Teaching Philosophy Statement
I have a dream and that dream is to one day become a teacher. I have had this since I was a small child and I would play school with all my friends and my sister. I will always remember on the last day of school asking my teacher for any old teachers manuals or worksheets that she was going to discard so that I could pretend to play school all summer. I also remember as a child that I always preferred to go to the stationary department of a store to select to play school with over buying something from the toy department. There are many reasons why I dream of being a teacher. Of course, I think it would be great to not have to work nights, weekends, holidays, snow days, or summers, but now there is a greater reason and that reason is to touch the lives of students like some of my teachers have touched my life. As a teacher you have the ability to not only affect the student's present life, but also their future and the future of our country. It will also allow me to have the best of both worlds: to have a rewarding career as well as be home with my children when they are not in school. As a teacher I plan to incorporate the essentialist and behaviorist philosophies into my future classroom.
I feel that it will be important to incorporate the essentialist educational philosophy into my classroom because I believe that it is important to instill in our youth not only academic knowledge, but also character development. I feel that if they receive these two things they will be more prepared to face the real world. It is important to teach them respect for authority and consideration for others because unfortunately in this day and time so many people lack things. It is important to teach them perseverance so that they will be willing to work hard and never stop until they have reached their goals. It is also important to teach them practicality because we live in a very unpractical world. I believe the core courses, that include: reading, writing, computing, history, geography, natural sciences, foreign languages, social studies, and government are essential to a student's future in college and beyond.
There have been many philosophies passed down through the years by many great educators. Views and opinions that have varied from individual to individual. Some ideas were widely accepted and others were not. I feel that it is important for every educator to obtain their own individual educational philosophy. An individual philosophy is good way to help an educator become grounded in what they believe and strive to make that philosophy happen in the classroom. It is a belief that should be strongly believed in and in the end have an impact on the people it is aimed for, which is the students. Over the last few years, I have developed a philosophy that I strongly believe in, because it has proven itself to me, and I want to prove it to others. The philosophy I have developed is that education is the key that opens the doors of opportunity and every student needs to understand the opportunities that await them with an education no matter who they may be.
As a sophomore, I was required to compile a genre of educational philosophies and create my own philosophy in the process. Today, as a senior I am required to “revise” that statement into one that is sophisticated and intelligent based on new information that I have received in the last two years. One instructor said to me, “Your view on educational elements may have changed,” and another said, “Randy, your philosophy on the way you view yourself as a teacher and the view of your classroom may have evolved into a more manageable, realistic perspective,” and they were both right.
Every year I have had a teacher who has always went that extra mile to make sure I thoroughly understood each and every lesson. For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a teacher; I want to be like all those teachers who helped me through the years.
Education is everywhere. This is why teachers need to be the best they can be. Since all children and adolescents are required to attend school, they need teachers that care about them and their education. In order for a teacher to be able to do this, he/she needs to understand the nature of students and knowledge. These two things go together. A teacher also needs to know what the purpose of an education is because without knowing, a teacher does not really have a purpose. In my philosophy, I will discuss why I think my curricular area is important and how I will professionally develop myself to become the best teacher I can be.
The teaching context I have chosen for my work in this class is Spanish. Spanish would
“Teaching is not a profession; it’s a passion. Without passion for your subject and a desire for your students to learn and be the best in the world, then we have failed as a teacher and failure is not an option.” –John F. Podojil. In my opinion, this quotation is very true. If you do not have the passion to teach your students what is right in the world and what makes them be the best they can be, then you are not really teaching your students or you have failed and failure is not an option. I want to not only teach my students important subject manner but be an inspiration to my students as well. I want to be the teacher that students will come back to in ten or fifteen years and say, “You have inspired me in more ways than one. Not only did you inspire me to be a better person, but you inspired me to do better academically as well.” This is when I know for sure that I have made a difference in a child’s life.
Essentialism may be the philosophy of teaching that I plan to practice, because I do believe in the back-to-basics approach of teaching. Essentials in the academic process along with the development of the students’ character is extremely important for these students when faced with the real world. It is extremely important that students learn the primary subjects. I do feel certain subjects need to be addressed each and every day to help the students achieve the necessary skills they will re...
I want to teach because I want to pass on my knowledge to a new generation. I want to teach because I want to be challenged. After all of my previous work experience, I have found that I want to work in a profession that requires me to work on the edge of my comfort zone. Teaching puts me on that edge in that I have to rely on being able to improvise my lesson plans as not all students learn the same, so I would differentiate my teaching methods to reach as many students as possible. Having that challenge of working outside my comfort zone also means that every day will be different, so I will always look forward to the next one. Growing up I have always tried to be a positive role model and I think that there is no better way for me to do that than by teaching our youth. Teaching allows me to instill critical ethics and values effecting the social development of my students. I would do this by having clear rules and appropriate punishments for breaking those rules. In addition, I would introduce my students to new cultures and traditions that will allow them to have a better understanding of others, therefore providing students with experience in socializing with those cultures that they can carry forward with them throughout their life.
I have one goal for my teaching: helping students to think and learn for themselves. This goal is as simple as it is illusive. The more experience I have as a teacher, the more I understand that there is no one-way of achieving my aim. Clearly, the proper focus of education is learning, not teaching; but I know that it is within a teacher's power-and thus it is the teacher's responsibility-to create the conditions necessary to allow students to learn. How best to create these conditions is the question. Although doing so involves performance, it is not a performing art. Although it requires the rigor and systematic methodology of scientific inquiry, it is not a science. There is no algorithm for good teaching.
Children by nature are human sponges. They absorb information on many different levels, intellectually, emotionally, physically, etc. Their lives are mapped out by experiences, what they learn, and where they learn it. School is the first opportunity for children to learn, to experience, and to see where their lives are headed. All children have the right to an education. One that focuses on their individual needs and an education that will make them learn and feel good about themselves.
Essentialism will be a part of my classroom because I will be teaching science. Science is part of the basis of essentialism that became stressed with the launching of Sputnik in 1957. The philosophy of essentialism also stresses that when leaving school students are able to apply learning from school to the real world. This is what I want to do in my classroom; I want my students to understand the material being taught to them and be able to apply it to the world around them.
It is a constant truth that technology is growing rapidly and it is opening up many opportunities for students as well as teachers. Through the use of the internet information that would take scholars months to acquire out and interpret can be found in less than a minute though a Google search and not only is the information their, but in many cases the information that you wanted is shown in bolded so it can even be found quicker.
My placement teachers and the teachers I have had throughout my life have definitely influenced my philosophy on education. Although my beliefs concerning education aren’t set in stone, I believe I have more of an Eclectic view on education. My beliefs tend to come from many of the different philosophies rather than one sole philosophy. One of the philosophical approaches I will take during my educational career is Perennialism. This is the traditional and conservative view, and its followers consider school to be an institution designed solely to develop students’ intellect. Perennialists generally follow the beliefs of Aristotle. The perennialist teacher must be a good reader and writer and encourage students to improve both of these skills. Three primary approaches to learning are stresses: didactic teaching of concepts such as, the operations and uses of mathematics; coaching of skills; and seminars in which various topics are discussed in depth through the Socratic method.
In the essentialist classroom, you will see traditional subjects such as: English, Reading, Language, Math, Science, and History as the foundations of learning. “Essentialist teachers rely on achievement tests scores to evaluate progress and teachers expect that all students will leave school not only with the basic skills, but also disciplines, practical minds that are capable of applying lessons thought in school in the real world “(Sadker and Zittleman, 2007). Overall, teachers want their students to be able to use it appropriately in the real
I have always wanted to become a teacher. From playing school with my little sisters, to volunteering a summer camps and elementary schools, there is not better feeling, to me, than to know that I have helped someone to accomplish a goal and develop better as a person. I think that there is no better way to impact the lives of other people than to become a teacher. As a teacher, not only will be able to affect the lives of these students from day t day, but I can also make an impact on the life of each child and hopefully their family as well.