Teaching Philosophy
As a teacher of English language arts, my aim is to motivate students to develop critical thinking skills that will help them explore and master the content knowledge of ELA. Mastery of content, and transfer of knowledge and skills to other areas of life, can only happen if students feel confident in their abilities to learn and grow as individuals. Keeping this idea at the forefront of my teaching, I have practiced and continually work to perfect strategies that help cultivate rigorous expectations for all my students, a thriving classroom community, and caring relationships with students and their families. Outlined below are the tenets I find to be most important to my everyday practices. I have found these tenets to be connected, as they work together to help create a learning experience that empowers all students to attain personal and academic success.
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Rigorous Expectations
I truly believe that students need to be taught creativity, innovation, and 21st-century skills. If schools are neglecting to teach and create standards and curriculum around the development of these skills and mindsets, students are being deprived of key competencies. Once students have a strong base of the content knowledge, they need to be steered in a direction that takes them away from conventional thinking. Only allowing students to grapple with questions that have a singular answer is not preparing them to be problem solvers. In order to get students prepared for this type of thinking, high expectations need to be set.
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High expectations show students that you are confident in their ability to be a successful individual. When students are expected to work with persistence to attain their personal academic goals, they will begin to internalize the idea of attaining success through being accountable, instead of internalizing low expectations for themselves. However, I have learned that rigorous academic expectations are not the only form of high expectations needed to help prepare students to positively contribute to the community around them.
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Teachers need to set the tone that students need to be in charge of their own learning. This helps build advocacy skills within students. In addition to taking charge of their own learning experience, developing advocacy skills will help students apply the skills that they are learning outside of the classroom. When taught effectively, students can combine their critical thinking and advocacy skills to support the growth of the community around them.
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Classroom Community
In order to create a classroom community that will help all students positively participate in reaching their personal and academic goals, I have learned to incorporate specific habits and character strengths within the development of the classroom culture. To have a strong community, I believe it is important that these habits and character strengths must be shared among all students. Building a strong community with shared habits and character strengths leads to a safe environment for students to learn and express their ideas.
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In my classroom I prioritize every student’s individual learning style by providing them with personalized guidance they need to be successful in learning. By allowing students to learn in the way that is best for them, they feel comfortable in their learning journey. I have grown to appreciate the benefits of cooperative learning because it enables students to construct their own knowledge. Cooperative learning also helps build a strong classroom community by allowing students to work interdependently to complete a learning task. In addition to cooperative learning, I have also grown to appreciate utilizing students to lead discussions or reteach concepts to other groups of students. This creates a community that is not just centered on the teacher, but rather a community where I am the facilitator and students share in the responsibility of teaching.
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Caring Relationships
I have learned if you do not have strong relationships with your students, the chance of them being academically successful in your class is reduced. Students will not buy into the content you are trying to teach them if they do not feel a sense of belonging and joy. In addition, students will not be willing to take the risks that are necessary with rigorous academic standards. Positive relationships between teachers and students lead to nurturing a high achieving class. When strong relationships are developed, students and teachers can get the most out of learning time.
In addition to strong student relationships, I work diligently to make communication with families a priority. It is important that families are aware of their student’s goals and have a voice in their educational outcome. I find significance in understanding the values and beliefs of student's families. This allows me to compare what my classroom looks like to what my student’s family expects of their education.
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As an educator, I believe that it is crucially important to continuously push myself to grow professionally and develop my craft as much as I can. My time in the classroom has led me to see the importance in continuing learning about myself, the students I teach, the community around me, and the developments in the field.