Philosophy Statement
With the resonant click of a door sealing itself shut, you are suddenly aware that you no longer have the comfort and safety of all that you know and love. You have been hurled into a chaotic order of around 25 other individuals such as yourself all led by a complete stranger. You look to the door behind you, contemplating your options for escape once you break through this initial barrier, and just as your finger twitches in anticipation of such an event, you are told to come away from the door by this large, intimidating stranger, and you briefly wonder if those in charge of this establishment exclusively employ mind readers in order to ensure no one sent here falls out of line.
You are assigned a small area within the room that they say is yours; it has your name on it. The scary thing is, even your last name is there. How do these people know these things about you, and why are they acting like your friend?
Looking around, you see your new companions reacting to this environment in a variety of ways - anywhere on a spectrum between abjectly horrified to deliriously excited. You have no idea what is in store for you and as you hang your belongings, all that those traitors (your own parents!) left you here with, on the plastic chair designated to you a strong and clear voice calls out for everyone to have a seat. You watch as your compatriots scurry to their assigned spaces and quiet down, all eyes on the only figure remaining upright - the large stranger. With bated breath, you watch as this person clears their throat, and with a peaceful smile, they seal your fate.
"Hello everyone!" the clear voice rings out once more, "And welcome to kindergarten! I am excited to meet you all, I will be your teacher for this year, and my name is ..."
First impressions are everything, or so they say, and a student's first impression of their classroom, a place where they will be spending a large portion of their days, is no different.
Confidence in yourself, imagination to believe in and create the impossible, and passion to achieve the goals you have set before yourself - these are the key ingredients in my recipe for creating a classroom in which students feel welcome, productive, and engaged, and where they can come to explore the world around them through all the methods humanity has discovered. These methods include all content areas that are so common within all classrooms today with an added spice of cultural empathy, arts integration, nature discovery, and open-ended discussions. It is my greatest hope that through my teaching and the experiences that I provide for my students, I will provide the basis for these children to become positive and productive members of society who can take their passions and channel them in such ways as to create pathways to an even brighter future.
As a teacher, I want to embrace my students' individuality and give them a place where they can find themselves without fear of judgement, and learn to become happy, healthy adults with a drive to better the world and the empathy to understand how to do so in a positive and productive way.
In order to achieve this goal, there are certain foundations to my philosophy that I have set in place to build off of with each new class I encounter.
Key Ideas
01
Safe Environment
02
Fine Arts Integration
03
Multi-Cultural
04
Student Centered
First and foremost is to create a safe environment for my students. This means that physically, emotionally, and mentally, it is my goal to ensure that students are not afraid to answer questions, give their opinions or discuss their emotions with myself or their peers. In order to do this I choose to clearly state my expectations to the class in the very beginning of the year, modeling behaviors and academic exemplars for students to follow, and progressively scaffolding these so that students will be able to follow these expectations independently. Because I prioritize a safe classroom environment, I also chose to mainly use positive reinforcement with my students, focusing on what can be done, versus what should be avoided. In addition to using positive reinforcement and modeling behaviors, I also believe that part of having a safe classroom is not being afraid to take risks -either academically or otherwise. During my experience visiting various schools in Japan I realized that the students had a very high resilience and positive reaction to failure. What I noticed as a contributor to this type of grit was that the teachers did not focus on the failure, but instead focused on the recovery and changes that needed to be made to fix the problem. I have decided that I will follow the same strategy and focus not on any type of failure, but acknowledge it only briefly and focus instead on the positive actions to change the issue.
After the safe environment has been established, I also model and scaffold embracing all cultures and identities, and the idea of trying to understand someone before you judge them. It is my hope that through introducing my students to multiple cultures from an early age, and teaching them about these peoples ideals, motivations, and living styles, they can become more understanding and empathetic adults who do not discriminate against others based on the social group they identify with. I also choose to embrace all of the cultures present within my own classroom by providing literature and creating lessons that include my students' cultures or backgrounds. Through this, I hope to give my students a sense of relevancy and identification within the world they experience. Also, in coming to understand my students' cultures and backgrounds, I can learn how to best interact with them and help them to succeed in my classroom.
Along with embracing multiple cultures, I also choose to embrace diverse subject matters and learning styles beyond the core curriculum. While the core curriculum is a useful tool for guiding what students should be able to know and accomplish by the end of the year, I believe that there should freedom on the teacher's part to plan individual lessons in order to best meet the individual needs of their own classroom. Therefore, I find it extremely important to expose students to the fine arts and well as to allow students to explore and discover the natural world around them in a hands on fashion. While I do wish to focus solely on these concepts at times, I also enjoy incorporating these concepts into core curriculum in order to show my students how these more abstract forms of thought can be relate to the more concrete concepts they see everyday. It is also my hope that through allowing my students to experience as many areas of study as possible, they will be able to find the area that leaves the greatest impression on them, so that they can build on this passion as they continue to grow.
Finally, I believe that instruction should be more student centered than teacher centered so that my students can feel involved and relevant in their communities, be it the classroom, in their neighborhoods, nationally, or even in the world-wide community that our society has become. I choose to engage my students in hands on discoveries and problem based learning so that they can learn not only the direct concepts being taught, but also the practical applications of these concepts, as well as practice how to express these discoveries and solutions to others in clear and effective ways. Acting as a scaffold and a guide, it is my hope that students will be able to see how they are impacted by what is being learned, as well as its great worth to them, which will the lead to the desire to continue their education, through whatever means open to them.
There is a quote floating around the internet that originates from Mark Twain. It reads, generally, "I have never let schooling get in the way of my education." Many have taken this and twisted the words to become something along the lines of "Don't let school interfere with your education." I believe that, when you contextualize what education was like in the time that Mark Twain lived and what he would have considered 'schooling', what is actually being said is something more along the lines of this: "Don't let what others tell you to be true stop you from discovering the truth yourself.". This philosophy is one that I believe to be far more valuable to follow and to share with others, and which I strive to instill within the minds of my own students.