Education is a reflection of a community’s standards, morals, and values.  It outlines the tools needed to succeed and what information should continue from generation to generation.  Education allows each person to take part in this process and find their niche in their community.  It is the foundational pillar that connects people within their community and communities to each other globally.  Education is also a vital key to individual success, which can uplift the surrounding communities’ success.  This essay will provide a framework for my philosophy of education.  First, a comprehensive and precise philosophy statement will provide a basis for supporting research.  From there, research will show how my philosophy of education will assist in future educational settings.  To conclude, I will show that it is necessary to teach the community’s morals and values to produce individuals who come prepared for tomorrow’s challenges.

Before I support the two components needed to achieve my philosophy, I will outline the difference between equality and equity.  

Equal and equitable are two very different notions.  First, the idea of “equal” is distributing educational supplies, resources, and opportunities evenly throughout the students’ population regardless of any initial or continual need (Wise, 2019).  On the other hand, equitable is the distribution of the same things concerning initial and continual needs.  There is a significant gap in success with students of color, immigrant students, and students in low-income neighborhoods which can be associated to the lack of equitable distribution of resources (Wise, 2019) (Dearing, Walsh, Sibley, Lee, Foley, & Raczek, 2016).  To reach equality in education, we first have to give resources equitably to remove as much of the gap as possible (Wise, 2019). 

Education is a resource that serves the individual and the community (Clavert, 2015).  This resource is used by the individual to create their success.  As the individual is part of a society, one’s success becomes the success of the whole.  From this notion, education works in a cyclical fashion that promotes the community’s overall well-being through the development of its parts (Clavert, 2015).  Under the theory of luck egalitarianism, factors that are of no fault of the person, such as a student’s race, creed, gender, geographic location, or academic ability, should not be the reason to limit the opportunities, resources, and supplies needed to be successful (Clavert, 2015).  Equitable education can be a solution that will lead to more opportunities for more people regardless of natural-born factors (Wise, 2019) (Clavert, 2015).  Furthermore, prioritizing education equitably in underperforming communities will also give them better access to democratic participation, financial opportunities, and cultural awareness (Wise, 2019).  

Continually, every child has individual and unique obstacles to overcome, which shows that their educational path will require different supports and resources from their classmates (Clavert, 2015).  It is necessary to understand then that equity will always need to be present in a teacher’s classroom to work towards the ideology of equality for all (Wise, 2019).  In terms of education, equality allows adequate allocation of resources and services to any student who needs additional assistance to master a skill necessary for their future success in a global economy (Khan, 2015).  To practice equity in the classroom, small group instruction and goal settings based upon ability are daily practices that allow a teacher to improve specific students’ skill sets.

Green (2017) focuses on authentic leadership and how teachers can use it to mold the surrounding community.  Authentic leadership is the ideology that a leader wholeheartedly stands by their core values and uses those values to drive them and their followers forward.  In an educational setting, this is a teacher with clear expectations for the students because they have clear expectations for themselves (Green, 2017).  These expectations, such as respect, kindness, fairness, inclusivity, and active listening, are practiced in the classroom and are commonly revisited to understand the importance and value of working in collaborative settings.  The students should see the teacher using these expectations daily to see the ease of use and how to approach certain situations that may be new to them.

Practices such as goal setting, collaboration, and peer coaching can be examples modeled by the teacher if they use those strategies in their daily lives (Green, 2017).  Regardless of the classroom practices, they become standard because the leader never waivers from their importance.  As the leader showcases their true self and the tools that have gotten them to that point, the students can use those same tools as resources in future settings (Green, 2017).

Dearing and colleagues (2016) state that students from first-generation immigrant households are more likely to need additional assistance to be successful citizens in the global economy.  In other words, before they can work in collaborative groups successfully, programs and services need to be in place to provide that student the resources to be successful (Dearing et al., 2016).  As is the case of all students, students from other countries bring a unique cultural outlook and have a fresh approach to collaborative learning (Dearing et al., 2016).  They get a set of talents and skills that the students born in this country may not have.  Their value adds to others’ worth, and in return, the programs and specialized instruction are given to English learners to increase their own skill sets. (Dearing et al., 2016). 

Morals and values should reflect the surrounding community deems essential and necessary (Green, 2017).  Educators should also remember those morals and values while still being true to themselves (Green, 2017).  In most cases, educators do not come from the same communities they serve and need to be cognizant of hidden rules that may rule the community or themselves (Payne, 2016).  At the same time, educators need to share the morals and values of different cultures to explicitly teach students how to interact in various settings in the future (Payne, 2018).  A book written by James Mollison called Where Children Sleep portrays children’s lives worldwide and the current state of their bedrooms.  This book has been instrumental in teaching the overarching morals of kindness and compassion towards all humans.  Using collaborative questioning, the class discusses what the children in the pictures would assume if someone reversed the roles.  Collaborative exploration and role reversal are positive tactics to promote global morals and values of compassion to others.  Novel studies such as these allow students to learn international morals and values while having a safe place to ask questions to grasp the importance fully.