My Teaching Philosophy
If someone would have asked me one or two years ago what I wanted to do with my life, I would have said, “I have no clue, but I do know that I will never teach!” I have had that sentiment for as long as I can remember. But this year, I had to decide on a major. I looked at all the possibilities offered to me at Concord College and realized that education was the only one that suited me. I was still not sure if I wanted to pursue a career in education, but it at least gave me some classes to take. Throughout the spring semester I have been able to learn about the teaching profession and observe teachers in action. Add this to the past experiences I have had with teachers and school and I realized that teaching might not be that bad of an idea.
To be a teacher is to be a life changer. In today’s society children are not give the best role models outside of home and sometimes even the ones at home are not up to par. Children are bombarded every day with images of violence, sex, drugs, and hatred. In a lot of cases what you see is what you get. Teachers today have a very unique role in the lives of their students. Either they can sit back and watch the children do as they please, or they can do something and help the child get the proper training needed for a successful adult life. True, most teachers are not going to teach a subject in which the students need to make life altering decisions, but a good teacher will help lay the groundwork needed for that child to make such decisions in their future. There is no question to me that teachers are life changers. It happens too often that a teacher has to talk a student out of something terrible. The subject that the teacher will teach ...
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...n to better myself in this profession. Even with the PhD. I would still like to teach in public schools because I have a passion for sports and coaching. I plan on coaching at some level in the public school system. If for some reason that does not work, I would love to someday be a professor of history at a college or university.
I want to be a teacher to change the lives of children. I want to be a good role model for the students I teach. I hope that the material they get from my teaching will help them in their lives at some point in the future. The most important job in the world besides being a parent is not the president of the United States, or the president of a major cooperation, it is a teacher. Single handedly these people shape the lives of the presidents, lawyers, doctors, etc. If it were not for teachers, there would not be anyone else.
With the development of a civilized society in America during the 1700s and 1800s, the role religion played in an everyday person's life was becoming more and more diminished. To combat this, a series of religious revivals were set in motion: The Great Awakenings. These were a series of large, sweeping religious, social, and political changes that sought to use the basis of religion to revive faith in a neglected belief, bring about numerous social reforms, and use political factions to great effect upon society's mentality. Although most view the First Great Awakening as the first' and greatest' religious, social, and political influence to American society, the second Great Awakening can be considered far more influential in its religious, social, and political aspects of influence.
The Great Awakening resulted in the growing of the Baptist and Presbyterian churches. In revivalist services music played a very important role in getting people to accept Jesus. Preachers used the singing of hymns, psalms, and spirituals as a form of emotionally connecting and bonding with their congregation. The results in America were astounding, at least 50,000 souls were added to the churches of New England out of a population of amazingly only 250,000 people. The Great Awakening also affected over one hundred towns in the middles states. Biblically based schools and bible based colleges also multiplied during this time.
The Second Great Awakening started the was a religious revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States, it sparked the building and reform of the education system, women's rights and the mental health system. It was also the start of many different denominations of churches such as the, Churches of Christ, Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the Evangelical Christian.
The Second Great Awakening was extremely influential in sparking the idea of reform in the minds of people across America. Most people in America just accepted things the way they were until this time. Reforms took place due to the increase of industrial growth, increasing immigration, and new ways of communication throughout the United States. Charles Grandison Finney was one of the main reasons the Second Great Awakening was such a great success. “Much of the impulse towards reform was rooted in the revivals of the broad religious movement that swept the Untied State after 1790” (Danzer, Klor de Alva, Krieger, Wilson, and Woloch 240). Revivals during the Second Great Awakening awakened the faith of people during the 1790s with emotional preaching from Charles Finney and many other influential preachers, which later helped influence the reforms of the mid-1800s throughout America.
The Second Great Awakening was significant because reform movements were connected with religion. Most of reform movements were in fact influenced by the religious ideas expressed during the Great Awakening. Religious congregations and sermons challenged the true faith of people, and as a result different religious groups emerged in order to purify the society. With the ongoing religious revivals, different group of people also began to question the governing norms, which contradicted with religious teachings. In David Walker’s, “African American Abolitionist David Walker Castigates the United States for Its Slave System, 1829,” Walker also raised the question of African slavery, and how it did not agree with Christianity. Walker said:
The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival. It influenced the entire country to do good things in society and do what was morally correct. The Second Great Awakening influenced the North more than it did the South and on a whole encouraged democratic ideas and a better standard for the common man and woman. The Second Great Awakening made people want to repent the sins they had made and find who they were. It influenced the end of slavery, abolitionism, and the ban of alcohol, temperance.
The Great Awakening was a superior event in American history. The Great Awakening was a time of revivalism that expanded throughout the colonies of New England in the 1730’s through the 1740’s. It reduced the importance of church doctrine and put a larger significance on the individuals and their spiritual encounters. The core outcome of the Great Awakening was a revolt against controlling religious rule which transferred over into other areas of American life. The Great Awakening changed American life on how they thought about and praised the divine, it changed the way people viewed authority, the society, decision making, and it also the way they expressed themselves. Before the Great Awakening life was very strict and people’s minds were
In essence, the Great Awakening was a religious awakening. It started in the South. Tent camps were set up that revolve around high spirited meetings that would last for days. These camp meetings were highly emotional and multitudes of people were filled with the Spirit of God. These meeting, were sponsored mainly by Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterians, and met social needs as well as spiritual needs on the frontier. Since it was hard for the Baptist and Methodist to sustain local churches, they solved the problem by recruiting the non educated to spread the word of God to their neighbors. The camp meetings eventually favored "protracted meetings" in local churches.
The First Great Awakening was an extremely important religious revival that moved through the American colonies. This spiritual revival took place in the American colonies around 1730 to 1760. The First Great Awakening was able to gain a lot of momentum because of the influential preaching that taught the citizens of these colonies that the only way to salvation was by accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior. Many of the colonists believed that they lived proper and just lives by attending church and doing good deeds. It was by the strong influential preaching that took place during the Great Awakening that preachers informed these believers that their works and good deeds would not save them; only salvation through
Through my own experiences, and as enforced by others' opinions in the profession, I have found that teaching is one of the most rewarding careers. Not only are you placed in the position of instructing and guiding children and young adults through the life long learning process, but you are able to give back to the schools and communities which have supported your early education and experiences that opened you up to a bright future. In becoming an educator, I hope to someday share the knowledge and lend the helping, supportive hand that I was once given, allowing students to formulate their own perspectives of the multicultural society and world around them. Teaching is a career I have been interested in pursuing throughout high school, and as my experiences and study in the field expands, I feel that my desire to teach will grow stronger and develop more soundly.
One of the most important things to me as a teacher is that I am a leader, for 180 days out of the year students will come in my classroom and look to me to learn. I believe in leadership by example,. I must show up each morning prepared and ready to work, stay after school if necessary and do whatever it takes to get the job done. I will present a professional appearance and be a role model for my students. I will be consistent in my classroom management, discipline and keep my students on task.
Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that in my future I wanted to become a teacher. I always looked up to my teachers, especially the ones I had in elementary school. I even played 'school' with my friends and pretended I had my own classroom. I loved being in charge. During a summer, I was given the opportunity to work as an Energy Express mentor and work with a group of eight children. This was one of the most wonderful experiences I have ever been through. I was a mentor to help guide the children, and by the end of the summer I felt as if I had really accomplished something. I am planning to pursue a career in elementary education. I love children, and just knowing that as a teacher I could make a difference in someone's life means so much to me.
As we reminisce and reflect back either on our childhood or academic career, we tend to have that one teacher who was memorable to us in some way - for their sense of humor, their stellar personality, or perhaps having that charisma and charm no other teacher had to make a difficult subject and it 's concepts fun to learn. While knowledge is power, I firmly believe that it is rather the exchange and distribution of knowledge that is power. When one can educate the masses there is no doubt that together we can accomplish great things. Becoming a teacher would mean the opportunity to be able to witness the shaping and molding of the minds of the future generations and the satisfaction knowing that you have helped your students set themselves onto the right path and provide guidance towards the creation of a better tomorrow. Choosing to become a teacher will allow me not only to educate my students, but also educate myself to be a better teacher throughout my career. I believe it is a function of human nature to want to change the world for the better. In adulthood, I have learned that the improvement of the welfare of the world must begin with
Teaching is a daunting task that I do not intend to take lightly. Becoming a teacher has been a dream of mine for several years. I always knew that teaching would be the career for me, especially when I began working in the school system as a substitute secretary. I loved working in the school environment; coming in contact with children everyday made me realize how much I would enjoy teaching a classroom full of students.
When I decided to go back to school my objective was not only to increase my knowledge and receive a degree, but I decided that the only profession for me to pursue would be to earn a degree in teaching. Not because a business or computer degree would be out of my grasp, I can learn anything necessary to do a job, but because by earning a degree in teaching I would be able to fulfill a dream of mine that I had held since my own days in school. I want to be able to help children reach for the dreams in their lives. That is the reason that I have begun this program of study, to fulfill my life ambitions of becoming a teacher so that I can help inspire children to reach for their dreams that they are holding. Even though I’m starting college with this plan of being a teacher later than my colleges, I will be able to help them and my future students by sharing my life experiences that have occurred so far.