Teaching Philosophy

Learning is an interactive and collaborative process. In my experience, students learn better when they are active and engaged. Thus, my first task as an instructor is to learn about my students, what interests and motivates them, what they hope to learn, and how they learn best. Students are usually motivated by a teacher that takes interest in them and their learning style.  In order to support this, I always have my students complete a getting to know you activity. In classrooms that will be highly discussion oriented, it is often a game designed to open them up to sharing controversial opinions with one another. As a result of my beliefs about engaged learners, each class I teach is unique and tailored to my students’ learning abilities and interests. I am not hesitant to use a number of different teaching styles in order to make my point. I am comfortable with interactive lectures, facilitated discussions, homework, demonstrations, small-group activities, use of computers and hands on activities, guest speakers, pop quizzes, SOL formatted tests, large-group activities, and any other method of conveying information that I think will help.

Students should be critical thinkers. Complementing this is my belief that students should be able to actually apply the material learned in class. As a result, many of my homework assignments and in-class activities deal with questioning theories and their real life experiences. For example, I allow my students to read novels that tailor to their own lifestyles and create book reports that contain SOL formatted questions and reflect the skills that are curriculum based. I often have students write journal entries applying information from class to things that have happened in their own lives. I have staged debates in order to get students thinking about both sides of controversial issues, and I often use assignments and activities that require students to deal with things outside their normal range of experiences, such as inferring on what to do if they were blind for two hours in an unfamiliar place. Students often claim to enjoy these types of activities quite a bit. They both help solidify knowledge presented to them in more traditional ways and provide an experiential component that increases their understanding.

Another way I engage critical thinking and active learning is through relying on classroom discussion to draw out key points. In doing so, I model a number of important skills. I encourage them to test their own reading comprehension by the use of interpreting the text aloud. I also allow them to speak to each other and to me about controversial topics, points of disagreement, important skill based facts that I am teaching. This is especially important when introducing a difficult comprehensive skill, where the skill requires higher order thinking. I currently teach at a school that has a low number of highly comprehensive students, I have had to learn to differentiate instruction extensively through interactive technology, videos, small group hands on activities, and identifying the skills to relate to real life situations. I feel that my student assessments demonstrate that I have done just that.

I believe that a teacher should be transparent. In other words, I want students to understand that I base everything I do in class on a academic belief, and I want them to know what those beliefs are. I want them to understand what I expect of them and what they can expect of me. I want them to know what they will learn in my classroom and how they will be assessed. Not only does this allow them to effectively evaluate how well they are doing, it also allows them to decide how well I am doing. I am always open to student feedback, and am willing to make changes in order to do my job more successfully. For example, I often conference with my students about grades, benchmarks, tests, and content knowledge.  The process helps me to evaluate whether I need to make changes for the upcoming semester. Students respond positively to this, as I make it clear to them that it is a priority of mine that they learn and understand the material. I have learned through years of interacting with students, that there is a fine line between changing to better serve students and simply being a pushover. This is an area of concern that I continually revisit in order to make sure that I am being firm and fair, yet appropriately flexible.

Lastly, I believe that an education should provide skills beyond simple understanding of classroom topics. To that end, I focus on three main “life skills” that I believe students will carry with them into their working lives. These skills are 1) fluency in reading, 2) comprehension, and 3) technology. As a result, I often have students read and comprehend novels while using the novels to explain the skills that they are required to know.  The students love this concept, because in the midst of learning the skills they have an opportunity to express themselves and re-evaluate the characters and their actions. I encourage, and sometimes require, students to present information to the class. I give students assignments requiring them to use technology, such as creating a web page, creating books, pamphlets, diagrams, and Sol formatted. Overall, I believe that these key features of my teaching philosophy contribute to active, engaged student learning.