It is my belief that everyone is capable of anything that they set their minds to, especially in regards to learning. Therefore, I have decided that my main goal as a teacher is to empower students with this belief and show them what they are all capable of, no matter what their backgrounds may be. I want to have students not only learn material, but also learn that they are stronger than they may think they are.
In order to create a classroom that empowers students, I would like to give a voice to every class member. This means that I would actively check-in with students at the beginning of the class and see what their joys and stressors of the day are. During class time, I would avoid the “didactic” method of teaching, where knowledge is only allowed to flow from the teacher to the passive student. I would encourage discussions among the students and have them support one another. I am not all knowing, and yet I do know (as postulated by Vygotsky) that peers can be a greater teacher than I would be in some instances. Furthermore, teaching another person can help the students learn the information for themselves twice as well. I also believe that learning is, in large part, about making connections between pieces of information, and, as such, class discussions would play an important role in assisting students in making these mental connections. I want my students to be able to succeed, and I truly believe that an open, discussion-based learning model is the best way to ensure this. Such a model also allows for formative assessment as I listen to students share their thought processes. Rather than seeing if they memorize answers, I can tell if they actually understand the process behind the answers.
Of course, I want to be able to teach directly as well. I want to be able to inspire my students to want to know more, since the best learning happens between what bores students and what is too hard for them to grasp (yet—as I said, anything is possible to learn). In order to inspire them, I want to fill each day with new fascinating facts and figures that connect to a variety of fields. No opportunity to teach students about anything should ever go unused. I also want to encourage exploration into the subjects that we are learning about beyond class, at home. Learning should never stop at the door.
This is a description of my teaching philosophy, one meant to empower students and their learning. It relies on ideas of identity in the classroom, interest-promotion and “cross-contaminated” learning practices, and discussion-led/peer-focused learning.