Teaching Philosophy Rough Draft
All teachers have past experiences that shape their life and the way they teach. These past experience whether good or bad impact their beliefs, habits, preferences, and abilities inside the classroom. These combine into what is referred to as a teaching philosophy. Just as each person is unique, each philosophy will be different. It will become obvious that my philosophy is a combination of pragmatism, realism, and constructivism.
All teachers have past experiences that shape their life and the way they teach. These past experience whether good or bad impact their beliefs, habits, preferences, and abilities inside the classroom. These combine into what is referred to as a teaching philosophy. Just as each person is unique, each philosophy will be different. It will become obvious that my philosophy is a combination of pragmatism, realism, and constructivism.
We educate our children in order to empower them with knowledge to obtain gainful employment and make good, smart, fact based decisions. It is the teacher’s job to create an environment suitable to the learning process and facilitate learning by the students. It is therefore the students’ jobs to apply themselves to the learning process and all the resources provided to them in order to learn as much as possible. The teacher should challenge the students without overwhelming them and the students should provide feedback so the teacher may properly gauge their level of understanding.
I believe that there lies in most children a natural desire to learn and it is the teacher’s responsibility to teach in a way that grabs the students’ interest and plays upon this desire. Students however are human and as every human is different, all students will not learn identically. Subsequently, it is the teacher’s job to provide variety when teaching so that all students are supplied with a learning method they can relate to. When carrying this out, there will be some redundancy that will further aid the learning process without apparent boring repetitiveness. For example, a teacher could first lecture over the material, then provide visual aids, and finally assign a hands-on activity. Students will not only see the material three times, but they will hear, see, and do the learning. This leads into my next point that material needs to be learned instead of memorized. Students who memorize material will usually forget that material shortly after being tested on it. For classes that build upon themselves, this is dangerous to the student’s performance in the latter part of the term. I feel lecture is an important part of teaching. Lecture alone is not a sufficient teaching method, however when properly combined with visual aids and hands-on activities it can become an invaluable tool.
Perhaps it is my background in agriculture and sciences, regardless I believe in the importance of hands on learning and laboratories. However, the presence of a laboratory section does not mean the teacher should purely lecture. For classes where a laboratory section is not feasible, small in class activities or homework assignments that require performing a task can be very beneficial to the student. If access to a computer lab is available, there are many computer based activities or simulations available. Activities will not only enhance learning, but allow an avenue for students to explore.
With my interests lying in the sciences, I see great opportunities for employing technology in my classroom. Naturally, employing the internet as a resource is almost a given anymore. However there are more and more technology based learning aids being developed especially for our laboratories. Nevertheless simply providing opportunity will not ensure learning. We must hold our students accountable for themselves and their learning. In turn it is their responsibility to demand quality teaching from us their teachers.
