Teaching Philosophy

“Tell me, and I’ll forget. Teach me, and I’ll remember. Involve me, and I’ll learn.” –attributed to Benjamin Franklin

Born into an Afri-centric collective in Brooklyn, New York, I believe that the sense of self-esteem and self-pride instilled in me from birth were integral components of my early education that helped me develop into a life-long learner. Having been fortunate enough to have parents who started reading to me when I was in the womb, I understand that literacy is the gateway to education, and I have chosen to become an elementary school teacher because I want to help children make the successful transition from learning to read to reading to learn. I believe in experiential education that is student directed, culturally relevant, and incorporates as many learning styles as possible. My lesson plans will respect students’ backgrounds and empower them to create the world in which they want to live.

Environment: Students’ school and home settings must encourage and inspire the development of literacy. My classroom walls will be adorned with literary-themed images that role model and support literacy development (e. g. reading celebrities, framed book covers, authors, quotes, codeswitching charts (Wheeler & Swords, 2007), vocabulary walls, etc.). My classroom library will feature not only books suggested by education administrators, but also reading materials chosen by students (e.g. magazines, comic books, and digital media). Poetry, Collaborative books, and grammar are just a few of the literacy centers that will be featured in my classroom. Most importantly, my classroom, students and I will foster a community of learners (Tompkins, 2010) who will create and maintain a communal safe space in which respect is paramount, and sharing, collaboration and growth will freely take place.

Creativity: According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, the highest order of thinking is represented by students’ ability to create. And, as Howard Gardner has elucidated, we all possess multiple intelligences. To facilitate higher-level learning, I will appeal to as many learning styles as possible by incorporating arts-infused education and action-based learning into cross-curricular thematic lesson plans. For example, to learn the water cycle, students might read Thomas Locker’s Water Dance. Kinesthetic learners might collaborate with musical/auditory learners to use music and movement to dramatize the transformation of water from solid to liquid to gas. Visual learners might collaborate with linguistic learners to narrate the dramatizations. Students’ written reflections on their chosen activities will round out such assessments and provide data that will allow me to tailor subsequent instruction to my students’ needs.

Experiential Education: “Learning is a function of the activity, context, and culture in which it occurs or is situated” (Tompkins, 2010, p. 9). Students learn best from the practical experience of their education. Reading and writing workshops will be derived from students’ personal interests, experiences and aspirations. According to constructivist John Dewey (Tracey & Morrow, 2006), problem-based learning motivates students to collaborate with peers and use reason to find solutions to real-world problems. To promote profound cognitive development, students in my class will engage in inquiry learning that encourages them to formulate hypotheses, draw conclusions, collaborate, and reflect on their answers and procedures. Not only will they produce a classroom newspaper, for example, they’ll also write letters to government officials and editors of local newspapers in response to literature circles discussing books and stories of interests to them.

Culturally relevant: Students learn best when they have aesthetic (i.e. personal and emotional) responses to texts they read. “One method of evoking aesthetic responses in children is to elicit connections between text and their own lives” (Tracey & Morrow, 2006, p. 55). Therefore, if my class is 95% African American, for example, authors, subject matter, and images appearing in their academic materials will reflect positive African American contributions to history and culture.

Home-School Connection: To the greatest extent possible, families will be kept abreast of learning objectives and encouraged to be an active participant in their child’s learning process. For example, students will keep home-school journals in which they will share something they’ve learned with their parents (or guardians) on a weekly basis. Parents will be encouraged to respond to their child’s journal entries. With parents’ permission, family photos will adorn classroom walls, and families will be invited to share stories, music, games and food that are special to them during class family days (Villegas & Lucas, 2007).

References:

Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century a balanced approach. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2006). Lenses on reading: An introduction to theories and models. (pp. 47-75). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Villegas, A. M. & Lucas, T. (2007). The culturally responsive teacher. Educational Leadership, 64(6), 28-33.

Wheeler, R. S., Swords, R. (2004). Codeswitching: Tools of language & culture transform the dialectally diverse classroom. Language Arts, 81(6), 470-480.