Teaching Philosophy

When trying to put together my teaching philosophy, I found that I had so many ideas in
my mind; it was somewhat difficult to articulate them. I know what kind of teacher I want to be
but expressing it is more challenging. I’m going to attempt to break it down into a few different
areas in order to organize my thoughts. First and foremost here I want to take some time to talk
about where my beliefs come from. Largely my ideas about teaching come from my own
experiences with education as well as what I’ve heard from my mom who is a teacher. I would
consider myself to have been pretty lucky to have had a good education. I always felt safe and
comfortable in my classrooms and I was able to effectively learn throughout the majority of my
education. However, that doesn’t mean that it was perfect. I often found myself getting bored
during school and tuning out as a result. Grade school wasn’t much of a challenge for me and
few of my teachers sought to push my further than the standard curriculum. I think this is one
aspect where my education failed me and definitely hurt my down the road when I went into
university without any conception of working hard in school. Now that I will be getting a chance
to be the teacher in a classroom I want to make sure that school can be engaging for everyone. I
have lots of big ideas that I will illuminate in the proceeding sections but I also worry that I need
to remain realistic. I think that a lot of my sense of what is realistic comes from my mom.
Throughout the years I’ve always been interested in the things she does as a teacher and we
would often go for walks with our dog where she would tell me all about it. I would run ideas by
her and she would challenge them and make me think about how they would actually look when
implemented and if they are truly realistic. Through these life experiences I’ve developed a
strong sense of my teaching philosophy.

Classroom Environment

One of the most important things to me is my classroom environment. I want to create a

space where students can feel welcome and safe. I know not everyone is as privileged as I was
growing up and some students don’t have a good home life. That is why I think it is important
that school is a place where they can feel comfortable, especially if they can’t anywhere else. In
order for everyone to feel safe, everyone must feel included. Students come from such a diverse
group of backgrounds. I think it’s great to celebrate this diversity and highlight what makes us all
unique. At the same time, it is of the utmost importance that we all remember we aren’t that
different from each other. Just because a student lives with their grandparents or speaks another
language or has a learning disability, doesn’t mean they are a kid just like everyone else. I think
this is important to keep in mind as a teacher and we foster these ideas within our students. I will
not tolerate any form of bullying or discrimination in my classroom. Learning can be hard
enough as it is, if children don’t feel safe and accepted we can’t expect them to learn.
I’ve been in some classes that have a very rigid, structured feel to them. While I
understand and appreciate the need for structure, I think it is important that we remain flexible as
teachers. Things won’t always go according to plan and we need to be ready for that. It is also
good for us to model flexibility for our students. I don’t want to keep my students sitting at their
desk all day. I know how boring that can get. I see a lot of value in taking breaks for kids to
move around and allowing them to move during their learning as well. When we can get a
classroom where the students are free to move around more, I think this can lead to a lot of great
collaboration between students. It also allows for students to help each other which I believe is
paramount not only for creating a sense of community but for practicality reasons as I can’t be
everywhere at once.

My Role

This is the area where I worry about the realism of my ideas the most. I’ve seen so many
classrooms (almost all of them in fact) where there is a strong power dynamic between teachers
and students. I think this is especially true in younger grades as these students need more
guidance. For myself, I don’t want to be the type of teacher where I’m the authority who is
always right and must be listened to without question. Of course I want my students to listen to
me, but I want it to be because they respect me and not because of some built-in obligation. To
describe what type of teacher I want to be, I keep coming back to the phrase “first among
equals”. Quick disclaimer here that this phrase has a somewhat problematic history but it is the
essence of it and not its previous use that I agree with. I want my students to feel like we are all
equal in the classroom, including myself. I think this can be achieved by mutual respect and a
collaborative learning process. Students should be involved in all aspects of their education and
not just there to absorb knowledge from their teacher. I don’t want to position myself above the
students telling them what to do. Rather I’d prefer to get down on their level physically, whether
this is sitting on the carpet with them reading a book, or kneeling beside their desks answering a
question.

Learning

As I mentioned before, I think that learning should be a collaborative process. I think that
in our society education has become a competition between individuals. I think this is a failing of
our system and that we would be better off as a society if we took a more collectivist approach.
First of all, I think it’s vital that students are included in the process of choosing what to learn.
Of course this has to take place within the curriculum laid out by the government. That presents
some challenges but I think there is still plenty of room for student input within that framework.
When students get a say in what they are learning, engagement will go through the roof in
comparison to a fully teacher driven curriculum. The learning process should be collaborative as
well. While it is good to give students time to work independently, this can be difficult since
students all work at different rates. Instead I think it is beneficial to get students that are stronger
in an area to help students who struggle in that area as that is shown to improve learning for both
parties. I think this will also contribute to students who are better citizens down the line, who
aren’t just out for themselves but want to help those less fortunate in society.

I think it is also important to take a more holistic approach to learning. This is inspired
from the Indigenous Ways of Knowing. We can’t teach things in isolation and expect students to
understand them without context. As a teacher, for every lesson I need to know why I’m teaching
it. Not only will this allow me to teach it in a more effective way, but it shows students that the
material is valuable to them and will help keep them engaged. The number of things I learned in
school where a teacher couldn’t explain to the class why we were doing it has been frustratingly
high. It is easy to check out on something when you feel it is not important. We must connect our
lessons to the non-school world and to each other in order to put them in context for students and
give them a bigger picture of what we are trying to teach.

Assessment

I have learned a lot through the assessment course that I’ve been taking in Professional
Semester I. There has been a strong focus on summative assessment which has really resonated
for me. As I hope to teach elementary grades, formative assessment is going to be most of the
assessment that I do. I understand that we have to do summative assessment and ultimately give
students grades, but I feel that summative assessments have little to do with learning. Conversely
I think that formative assessment is an excellent tool to inform me as a teacher what I can do
better and to foster greater learning amongst my students. One idea from reading the formative
assessment textbook that has really stuck in my head is giving each student a mini-whiteboard to
have at their desk. This would allow you to ask a question to your entire class and get quick
feedback on where everyone is at so that you can adjust accordingly. I also really liked to idea of
calling on random students to answer questions rather than selecting those that put up their
hands. This gets everyone participating in an active way in the learning process. If students are
struggling to answer I think it would be beneficial to give them a chance to discuss with a partner
and then return to the main group.

If we are going to get all students to participate it is important that they know that it is
okay to make mistakes. This is perhaps the belief that I hold most dear. As I student I was always
petrified of making mistakes. I thought that a mistake would make me lose credibility as being
“the smart kid” and because of this I would never raise my hand in class. Now as an adult,
although I still struggle with this, I recognize the value of making mistakes in order to learn. I
think that we need to lead by example here as the teacher and make mistakes of our own. It’s
going to happen so we might as well embrace them instead of trying to hide these from our
students. When we do this, we are modelling for them that it is okay to make mistakes and that
we can learn and grow from them. Encouraging students to be willing to try even when they
don’t feel confident will be one of the biggest challenges as a teacher, but it is also one of the
most important aspects of the position.