarding a new teaching technique that has been shown to work with the new generation. I will keep in contact and keep conversing with my colleagues regarding our ideas on education and how a teaching method could be improved.
I want to be the teacher that the students still remember after they have graduated college. I want them to be able to look back on what I taught them and see how they were able to use it in their high school and college careers, perhaps even their professional careers. In this I hope that I would not be the only person in my classroom to find this self-fulfillment. I would also hope that my students would discover their own self-fulfillment as well.
