Teaching Philosophy

Philosophy of Teaching

I grew up a first-generation American in a household that always emphasized the importance of an education. My mother always told me that education was going to open doors and opportunities for me, and that at the end of the day, whatever I learned would be the only thing that could never be taken from me. Now, I understand why my mom emphasized education as a solution, but I think it is much more complex than my mom may have initially led me to believe. I think education is an equalizer and allows students of all backgrounds to be on the same level in life, but only when they receive equitable access to education that is led by a collaborative school community with a drive to see all students succeed. It requires students’ lived experiences to be part of the curriculum, teachers to see the political nature of their jobs, and for the classroom to be community rather than a competition or a place of control.

First and foremost, I believe in the importance of student voice. When students believe that their voices are heard and that their opinions have weight, they are more likely to contribute to larger conversations within and beyond the classroom. Students should be taught to persuasively defend their positions, to share personal narratives, and to communicate in a collaborative manner with peers. Each of these skills will enable them to advocate for their needs, to share their experiences and perspectives with one another, and to build stronger relationships with their communities.

As an educator, I believe that teaching is inherently political. On a basic level, what we are allowed to teach and the language that we use in the classroom are political decisions decided on by the many bodies that oversee education. However, on a deeper level, teaching is meant to socialize students into our society and to teach them what it means to be a good and active citizen. When teachers recognize that the texts and theories that we teach always promote a narrative, we can begin to question whose narrative they tell. The texts we choose should represent a diverse set of experiences that our students can see themselves and their loved ones in. The theories we base our classrooms in should be equitable and promote justice. If our students are meant to learn how to think critically about the world around them, they must have teachers who believe in respectful and critical observations of their environments as well as teaching hope and resistance against the status quo until it reflects true equality.

Educators who create classroom environments that are safe will be more likely to succeed at the above goals. In safe environments where all students are respected, heard, and valued, they are much more likely to contribute to their own learning and to see one another as co-constructors of meaning and community. They deserve to have their identities recognized and respected, to have their arguments heard, and to be taught the skills they will need to survive and thrive in an ever-changing world. By promoting student literacy, their oral and written skills are developed and strengthened in an environment where they are free to make mistakes and learn from them, which allows them to eventually become advocates for their needs, critical thinkers about the information they are presented with and the choices they will have to make, and members of communities that understand how inherently interconnected we all are.

Beliefs & Goals

I believe that at the heart of every English classroom are the lived experiences of students and the ways that they try to reconcile these with the readings that they are assigned. Too often, students are asked to navigate white, male. abled, hetero-normative spaces that they may not have experience belonging to, and thus, the English classroom has frequently been a place of denial and exclusion. I believe that as a teacher, it is my responsibility to engage the stories of every student and empower them to believe in their value. When student identities are integrated into the curriculum, everyone benefits. I believe that students are already grappling with big ideas, and may not have the words or additional contexts with which they can discuss them or explain them to others.When student histories and identities are centered in the English classroom, students not only engage with the texts on a deeper level, but can ask better questions about the text and the world around them, as well as how the two might interact with one another. Students whose lived experiences are brought to class become empowered to use the literary tools that they learn about to tell their own stories, bridging the divide between classroom and real life.

In the first three days of Brown Summer High School, my classroom had already emphasized the importance of names by making time to ensure that students knew one another and felt comfortable in our classroom community. Students had learned each other’s names as transitional activities between lessons about poetry that enabled them to write their own piercing and thoughtful drafts of name poems. We centered student voices by asking students to write letters to us, their teachers, on the first day—highlighting that their voices matter and that we value their knowledge. In giving these assignments, teachers take the first steps in empowering their students to become “enlightened witnesses”, which—as bell hooks says—encourages them to think critically not only about themselves, but about their relationships with the world around them. As a teacher, when I center my students’ identities, I provide opportunities to strengthen their understanding of self, of society, and of the power dynamics between them.

Philosophy

For the beginning of this summer I chose "Y'all means all" as a teaching philosophy because I believe that the classroom is a place for everyone to be included and for every part of each individual to be welcomed to engage with our materials. In "A Talk to Teachers", by James Baldwin, he states that developing a conscience is one of the paradoxes of education because as we learn more, we are charged with a need to change our society and improve it. The more we learn, the more we discover that the world around us is not built for all of us, and in caring for our fellow classmates we find that we want to change the structures around us so that we may all live within this community together in peace.

I also really like Matt Kay's message about how we, as both students and teachers, may spend the rest of our lives learning to be good listeners and to really hear what people have to say. There are so many opportunities to learn about one another in the classroom if only we know how to listen and to understand what our peers and our students are saying to us. Actively reminding every member of a classroom and school that we all should practice good listening skills also reminds adults that we are not more knowledgeable because of our age. We can be students, too, if we let our students become our teachers—because who can know their experiences better than them? Every member of a school community has so much to contribute, and it would do everyone a disservice to ignore the wealth of knowledge that any individual walked in with simply because we could not listen.

Ultimately, I believe that my beliefs align with Tara J. Yosso's understandings that all students have knowledge and lived experience that is worth giving value to, especially when it is a form of knowledge that our larger society will not give our students credit for. If the role of a classroom is to educate and empower our students, then we cannot speak about them using a deficit-based lens. Not only do I believe in the idea of "Y'all means all" as a statement of inclusivity, but I also believe that this idea highlights how all of the many identities that make my students themselves cannot be left outside of the classroom door; our students are never just a student or just fifteen, they are all the many identities they hold and to ask them to leave any of them behind would be to deny the many ways in which they take up space in our world.

Practices

The following are practices I strongly believe in including in English classrooms because of their connection to both my teaching beliefs and philosophies:

Word Scrolls and Concept Ladders:
Students use their prior knowledge and understandings, as well as one another, in order to explore and define new words and ideas with the prompts provided in each assignment ("what this idea is", "what this idea is not", "what does this idea look like"). I like these practices because they emphasize to students that their knowledge is valued and that they can unpack big ideas using one another and their resources from what they have previously learned about in class. Both activities ask students to question and clarify their definitions of big ideas, such as justice, and to engage one another in difficult conversations. The conditions necessary for these activities are to choose words and concepts that relate to the material students have already engaged with, to ensure that every student has at least some kind of background knowledge with which to begin.
Vignettes and Single Stories:
Students choose single moments in their lives that hold deep meaning for them and learn to write short narratives about them. Through this activity, students learn not only about writing a narrative, but also about reflection and critical thought of what a single moment can mean for themselves and the resultant changes in how they view the world and the world may view them. It grounds students firmly in the contexts in which they have grown up and allows them to wonder what different contexts could look like, which is the basis for them being able to imagine better worlds and expect better from the societies around them.
Anticipation Guide:
Students are asked to determine how they feel about many statements at the very beginning of a unit, and revisit the statements at the end of a unit to see how their learning and engagement with the class has changed their perspectives. This activity encourages students to rely on prior knowledge the first time it is introduced and to engage critically with the ideas presented, evaluate them and their resonance, and then decide if they agree with them or not and to what extent. The second time it is introduced, students are often more hesitant to either strongly agree or disagree with the absolute statements given, since they have learned to consider the nuances of each statement as it pertained to our novel, our unit, and other knowledge that they have acquired since their first time being presented with the statements—which pushes them to develop a conscience and critical thought about the effects that these statements can have on themselves and the larger society. This activity also improves students' empathy skills, which are a necessary component for good listening and thinking about social justice.
Character Tea Party / Meet and Greet:
Students become their assigned characters prior to reading a novel and introduce themselves to one another, gathering information and creating relationships in their minds before they begin the novel. This asks students to engage with one another, read between the lines, and understand the relationships of different characters. In taking on the character they were assigned, students are also asked to engage in empathy and perspective-taking, and practice giving information that only they have to one another. This activity is good for content-learning, but also to learn the skills of participating in a group, taking good notes, reflecting on given information, and integrating information from different sources together to create new understandings.

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