Teaching Philosophy

“The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds hard to answer.”

~ Alice Wellington Rollins

I teach because I can. When an adult asks another adult why a toddler is doing something silly or illogical, the answer is, “Because they can.” Not every person can teach much like not every toddler can (or chooses to) shove a pea up his nose. I am lucky and grateful that teaching is something I can do. I came into this profession late in life, and I have no formal teacher preparation training. I only have my content knowledge, strong desire, and extreme passion for others. I also know that I was meant to teach. Anyone can stand in front of a group of people and impart knowledge; I have sat in high school and college classes with the best of them. But that is not teaching. Teaching is opening a door to someone’s mind, passions, abilities they had no idea they had. My most important job is to encourage others to think. Once the thinking starts, everything else is possible. Along with thinking, my job is also to encourage others to care. If we do not care about something, we will not do our best with it. I am not foolish enough to believe that all students will care about the content they are expected to master. But if I can encourage them to care about themselves and others, it is highly likely they will begin to engage in the classroom and, hopefully, take this engagement out to their communities and the world. Imagine a world brimming with engaged, caring thinkers.

The students at Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC) inspire and challenge every fiber of my being. I teach at the Twin Rivers Unit which is one of the two sex offender units in the state, houses 850 men, and is a safe haven for the transgender population. The diversity in my classroom is above all others: age; ethnicity; physical, mental, and emotional needs; academic ability; gender, sexuality; gang-affiliation; fear of disclosing a crime; fear for safety. The list goes on and on. The hats I wear in one class session change rapidly and frequently. There are days when I am utterly exhausted and spent. But I get up the next day and come back, because, simply, I love it. My students are often considered throw-away by society. Many of them have families who have also abandoned them. Some of them are completely and truly alone in the world. They deserve at least one face to smile at them, one person to ask them how they are doing, and one person to tell them they matter. Most anyone can show someone how to do long division or write a paragraph. Not everyone can (or wishes to) show someone that they are important and that they have skills, abilities, talents. Not everyone wants to spend their time opening minds and instilling value. I do.

In all my years in school, the most important and lasting experiences involved something relevant to myself and my life. A good teacher will try to relate an assignment, process, activity, task to the students’ lives. This is not always easy to do. The best way I have come up with this is to ask the students. Student input is paramount to engaging and lasting learning. Even the shyest, most withdrawn students like to talk about themselves when given a safe environment to do so. Every day in my classroom, I try to relate material to the students. I am always telling my students, “Know your audience.” That is advice I take to heart. The audience in Corrections Education is unique, to say the least, and convincing many of them that I have anything of value for them can be extremely difficult. They are there because they are required to be; if they refuse to come to school, they get in trouble. So, I do my best to encourage them to view school and education as a positive and not as a punishment. Often, easier said than done. Relating the curriculum to them helps them find value, is easier to understand, and usually is a lot more fun!

In Pre-College English 99, I am using the 2019-20 Edmonds College Reads book, American Like Me, by America Ferrera, a collection of essays written by famous people whose identity straddles the United States with another culture. Most of my students fall into this category, and this book has been a big hit with my classes. Even those of us who primarily identify as white can relate to these stories. I have students draft their own essay to be modeled after those in the book. They learn valuable writing, editing, collaboration, and contribution skills while exploring themselves at a meaningful level. This gives them power and adds to their perceived value. It reminds them that, while society may have thrown them away, they still matter.

I know that students are understanding by the questions they ask and the ways in which they apply information/knowledge to themselves and the world around them. I recently had a student complete a science experiment for a high school science credit. He was not super-excited about this assignment, but, with encouragement from me, he dove in and found that his self-selected topic actually “intrigued” him (his word, not mine) the more he learned about it. While presenting his findings to the class, I knew he had a good understanding of his topic by his answers to student and teacher questions. He had no idea ahead of time what he would be asked, and I know that he was nervous about this. He handled the questions beautifully, and his approach to them showed me that he truly was “thinking like a scientist.” He did not know the answers to every question, and once or twice his answer was, “I don’t know.” To me, this shows maturity and greater understanding. He could have made up answers or pretended to answer the question, but to admit uncertainty rather than make stuff up shows critical thinking, which is the whole idea anyway.

I am always trying to improve. Teaching is a very fluid profession. Just when you think you have “seen everything”, you are faced with a new challenge. Flexibility and patience are key, especially in a Corrections setting and in the time of COVID. These past two years as an instructor at MCC, I have had to stretch in ways I did not know possible. A Corrections setting is somewhat of a dichotomy: very strict rules and procedures, very regimented, very scripted, sometimes seemingly robotic. But all this exists with a group of people who could not be more diverse. Prisons collect people from all walks of life (often they have nothing in common and sometimes do not even speak the same language), place them in extreme close proximity, and expect them to all behave uniformly. Cultures, life experiences, abilities all collide at once and often clash. This is evident in a Corrections classroom. My Basic Skills & High School+ students are required to attend school, and some of them are not happy about it. They are also not happy about being in the same room with some of their classmates. Tensions can be high. Add to this the fact that many of my students had very little formal education; they do not know how to behave in a classroom, are not aware of what is expected of them. Reaching, encouraging, and understanding each and every one of my students is always paramount and usually challenging. It is a life-long endeavor and a constant learning experience. I know I will never be perfect at this, but I am always striving to improve.