My Teaching Philosophy​

"Looking forward to the future means paying better attention to the present. Students should be doing worthwhile work now, learning whatever attributes are important to be able to work peacefully and productively with others and discover their own strengths" Curriculum Integration (Dermarest, 97).

 

Teaching Skills

What better way to prepare our students for their lives after high school than to give them the tools of critical thinking, problem-solving, and stewardship. To me, this means teaching students life skills such as public speaking, how to write a respectful email, how to validate information, how to back up an argument, and lastly how to be a citizen in a democratic society. 

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I found during my student teaching that many of my students lacked some of the basic skills that a student needs such as; note-taking, studying, memorization, skimming, and writing a five-paragraph essay. Therefore, I took it upon myself to include lessons on each of these topics into my content. As a class, we tried various notetaking templates, study techniques, etc. I had multiple students thank me for teaching them these skills because no one had taken the time to teach them how to do it, it was anyways an expectation that they would just know. After this, I decided I needed to add in life skills as well. I then created documents for how to create presentations and do public speaking.

 

I also incorporated a group behaviors chart and a poster explaining consensus, and introspective questions. These activities taught my students valuable skills in civil discussion, public speaking, and collaboration. The life skills are not as readily apparent and appreciated by the students, but I find these skills valuable in my life and will continue to help my students build them up to. My goal is to be able to find more life and academic skills that I can integrate into my classroom. 

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Through my inclusion of skills, I have found myself interconnecting with the ELA and Humanities classes in the school. Being able to tie all three of our classes together and communicate and share resources has been very fun and extremely helpful for all of us and the students have even started to make the connections between them.  

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Non-Partisan Education

In social studies, I also find it important to demonstrate information for multiple resources. Therefore showing my students news from multiple points of view from around the world will be a priority for me. In the world, you will always have to encounter people who do not agree with you, but you still have to work with them. This is a skill I hope to allow my students to develop. I believe students should be allowed to form, embrace, and debate and create their own views about real-world problems.

 

Democratically Integrated Curriculum

I have a focus on student choice, voice, and autonomy. This prepares students for entering into the "real-world" by teaching them to stand up for what they believe in, understand the structures of voting and democracy, as well as how to go about making a change through discussion and voting. However, it is important for me to recognize the limitations of student choice, voice, and autonomy. Through trial and error, I hope to be able to find a balance between student choice and teacher choice. This is key to providing a structured and interesting plan. I think every teacher, in their own way, tries to include student feedback, interest, and autonomy into their lesson plans. This is important to me because I believe that if I am teaching democracy, politics, and government, then I should be modeling what I am trying to teach my students.

 

My goal

My goal is to create a space where every student has a voice that is heard. This would be a space where their opinions are validated but are also challenged to look at problems from other points of view. I believe that the best way to do this is for educators to include democratic integration into their curriculum design, while also setting clear boundaries on where the students’ choice ends and the teacher takes control again.