Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!
My Educational Philosophy:  The purpose of education is to equip children with the skills to become lifelong learners.  Education is a lifelong process -- we never stop learning.  As a teacher, I should constantly be learning -- from my students, from my peers, from trainings, and from self-directed learning.  I have to be proactive in my own education.  I want my students to be proactive about their education, as well.  As their teacher, it is my job to challenge their thinking and engage their imaginations so that they want to learn.  I cannot force anyone to learn anything.  It has to be a choice on their part.  It is my job to guide and direct the students so that they will choose to accept the challenge of learning.  It is also my job to teach the students strategies which they can implement to make them more responsible and capable students.  I also want to make learning fun.  There is no reason that school should be boring.

In order to achieve this goal, it is my responsibility to provide a safe, nurturing environment that supports learning and encourages and guides my students to build them up and help them to reach their goals and aspirations.  There are many theories about how children best learn.  I do not believe that I should cling to one theory as the basis for my philosophy of education.  Instead, I believe that each theory has some merit and should be studied and considered.  That being said, I most strongly identify with the Social Constructivist Theory of Lev Vygotsky. I believe that students can achieve more with the help of someone more knowledgeable than themselves than they can on their own.  This is what Vygotsky referred to as scaffolding.  It is my job to provide my students with just enough support so that they are able to grow and learn and to achieve more than they could on their own.  I believe that finding this balance will be a learning process on my behalf.  I will have to give enough support to cause them to grow without giving too much and not cause them  to stretch their mental muscles.  In order to achieve this, I will have to figure out each student's zone of proximal development.  This will allow me to know what the student can achieve on his own and what he can achieve with help.  This is a skill that I will develop over time and with trial and error. 

Jean Piaget is another important influence on my theory of education.  Piaget's theory is closely associated with that of Vygotsky.  Like both of these men, I believe that children learn best when they are active and involved in their own education.  This means that, as the teacher, I am not merely a dispenser of knowledge for my students.  It is my job to challenge my students and force them to help build their own knowledge.  Students must be responsible for their own education.  I will challenge my students to engage in critical thinking and mindfulness.  I believe that Piaget's concept of disequilibrium of thought is particularly enlightening.  Disequilibrium is the idea that exposure to a new idea or concept creates a sense of imbalance in the learners which causes a mental struggle or discomfort.  This discomfort is eventually resolved when the student is able to incorporate the new information into his way of thinking.  This results in equilibrium or a new balance.  As an educator, I should cause my students to be mentally uncomfortable if I am going to challenge them and cause them to grow.  If a student is never challenged, he will never learn anything new.

Classroom management is an important issue to consider when articulating my philosophy of education.  I will carefully consider the rules and procedures that I establish within my classroom in order to create an environment that is conducive to learning.  I will also allow student input, so that my students have "buy in" with the rules and are more willing to abide by them.  My goal is to create a community of learners in which the students and I work together towards a common goal, which is growing and challenging their minds and knowledge.  I want to address the whole student, not just the academic side.

Diversity of my students is another important consideration for my philosophy of education.  No two students learn exactly the same way.  This means that I will have an entire classroom of individuals who each have specific needs.  This will be a tremendous challenge as a teacher!  If I consider Howard Gardner's list of eight learning styles when I plan lessons, I will be able to better meet the different needs of my students.  I know that I learn better when I encounter new information in multiple formats.  It makes sense that this approach will help my students as well.  I do not want to teach in the method with which I am most comfortable and neglect the other learning styles represented in my classroom.  I will utilize cooperative learning groups on a regular basis.  I will use strategies to activate the prior knowledge of my students before we begin a new topic.  I will push my students to reach the upper tiers of Bloom's Taxonomy.  These teaching strategies will help me to address the diverse needs of my students and facilitate more learning. 


Parental involvement in a child's education is an important component in a student's success.  As a classroom teacher, I will strive to involve the parents of my students and establish a means of communication with them.  This becomes more difficult at the middle level, which is where I will be teaching, but I will do my best to accomplish this goal.  I believe that technology will be an important part of this communication.

Technology integration within the classroom is another goal that I have as a classroom teacher.  Obviously, this will be limited by the resources of the school in which I teach, but I will try to challenge my students to grow and gain experience with technology.  In order to do this, I will have to first challenge myself to grow and gain experience with technology.  This will be part of my proactive approach to furthering my own education.

Because I will be teaching at the middle level, physical and emotional development is an important consideration for me as a part of my educational philosophy.  Erik Erikson stated that adolescents at this stage are going through a time of transition and change during which they are trying to figure out their identity.  This process is marked by puberty and the developmental changes that the adolescents experience.  As a teacher, I have to take these changes into consideration.  It is my goal to help to guide my students as they walk this challenging path.  I should be a constant source of strength and encouragement for them, and I should be available to them if they need to talk.  I will also seek to create assignments which will help them to be introspective, so that they can gain a greater awareness of who they are.  I agree with William Damon's belief that, by providing my students with positive feedback,encouragement, and direction, I can help them to achieve a positive identity outcome.

Curriculum is an important consideration within the classroom.  In order to teach my students, I must first decide what is worth knowing.  This question will be addressed by many interested parties, including the state and federal organizations which design the educational standards, the Board of Education for the school district in which I work, the administration for whom I work, my fellow teachers, my students, and myself.  Once we have determined what is worth knowing, experiencing, and being, I must decide what tools I will utilize to accomplish this task.  Textbooks are the obvious first choice, but they are limited in their scope.  I will search out other sources, both online and in text, to supplement my students' curriculum in order to best meet their learning needs.  The Common Core standards place a high value on utilizing primary and secondary source documents.  This will be especially important in the field of Social Studies.  The inclusion of non-fiction texts will help my students to have a deeper understanding of the topic we are studying.  The internet opens the door to so many new sources of information.  I will work with my students to equip them with the skills they need to search out new information and use it appropriately.  I will also actively seek out technologies that I can incorporate into my classroom in order to stimulate the minds of my students.

As a Social Studies teacher, I will seek to impart my love of history to my students.  The field of Social Studies encompasses so many different areas that are important to the every day lives of Americans.  Unfortunately, most students do not recognize this fact.  I want my students to appreciate the implications of the innovations and discoveries (through technologies, medicines, etc.) that impact our lives each day.  I want them to understand our government and how the laws and bills affect our daily lives.  I want them to know that the freedoms and privileges that we enjoy are not universal and come with responsibilities. I want them to appreciate geography and how it has helped to shape culture.  I want them study different cultures to broaden their minds and help them to appreciate diversity.  I will seek to challenge my students and help them to make connections between our subject matter and their lives.  This personalization will help them to become more interested in the subject and more willing to learn the material.  It will also help to mold them into responsible citizens.