Sarah Lee

The Teacher I Will Become

• I believe the purpose of school is to teach students essential knowledge and critical thinking skills that are applicable to our culture and society to prepare them for the world they will live in after graduating.

• I want to cultivate a desire to learn in my students. I want them to be curious and ask questions, diving deeper into the knowledge they gain and asking how they can use their education in our culture today. 

• I hope my classroom is a good mix of student- and teacher-centered. I want my students to be able to have the freedom to apply their education to their passions while still learning the essentials and analysis skills they need.

• A word that describes me as a teacher is "guide." I want to be an outstanding example to my students.

• A word that describes my students is "curious." I want my students to love learning.

• The educational philosophy that resonated with me the most was essentialism. Especially in elementary school, it's important to build a foundation of knowledge that they can bring into their later years of education. Students should master the core subjects.

• If a visitor walked into my classroom, they would see... a teacher leading instruction, giving a lesson on the essential knowledge and culture from our culture. The teacher encourages discussion and deeper thought on the core topics learned. Afterwards, students collaborate together, applying the essential knowledge they learned on student-driven projects. The classroom is orderly, structured, but also curious and active.

My Thoughts on AI

• I think AI can be a valuable resource to students. Using AI to summarize and simplify the information can be an alternative way for students to get a personalized learning experience. However, learning the full chunk of content and being able to summarize information is also an essential, valuable skill for students. Using AI as a resource after acquiring these skills would be best. Many students also use AI to completely do their assignments for them which harms their ability to learn and apply the knowledge.

• I don't like using AI to generate images/art because AI scrapes work from other people to create a patchwork image of various different images/art. I think it is unethical and trivializes art and creativity.

• In the future, I want to keep my AI use to a minimum, only using it as a supplemental resource.

Hey Sarah! For some reason, I could not open the padlet, so I'll just leave my comment here. We talked on the first day about the type of teachers we want to be, and upon reading your page, we are more similar than I thought! I also want a good balance between student and teacher centered, because I agree that school is to provide essential knowledge, but also to cultivate a student's ability to think critically and ask questions. With some student-centered and some teacher-centered, we can provide the important information and also let the students apply it in their own way! I also agree with your stance on AI usage. It should be used as a supplemental tool, not to replace the thinking process. - Sadie Jansen

Hi Sarah 🙃 

I really enjoyed reading your philosophy statement. I like how clearly you explained your belief that school should prepare students with both essential knowledge and critical thinking skills. That shows you have a strong sense of purpose as a teacher. I also loved how you described wanting to cultivate curiosity your word choice of “guide” for yourself and “curious” for your students was powerful and really stood out to me.

The way you explained essentialism made a lot of sense, especially your focus on building a strong foundation in elementary school. It shows that you are thinking not only about what students need in the moment but also how their early education connects to their future learning.

Eliana

Hi Sarah! I really liked how you mentioned that you want to be a teacher that encourages discussion and deeper thought, I think that is really important. I liked how you want to be a teacher who ensures that their students are gaining the proper knowledge, critical thinking skills and application, while guiding them and encouraging curiosity. - Jordan Brown