My teaching philosophy is many things which ensure that my students are the top priority and that my approach to teaching remains innovative and is flexible. My philosophy revolves around progressivism, reconstructionism and essentialism in the classroom. Overall, I want to make sure students feel safe at school and in the classroom, that learning will be valued and creative, and aim to create a classroom management method that revolves around mutual respect.
To me, progressivism means that I want to encourage my students to actively think and search for answers. I would like them to form their own opinions and ideas and be willing to discuss them in a group setting. This will help them to share and extend their knowledge as a group. Bringing reconstructionism in the classroom would provide the students to think deeply and critically in the classroom about world events. I would like to encourage thinking and conversations about social problems and talk about potential solutions and feelings towards the topic. Lastly, by introducing essentialism in my classroom I would like to make sure that the essential set of skills and knowledge is provided and understood by my students. I want to be able to create the necessary authority which will be respected by my students. I expect to do this by establishing rules and boundaries early on in my student-teacher relationship. I also want to make sure that my students know that if they show respect they will receive it back. This can be shown in many ways by listening, waiting, respecting space and time. By having these three approaches in mind will help to ensure that my students’ needs remain important and that my teaching provides essential knowledge but continues to be creative.
Making sure that students feel like they are in a safe environment at school is very important to me. This can mean that students feel welcomed at school, happy, not scared, and are making valuable social relationships. These things can happen inside and out of the classroom. If students do not feel safe it can impact their learning and development. I especially want my students to know that they can come and talk to me when they need and my classroom is a safe place to freely express themselves appropriately and to share their thoughts during discussions.
An important part of my philosophy is to create a classroom management method that will help me teach productively and cater to the students at the same time. I think that it is important to create a plan early on and share it with your students. I would like to create rules as to when it is important to listen and when it is time for discussion. This will help the students stay quiet while listening because they know they will get a chance in the lesson to express their own thoughts. It is also important for me to be organized as a teacher. This helps me be prepared and lets the students have a feel for a classroom routine. This can eliminate wasting time on prevented questions like “What are we doing today?” and “where do I hand this in?”. I think that this will help me a lot in the classroom to create an essential routine for me and the students.
Overall, my philosophy is to create mutual respect in the classroom and feeling of belonging in school for the students, and for me as a teacher to continue to be innovative and organized in the classroom. I want to initiate creative and critical thinking about classroom topics and global issues while making sure I am providing important information. Ultimately, the process of my student’s learning is important to me and I want to watch and learn from them to adapt my teaching to help them learn efficiently.
