My Philosophy of Education
Hanover College, 1992, maybe? I would imagine that is the first time I wrote a philosophy of education paper. I would bet I could even find it on a floppy disk somewhere (not that any of the computers I have now would read one!) How can a pre-service teacher really have a philosophy of education? Or rather, how can a pre-service teacher have anything but a "philosophy"? A pie-in-the sky, here's-how-I-would-do-it dream of what education should be. No matter how much time you had spent in a classroom as a student yourself, or in formal observations, or even getting to teach a lesson or two in a field experience, teaching is a philosophical exercise until you have faced a room full of students for a whole day, knowing that a whole week is following, in a whole quarter, semester, school year. Knowing that you have the task of motivating those students to learn, managing a group of children, or tweens, or teens who could conceivably just turn on you at any point. And trust me, by minute two of that experience, all the philosophy statements you have written are forgotten.
Years after I graduated college and started teaching, my mom delivered a stack of things found in the back of a desk in a room that was once mine, but now was officially a guest room. In it was a notebook I had evidently used during a field observation of a physics class in Madison, Indiana. I really don't remember going into that classroom at all, but my oh-so-knowledgeable 20 year old self was appalled at how much class time the teacher gave the students to work on their own through their physics problems. What would my own students be doing in their physics class the next day, probably?!
So, now that I am out of the classroom, after 13 years, and getting to see education from a whole new perspective -- observing elementary, middle, and high school teachers, working with first year teachers and substitute teachers, having frequent discussions with principals and assistant superintendents -- I don't think I can possibly write another philosophy of education (though that is my assignment for this week).
Sorry.
I am always a very conscientious student, but I don't believe in philosophies of education anymore.
What I will share is my short, guiding belief statement:
I will treat every student as an intelligent human being, capable of taking in the wealth of information that is constantly available to them, but continually needing guidance to decide how to understand and make meaningful this new knowledge. I will teach students that monitoring their own learning is far more important than caring about a number or letter in red at the top of a paper. I will use every means of technology available to me in order to accomplish both of these goals, not because the technology itself advances the learning, but because this generation of students and those to come should not have to experience learning as an activity that takes place outside of their digital, connected, technology-driven lives.
Years after I graduated college and started teaching, my mom delivered a stack of things found in the back of a desk in a room that was once mine, but now was officially a guest room. In it was a notebook I had evidently used during a field observation of a physics class in Madison, Indiana. I really don't remember going into that classroom at all, but my oh-so-knowledgeable 20 year old self was appalled at how much class time the teacher gave the students to work on their own through their physics problems. What would my own students be doing in their physics class the next day, probably?!
So, now that I am out of the classroom, after 13 years, and getting to see education from a whole new perspective -- observing elementary, middle, and high school teachers, working with first year teachers and substitute teachers, having frequent discussions with principals and assistant superintendents -- I don't think I can possibly write another philosophy of education (though that is my assignment for this week).
Sorry.
I am always a very conscientious student, but I don't believe in philosophies of education anymore.
What I will share is my short, guiding belief statement:
I will treat every student as an intelligent human being, capable of taking in the wealth of information that is constantly available to them, but continually needing guidance to decide how to understand and make meaningful this new knowledge. I will teach students that monitoring their own learning is far more important than caring about a number or letter in red at the top of a paper. I will use every means of technology available to me in order to accomplish both of these goals, not because the technology itself advances the learning, but because this generation of students and those to come should not have to experience learning as an activity that takes place outside of their digital, connected, technology-driven lives.