As a future educator, I have a certain philosophy with a set of concepts about teaching and learning. I wish the best for my students and want to do as much as I can to better their lives currently as well as set them up for a successful future. For these things to happen, I have this philosophy set in stone so I can dedicate myself to giving my students the best while keeping these important concepts in mind. These concepts make up my philosophy before taking Education 102.
One of these important concepts of mine is that you never stop learning. I have had very experienced teachers tell me that they were not even close to the same level of teaching as they were when they first started. This is because they constantly learn and look for ways that they can be better. People who are the best at what they do always strive to become more knowledgeable in whatever their field or passion is. Similarly, teaching is always evolving. You cannot expect to keep doing the same thing all the time, year in and year out, and get good and/or better results. In addition to that, it is almost certain that your teaching ways and habits will not be the best right away, or ever, so you must continue to grow your abilities in the classroom. This includes keeping an open mind to discover new things since this will enhance your ability to learn. This could also include admitting to being wrong and not being afraid to be wrong since mistakes are learning opportunities, which is a positive concept to model for your students in the classroom.
Another very important aspect of my philosophy is that teaching and learning go hand in hand- you must be willing to learn to teach and to learn it will certainly benefit you to teach and lead others. This concept is also very important because you cannot teach without learning, as I previously stated. To have the ability to teach well, you must be willing to learn about different classroom skills and abilities and everything that being a strong educator entails. Going along with that, the best teachers are constantly learning ways in which they can be better role models for their students to help them succeed. The same goes when talking about learning; to learn about content of any kind, teaching it to others could potentially be instrumental in your success in learning. It helps to stimulate the brain and think about perspectives and situations in a variety of ways. Also, while you teach things to other people, they will be learning things, and you will be learning things, too.
Another important concept in my philosophy of teaching is that both learning and teaching can be done enthusiastically. By teaching my students in a manner of enthusiasm, this will, by nature, help make them more enthusiastic about their learning. This could include doing fun activities either by themselves or in groups, scavenger hunts, word searches, small projects, games, and many other options to give students exciting ways to learn. It could also be helpful to give students little rhymes or catchphrases to help them remember the content in a fun way. My enthusiasm for teaching them will be felt by my students and this will make them more excited to learn. If I don’t present the content to them in an exciting way, or a way that is captivating to them, they won’t get as much out of their learning because it doesn’t interest them as much. This would be a major issue because the entire reason for students to be in school is to get their education, so if the content isn’t presented and taught to them in a captivating manner that will be suited well for them, it will make their educational experience more fun while still getting them to know what they need to know.
Another important aspect of my philosophy is that learning and teaching take a lot of thinking and planning. From a teaching perspective, to get it done properly, it’s not something that can be done on the fly or with none or little thought. It takes a lot of time to plan and think out your content, your lessons, activities, etc. If you are deeply motivated to be the best educator you can be, you want to give the students your very best in many aspects. Another one of these aspects is planning out the content to be presented to them, the delivery of this content, keeping in mind time factors, as well as student needs and interests. To meet all of these criteria, it is important to take time and careful consideration to thoroughly plan these things out. Learning is a very similar concept. It takes time and critical, deep thinking on my end as an educator. Learning as an educator can be a wide variety of things, from different tactics to use to deliver content to the students, to learning how to build relationships with students and other faculty members, to changing up your lesson plans; it could go on. There is a lot of learning to be done as an educator, as there is a wide variety of concepts to learn about and a lot to learn about each one. To do this, it takes deep thinking. I will not be the best version of myself as an educator if I don’t push myself to think deeply when learning.
One more concept that is quite significant to my teaching philosophy is that if I’m not doing (or, at the very least, trying to do) my very best work, day in and day out, regardless of what’s going on outside of the classroom (other than rare occurrences) I am not properly fulfilling my role as an educator. I place high importance on this as a future educator; if I’m not doing my very best to learn about teaching my students and giving them what they need, I am doing them a disservice. Anything other than my best is not going to be sufficient enough. My students would be getting cheated out of their education and it wouldn’t even be their fault. By putting forth my very best effort, both inside and outside of the classroom, and making no excuses to do anything other than my very best, my students will get the best out of their experiences in education.
All in all, this set of concepts is what makes up my teaching philosophy. These are the values and principles that I want to stand close by when I officially become a teacher. Through personal experience and talking with experienced teachers, this is a set of concepts that will give me a strong foundation for a teaching philosophy to follow. Not that I won’t follow other positive ideas as a teacher, but these are values about teaching and learning that I plan to closely follow.
Now, these 3 concepts are parts of my philosophy that I would add upon completion of the Education 102 class. They are as follows:
- Using things such as the games and simulations and the flipped lesson projects like we did in class to facilitate their learning and get them engaged in what they’re doing. I would be doing so in a sense where the students are learning but also engaged at the same time.
- I would remind the students, like the book “Why don’t children like school?” talks about, it isn’t about mastery but just trying to get better every day and also focusing on the process of learning and not just getting the right answers themselves.
- Finally, I want students to have the ability to move information from the working memory to the long term memory so they don’t learn something and then forget it right away. Using constant but different forms of practice will help students put learned information into their long term memory to prevent forgetting it. That way, their learning will be retained.
