A Philosophy on Education

Education is the ultimate gentleman in the sense that it will always open doors for you.   The role of the teacher is to ensure that you know how to meet this particular gentleman.   By connecting curriculum to students’ backgrounds and interests, teachers bring education directly into students’ lives in lieu of having students make the long and sometimes abstract journey to education’s doorstep.  

A teacher is, by necessity, a community figure.   By knowing the surrounding community, teachers are able to connect students to a variety of resources outside of the classroom.   Partnerships with parents, youth groups, Boys and Girls Clubs, coaches, and other after school program can help the teacher hold students to higher standards by creating a greater web of accountability.

To be an effective teacher I believe you must be passionate, dedicated, and patient.  Any job requires a certain amount of passion, but to walk into a classroom everyday with the goal of impacting lives necessitates a great deal of it.   An excellent teacher knows their students and plans lessons with their interests in mind.  Each student is going to walk into the classroom with a different set of background experiences, no two will be the same. Why then would we ever expect them to all learn in the same way? All students can learn if the teacher will take the time to figure out how.  Students deserve to be seen as individual learners, and as teachers we must go out of our way to treat them as such.

Students learn best when they feel they are a valuable member of a learning community.   The teacher is responsible for creating an environment where students feel comfortable sharing questions as well as answers.  Students will be more engaged in class if they know the teacher identifies them as people and not just as an “A”, “B”, “C”, “D”,  or “F”.

I want my students to be confident in who they are.  I want them to wake up in the morning and think, “Wow, I’m awesome.”  Through this confidence, my aspiration for each of my students is that they would set high goals for themselves and that together we would map out the steps it will take to achieve them.  My students will not be afraid of hard work and will view it as essential to becoming the best professor/astronaut/mechanic/trapeze artist they can be. 

The role of a teacher is to create a community of learners, where every voice is heard and every diverse talent is celebrated. It is the teacher’s responsibility to demonstrate what it means to be a responsible, respectful citizen. Above all, a teacher is an adult who cares about what is going to happen to a child. This is why I joined the profession. I care.