Philosophy of Teaching

Because I have already written a philosophy of teaching for my undergraduate degree, I thought that I would post this in response to the readings. Enjoy.

Children are full of awe and wonderment about the world around them. They are always finding opportunities to learn and use every sense to explore their world. I believe a classroom is a place that a child’s wonderment should be nurtured and deepened. As an educator, I believe that the best way for children to fulfill their desire and need to learn is to have an environment that is safe and secure, accepting of everyone, and child-centered. I also believe that in order for children to get the most out of their learning experience, there must be a family and school partnership.

I believe that children learn the best when their environment is safe and secure. I have found that children are more willing to take risks when they know that they are being supported by their teachers and when there is no danger in the classroom. Risk taking is an important part of learning for children because they are exploring new parts of their world. This can only be done in an invulnerable environment.

The beginning years of a child’s education are the most important. During this time, they begin to form their ideas and attitudes about education. I believe that learning should be creative, fun, and hands-on. I also believe that learning should be challenging in such a way that it is appropriate for each child. If children begin with a positive education experience, they are more likely to succeed and continue in their educational career.

I believe that a classroom should be child-centered. In other words, what the children are curious about is what I will base my curriculum on. In order to make my curriculum child-centered, I will observe and listen to the children and focus on their wonderment about the world around them. When children are included in the building of curriculum, they are more likely to be interested in what the curriculum has to offer and gain more from the curriculum.

Each child brings a special, uniqueness to a classroom. I believe that each child should be accepted and that their uniqueness should be valued and not judged. Each child’s learning style is going to be different. I believe that it is very important to educate myself in many different learning styles in order to best meet each child’s learning needs. I am not teaching for my convenience or what will be the easiest, I am teaching for the children and their needs.

The relationship between families and teacher is a vital part of a child’s learning experience. I believe that when families and teachers work together to support a child’s learning, the child will gain more from their educational experience. The more that everyone works together to support the child’s growth and development, the better the future will be for each child.

As an educator, I will always be learning and growing. I hope to be able to share my passion for learning with my students. I believe that teaching is my small way of making the future brighter through each child.

“A teacher affects eternity: he/she can never tell where his/her influence stops.” Henry Adams.

Review of Web Sites

Furling is a great resource for teachers and students. I am always printing off articles that I like and that I think would be a great resource as a teacher. This web site makes it so much easier for me to keep all my articles in one place without printing them off. It is also very helpful because they have so many articles on almost any topic.
I think that it would be very beneficial for students so when they are doing research, they will be able to keep all their articles together as well. Furling also opens so many doors for students to find topics that they are interested in researching. This is definatly a tool I will use often.

Virtual Library is a great resource for teachers because it allows you to look for web sites on line by topic. Because I am going into education, I clicked on education and the library came up with a large list of different web sites that might be beneficial to the age group that I picked out.
This would be a very beneficial web site for students as well because it would open new sites for them to while they are researching different topics.

Planet PDF is a great resource to teachers mostly because it has classic books that you can download for free. This would make it very available for teachers and students with a computer. It offers a chance for teachers to read books without buying them and also allows students to read them as well.
Planet PDF also offers a variety of updates and information about using PDF which is also beneficial to teachers.

Concept to Classroom is a great resource because it is very important to understand and learn about students different abilities and the way they learn. This web site focuses mainly on Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences. It talks about the benefits of using multiple intelligence practice in the classroom and also takes on the perspective of the critics of multiple intelligence. I think that this site is beneficial to students because if their teachers understand more of how they learn and try to adapt the curriculum to the different learning styles, then the students will most likely get more from their education.