My Philosophy at Work in the Classroom

1) Classroom Organization:
I think that classroom organization will probably change a lot in my classroom depending on what we are doing each day. I like to put the desks in a circle if we are having a large up discussion, in small tab groups if we are doing a lot of group work, in rows if the students are doing presentations, or up against the wall if we are doing a lot of moving around. I also see my classroom being filled with a lot of stuff. I like to have books around. I will probably have a shelf somewhere in the room with books for students to borrow or look at in free time as well as a cupboard with art supplies and maybe props for when we do skits in class.
2) Motivation:
Students are the most motivated when they are interested in what they are doing. I see myself doing a lot of free choice assignments where students get to pick what they will work on. This is especially true about writing. I will probably do a lot of assignments where students will be required to write about themselves or about what they are interested in. There will also be a few rewards. Parties are fun and a great way to celebrate the success of the class. They are also an opportunity to bring in outside community members to broaden the view points in the classroom and bring the outside world in. Field trips and movies are both educational and rewarding. They give the students the illusion of a break from school but they are actually having a learning experience. But I think the most important thing in motivating students is having fun. I want to try to make every class fun. I know that is difficult but I think it is necessary in keeping students interested.
3) Discipline:
I hate detentions. Yes, lets punish students by making them sit quietly in a room after school doing their homework and not talking. That sounds like a great plan. Making doing homework a punishment is a bad idea. Not to mention, sitting in a room after school, doing nothing, not so bad. And many kids get detentions on purpose so they don’t have to go home or because their friends have them. I hate embarrassing students. I don’t think that teachers should demean a student ever. It is cruel and heartless. It also ruins classroom environment forever. I think that students punish themselves enough when they know we expected more from them and they didn’t meet those expectations. I think that if a student really needs to be disciplined the best way to do it is by telling them the truth, that they disappointed us. And if as a teacher I feel they still need to be disciplined I think manual labor is a good way to enforce a lesson. No one really likes chopping wood, cleaning desks, sweeping, washing floors and windows or helping the kitchen staff with their dishes.
4) Assessment:
I believe assessing students learning all the time. I think that formative assessment is the best way to find out how students are doing in the classroom and adjust the lesson as needed. It is fairly easy too. As for summative assessments, I think that these should be creative projects or papers that address real world issues or problems. These help students see why they are learning the things I am teaching them because they have real world applications and not just importance in school. I don’t believe in standardized tests or doing five paragraph essays over and over again. Yes, I want my students to be able to take a test because that is often important in order to get into college or get a job. And Yes, I want my students to be able to write essays because that is one important way that we communicate our ideas about books to others. However, I don’t think that standardized testing or five paragraph essays are the only ways to assess learning. And I certainly don’t think that they always show what a student knows. There are other ways of assessing that are more effective.
5) Technology Integration:
Technology is great. I have no problem using technology in the classroom but only when it is the best way to teach something. I think that some teachers try to use technology in their classroom because they have been told that they need to. I think that there are appropriate times to use it. I think technology is all around us and it is important for students to be exposed to it because it will be important in college and in the work place. People who can use technology often succeed above people who can’t because it has become such an important part of our everyday lives. Therefore it is important for teachers to know how to use it and to find appropriate uses for it in their classrooms.
6) Learning Focus:
Learning should be about the student. It is a teacher’s job to inspire students to want to learn about themselves and the world around them. Then it is the teacher’s job to guide the students in asking questions and finding resources that give them answers to those questions. Learning should be about critical thinking skills, students’ interests and self discovery. This is what will make lifelong learners out of my students.
7) Teacher and Leadership Style:
A teacher should be a role model and a guide in the learning process. I am here to help students ask questions and get the answers. I am not here to lecture or impose my own ideas onto them. I am here to help them create their own ideas. I am not a dictator in the classroom. I am someone who wants to help them do well and learn what they want to learn. There might be some extra underlying stuff that I teach them about English without them realizing I am doing it but for the most part it is about their own learning.

Voices of Educational Pioneers

Socrates, Augustine, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Jefferson, Gallaudet, Dewey, and Piaget. I think that all students come to school with some preexisting knowledge. Therefore Socrates made sense to my philosophy. Socrates believed " the teacher's role was to draw the knowledge out of the student. He believed that knowledge could not be transmitted from a teacher to the students, but that the students had to discover the knowledge that was within them." In other words, students need to learn about themselves and the knowledge they have already obtained. Augustine built off this idea too. Augustine believed that "the teacher should take into consideration what his students already know and build on that, teaching using a dialogue format Augustine termed as 'soliloquia'; two voices talking instead of one, interaction of teacher and student seeking the truth." The truth being referenced here is one that the student believes in. Therefore it is the teachers job to illuminate the beliefs of the student, not impart their own beliefs. I think that teaching should be very student centered. Rousseau agrees. Rousseau believed that "instead of education being centered on what is taught (the subject matter), it should be centered on who is taught (the child)." Education should be about self learning. I also think that students should have a hand in deciding on what should be taught this helps motivate them to learn. In this way Pestalozzi makes sense to me. Pestalozzi believed that "learning had to be stimulated by the interests and motivation of the child, not by punishment and fear." Punishment and fear only increase a child's hatred of school. I also think that education has the ability to empower us and make us more than what we start out as. Jefferson thought the same. Jefferson believed "in the ability of higher education to bring the lower class up to a higher class. Education was the only hope to teach not only useful skills but to change attitudes, to improve morality, and to spread civilization." He also thought that education could open our eyes and make us think about what is wrong with our current way of think and how it can be improved. I also think that all children should be educated. This includes all ethnicities, religions, races, genders and abilities. Gallaudet felt this way about deaf children. Gallaudet believed "that deaf children could and should be educated." This idea though should apply to everyone. I think that there are connections to be made between my content area, English and all other aspects of life. I feel it important to show this to students so that their interest in reading and writing will be increased and because connections help us to understand more deeply. Dewey agreed that all studies should be linked. Dewey believed "students should be helped to see the relations of studies to one another and to the intellectual whole to which all belong." The second half of this statement is also important because it infers that there is a community in which the intellectual interact and that learning opens doors to that community to all people who learn. I think it is important for students to be able to interact with that community. But I think that learning can only happen when you are ready for it to happen. Piaget also stressed this. Piaget believed in the "need to individualize instruction in order to accommodate each child's readiness at different stages of development." We are all at different stages in our lives and teachers must know how to accommodate for this.

The Eight Theories: Perennialism, Essentialism, Behaviorism, Positivism, Progressivism, Reconstructionism, Humanism and Constructivism

Perennialists believe that one should teach the things that one deems to be of everlasting importance to all people everywhere. They believe that the most important topics develop a person. Since details of fact change constantly, these cannot be the most important. Therefore, one should teach principles, not facts. Since people are human, one should teach first about humans, not machines or techniques. Since people are people first, and workers second if at all, one should teach liberal topics first, not vocational topics. Reconstructionists believe that education has two roles. The first is to transmit culture. The second is to modify culture. Essentialists believe that an educated person in a given culture must have a common core of information and skills. It is the job of the schools to transmit the core of essential material as effectively as possible. Behaviorists believe that by carefully controlling the stimuli in the classroom, the teacher can control student behavior. They believe that the environment should be highly organized and the curriculum based on developed behaviorial objectives. Positivists believe that truth and knowledge is observable and measurable. All knowledge is clear and precise and all students are required to learn the same knowledge. Progressivists believe that ideas should be tested by experimentation and that learning is rooted in questions developed by the learner. It emphasizes the the process of education in the classroom. Humanists believe that humans are innately good. Humans are born free but become enslaved by institutions. Humanists believe in the students as a completely autonomous person and therefore education should be without coercion or prescription. Constructivists emphasize hands-on, activity-based teaching and learning during which students develop their own frames of thought. The idea is to give students real life, contemporary problems to tackle.

I think that as a teacher I completely don't believe in Perennialism, Essentialism, Behaviorism, Positivism, and Humanism. I fall more in the Constructivist and Progressivist camp. I like the idea of having students asking questions and going to find the answers. It means that they have a hand in deciding what to learn. I also means that students can focus on what is important to them and what interests. I also like the Constructivist theory because it involves real life problems. I think that schools often try to keep the real world on the other side of the entrance way but they forget that learning, culture and student's past experience walk in with students every day. Those things help to shape what it is that students are interested in. And it is hard to teach someone anything they are not at least a little bit curious about. As adults we pick and choose what things to do based on our preferences all the time. Why shouldn't students get to at least part of the time? Progessivism and Constructivism focus the most on free choice and student value. Both things I think are important to learning.

4 Philosophies

Abstract:
Idealism believes that ideas and concepts are the essence of all that is worth knowing. To them being educated means being engaged in a discussion that stretches back through time. They like to ask questions that spark thought and artful bring students to realize that the student knows the answer. Realists believe in observation and experimentation. They believe that knowledge, reality and value exist independent of the human mind. They want to teach methods of obtaining knowledge. They would teach logical, clear content and clarify how things differ from one another by classifying them. Pragmatists believe that everything changes. They believe that experience changes both the knower and the world. To them there are no unchanging ideas and no universal laws. They focus on solving problems through interacting with the environment in an intelligent and reflective manner. Existentialists on the other hand believe that reality is nothing more than lived experience and the final reality resides within each individual. They believe in education as helping students create meaning out of their choice because we are our choices.

Reflection:
I think that my educational philosophy is most like Idealism and Pragmatism. I do believe that teaching ideas and concepts are more important than teaching material. Ideas and concepts can be applied to any material. Not all material can be applied to all concepts and ideas. I think too that is important to be engaged in a conversation and that being educated does open up those conversations to you. On the other hand I think the pragmatist have something with the idea of change. Everything does change. Most often in a cycle kind of way but that is still change. I also agree that values change. The values that they held to be true 100 years ago do not hold to be true today. They don't work for the society we live in now. The Idealists are interesting to me because it seems like there are some archetypes and metaphors that many cultures agree on. Such as the story of Cinderella. Almost every culture around the world has a Cinderella story. But I still think it is important to be culturally diverse, like the Pragmatists argue, because we differ in other ways. Those differences are as important as our similarities are. That to me seems to be where they intersect. In knowing what things we are similar and in what ways we are different and in constant flux.