Educational Philosophy
I wrote the following to a professor who wanted to know about my educational philosophy and why I love teaching. It is a bit long, and somewhat informal, but it will serve as an excellent introduction to who I am and the passion I have for teaching:
I love to learn and hope to be able to continue my education for life. Teaching enables me to continue my own development while aiding that of my students. I enjoy guiding them along the path of intellectual development and I love it when students challenge me to approach a problem from a different perspective or offer me some insight that I hadn't had before.
I feel like the non-completion of my Ph.D. may have actually led me to the right place--that is, to high school. I feel that I have a real knack for turning very complicated ideas into very simple ideas and processes. The university is the place where professors take challenging ideas, postulate, and turn them into more complicated things. I do the opposite. I love the challenge of turning something daunting and potentially confusing into something simple and fun. So perhaps my gift is better suited to high school students, where, instead of being frightened off by big, scary ideas, I can help students think of them as relevant and interesting. Hopefully I can help foster a love of learning, exploration, and discovery in students.
I want to teach Latin and English because I love how literature is so very human, how literature captures and describes the essence of humanity and our shared experience. I know it's a bit much to get middle or high school students to appreciate over 2700 years of "shared human experience," but I'm going to try.
Latin is an odd-duck these days, but I love to teach it. The benefits of studying Latin are immense (see "Why Latin?"). The subject is challenging, however, because students learn to think in new ways; their brains are not previously trained to think in terms of grammar and word endings. But after a day (or a week, depending on the student), as neural connections are made, as they practice, light switches comes on in their brains, and they have their first Latin "A-HA!" moment.
That's why I love learning. As a student, I love that "A-HA!" moment and the little rush of elation that accompanies new understanding.
That's why I love teaching. I love it when my students have that "A-HA!" moment and everything becomes clear. A challenge has been overcome and something new has been learned.
I love the challenge of finding the right way to teach different students. It is great when a student understands something right away, but it is more rewarding when the student keeps saying, "I still don't get it," and, after I've come up with four or five different ways to explain a difficult concept, I hit upon the right approach for that particular student and with a great sigh of relief he says, "OHH. NOW I get it."
I love it when my students say that Latin is easy, because I've made it fun for them to learn something like participles, the gerund, or the dreaded "passive periphrastic."
My role is not simply to tell students to memorize "stuff." They can read a book for that. My job is to guide my students on a journey, to ask them the right questions so that they can figure things out "on their own" and be empowered by their intellectual accomplishments, to make connections between their studies and "the real world," and to foster a desire to continue learning.