Educational Goals and Philosophies

Educational Goals and Philosophies

For the past seven years, I have had the same dream - to someday be a high school math teacher. I am finally on my way to turning that dream into a reality. Along the way, I am learning a lot of things and forming a number of opinions. One of the main areas in which I am forming new beliefs is in relation to what methods I will use in teaching my class and what aspects of what philosophies I will employ. First of all, however, I must reach the point where I have a class to teach.

How am I going to reach my goal of becoming a teacher? I believe I am taking the most important step right now by attending a good college where I am gaining further knowledge in many areas, especially math and education, as well as gaining practical experience in the public school system. At the present time, it is not my plan to attend graduate school. Since I took some extra time to earn an Associate of Arts in Bible, I will have already been in college for five years when I graduate, and I am eager to get out there and start teaching now. Math teachers are in short supply right now, and if I am able to get a good teaching position with only a Bachelor of Science, I would rather do that than continue on with further schooling. I know that teachers with their Master’s Degree make more money, but I am not worried about money. If I were, I would not become a teacher. I want to teach because I love math, I love to be able to help other people, and I love young people. I realize that if I decide to teach college level math someday, I will need to go to graduate school, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it if I ever do. At the moment, it is just my desire to teach high school.

When I am teaching in a high school someday, what philosophies will be evident in my classroom? What methods will I use to reach my students? In my present education, I am beginning to think carefully and deeply about these issues. From what I have read and learned and from comparing various philosophies with each other, I have come to realize that I am a strong essentialist, and I also see many strong points in progressivism and behaviorism.

Essentialism, made popular by William Bagley in the 1930’s, is the form of education most of us know well from our schooling experiences. It has also been called the “...

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...ng that is based on behaviorist principles. Students work at their own pace to reach a certain goal. When they pass that phase, they move on to the next one; otherwise, they repeat it until they can reach the objective. Mastery learning often provides rewards or reinforcement. Programmed learning is a type of mastery learning in which students work with an interactive program on a computer. The material is broken into small portions, and the computer provides immediate feedback to the student’s answers. Students are able to work at a speed comfortable for them.

I want to be the best possible teacher I can be. I want to communicate well with my students, and I want to be able to help them both now while they are in school and provide them with tools they will use when they are finished with school. In order to be a good teacher, I will use various methods and ideas from the philosophies of essentialism, progressivism, and behaviorism. I want to be open and willing to try new things and to always keep in mind the reason I became a teacher – to help my students learn math, in whatever way I can. When all is said and done, I want my grade as a teacher to be an “A.”