Philosophy of Teaching
The most important question is not “what is teaching?” but rather “what is learning?” For if learning has not occurred, neither has teaching. In my opinion, learning best occurs when a community of learners has gathered to pursue, discuss, and critically think about ideas relevant to and expressive of both the learners’ needs and their interests in a safe, engaging, and fair positive learning environment. We, as teachers, exist in order to create and maintain an environment in which students can best set, work towards, and ultimately achieve goals in order to grow as people. Each student that enters our class has their own background, their own needs, and their own desires. We cannot, as so many teachers of the past have, ignore those fundamental components of each student in favour of a broad understanding of what education should be from the teacher’s perspective. We need to use those needs and desires to the advantage of the student. A teacher should be ensuring that everyone is being fairly assisted and validly assessed on how they learn. Learning is subjective, not only should that be recognized, but it should be integrated into each piece of work and goal that students work towards. We need to create educational opportunities in our classrooms instead of trying to push ideas on students. By focusing on inquiry and project based learning, we are able to create an environment that allows students to take meaningful information out of every lesson, both connected to, and outside of, the learning objectives. No student is the same, and as such we have to treat them like the individuals that they are.
Learning is best when it is self-directed. Self-directed learning is an essential part of teaching because most of the important lessons that students will need to learn in their lives will not be administered by a teacher. Therefore, it is only sensible that teachers are providing students with the skills that they will need to learn whatever it is they want to learn, and opportunities to allow them to apply that knowledge. I believe that a guided-inquiry based model is one of the best ways to teach lasting information to students because in many instances, the process of learning is far more important than the actual content. Several educational studies have suggested that the highest order functions exist in the realm of meta-cognition. Therefore, it stands to reason that meta-cognition should be a centerpiece in the classroom. Students should be presented with problems and issues like they are in the world beyond the classroom. Give them guidance and watch them grow. Learning should be fun; it should be an enjoyable exercise of discovering and thinking critically to apply new knowledge to solve problems.
Teachers should focus on reinforcing the curiosity, creativity, and critical-thinking or their students. Teachers should not be thinking of themselves as engineers, constantly planning and calculating what needs to put into a student to achieve our goal of their knowledge, but rather like a botanist, constantly ensuring that the conditions and support are provided for students to bring out what they are capable of. To do this, teachers need to be several things. A teacher needs to be an expert in their field so that they can guide students in the right direction or suggest the right techniques to use. Teachers need to be facilitators of learning, not dictators of it, because ultimately the student is the one who needs to understand it. But most importantly, teachers need to be role-models. We need to show students with our actions that it is okay to fail, and it is okay to get lost sometimes and that for anyone to learn, everyone needs to feel safe. Teachers need to display optimism, encouragement, and respect constantly in order to foster the curiosity, creativity, and critical-thinking of our students. We are not raising the generation of tomorrow. We help them raise themselves.
Learning is best when it is self-directed. Self-directed learning is an essential part of teaching because most of the important lessons that students will need to learn in their lives will not be administered by a teacher. Therefore, it is only sensible that teachers are providing students with the skills that they will need to learn whatever it is they want to learn, and opportunities to allow them to apply that knowledge. I believe that a guided-inquiry based model is one of the best ways to teach lasting information to students because in many instances, the process of learning is far more important than the actual content. Several educational studies have suggested that the highest order functions exist in the realm of meta-cognition. Therefore, it stands to reason that meta-cognition should be a centerpiece in the classroom. Students should be presented with problems and issues like they are in the world beyond the classroom. Give them guidance and watch them grow. Learning should be fun; it should be an enjoyable exercise of discovering and thinking critically to apply new knowledge to solve problems.
Teachers should focus on reinforcing the curiosity, creativity, and critical-thinking or their students. Teachers should not be thinking of themselves as engineers, constantly planning and calculating what needs to put into a student to achieve our goal of their knowledge, but rather like a botanist, constantly ensuring that the conditions and support are provided for students to bring out what they are capable of. To do this, teachers need to be several things. A teacher needs to be an expert in their field so that they can guide students in the right direction or suggest the right techniques to use. Teachers need to be facilitators of learning, not dictators of it, because ultimately the student is the one who needs to understand it. But most importantly, teachers need to be role-models. We need to show students with our actions that it is okay to fail, and it is okay to get lost sometimes and that for anyone to learn, everyone needs to feel safe. Teachers need to display optimism, encouragement, and respect constantly in order to foster the curiosity, creativity, and critical-thinking of our students. We are not raising the generation of tomorrow. We help them raise themselves.