Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is based on my strong belief that students actively participate in their learning by constructing meaning with others in their social environment. Students may accomplish this directly through individual or shared mastery experiences, or indirectly through vicarious observation of competent role models. Consequently, I am always searching for new ways to actively engage my students in meaningful learning experiences and allow them different means to participate in cooperative learning structures which facilitate their social interaction and concept development. My teaching philosophy emanates from my observation of outstanding teachers, my education in theories of learning and teaching, and my own teaching experiences.
As a teacher, I collaborate with my students to help facilitate their meaning construction. In this age of information and technology, expertise is just a click away. It is counterproductive to student learning for teachers to jealously guard ill-conceived notions of their status as the sole source of expert knowledge. Recently, I taught a class which addressed meeting the instructional needs of English language learners with special needs. I collaborated with my students on projects that supported their pedagogical knowledge and skill development in this content area by encouraging them to seek out multiple sources of knowledge. As they worked on their projects, I consulted with student learning teams to assist them with their evaluation and synthesis of this new information. It is always foremost in my thoughts that students come to a learning experience from differing educational and cultural backgrounds. Accordingly, they have different constructions and levels of understanding of knowledge content. I address these differences by differentiating my instruction based on my assessment of my students’ individual strengths and learning needs. In my teaching, I have always found it very helpful to assess my students at the beginning and midpoint of each semester. These formative evaluations inform my teaching strategies by providing me with a critical understanding of my students’ prior knowledge and possible misconceptions. As my students begin to construct new knowledge, I scaffold their learning by providing just enough assistance so they can successfully engage in a learning activity, while still remaining appropriately challenged for academic growth. Students learn not only from explicit teaching and by engaging in knowledge constructing experiences, they also learn by observing others in their social environment. I look for occasions to present my students with observational opportunities where they can learn from competent models. Some examples of observational opportunities include inviting content area experts into our class, directly demonstrating concepts and processes for students myself, and having capable students model for their peers. One of the most successful modeling experiences that I recently designed for a class was when I asked students to become versed in one specific method of teaching English as a second language. Students spent the week researching their individual teaching methods and returned to class to demonstrate their method for their classmates in small heterogeneous groups. Students were later able to apply these modeled teaching methods with high levels of proficiency. I believe that it is important for students to be exposed to variety of models who can demonstrate proficiencies across many domains critical to student growth. This multiplicity of competent modeling experiences will afford students different ways in which to build a strong foundation of knowledge, develop precision in the execution of their skills, come to a more comprehensive understanding of their feelings, and mature in their ethical considerations and social interactions. |