What Do I Already Know About Teaching?

Adaptability to Student Needs - There will never be a full classroom of identical minds which causes any teacher to have to understand their audience and make changes to cater to their students needs. A teacher must decide whether they want to teach to the top of the class, middle of the class, or to the bottom of the class. Doing so requires skills in analyzing your students behaviors as well as critically thinking about how one can apply and manage classroom operations in order to curate a learning environment that appeals to all of your students.

Flexibility and Understanding For Students Home Lives - My father teaches at a school where there are many under privileged children that have extremely difficult and strenuous home lives. This brings about many behavioural and attendance issues that he has to deal with on a daily basis, it surprised me to find out he approaches these issues not with a iron fist, but a caring shoulder to lean on. Understanding that "you can never know what a student has to go home to" is a key mantra I want to live by because at the end of the day these are just children and some were born into situations where they must display more resilience on a daily basis than any teacher could ever understand. 

Accountability in the Classroom - Through observations made in my own experiences as a student, I have found that my classmates and I are always much less receptive and respectful to a teacher who runs their classroom as if they can do no wrong. It is much harder to give a teacher your effort if you do not like them or respect them and teachers who set up their classroom like a dictatorship often will run into those problems. Teachers that open themselves up to correction, advice, or just the opportunity to voice your concerns show the students that their thoughts can be just as important as the teacher which makes a much more unified classroom.

The Teacher I Will Become

The teaching philosophies that I currently most align with are Progressivism and Existentialism. The main reasons that I subscribe to these beliefs are because I want to place an emphasis on freedom and personal autonomy in my classroom. Another key contributer to this is the fact that I aim to use a Student-Centered Learning approach because I don't want the student to feel like my classroom is a dictatorship of any sort. In my experience as a student it was much harder to work for a teacher that I felt was in the role of a Teacher-Centered environment unless they had a profound ability to articulate their words into storytelling which I have only found in one teacher in my whole life. I want to use active engagement by asking the students questions that guide the lesson in the direction that they take it. 

If a visitor walked in my classroom they would see a spread out but flowing classroom environment that showcased my students personalities in their own spaces like name tags and other small accessories. This spread out classroom that promoted collaboration mixed with the student personalization would reflect the Progressivism and Existentialism sides of my teaching philosophy. The visitor would see interaction and collaboration between my students as well as students influencing the flow of each lesson.