My Educational Philosophy

I aspire to contribute to and help build a democratic society where collaboration is key, contributing to community development. Education plays an essential role in shaping society by providing equal and interactive opportunities for all individuals to become active members of society. The purpose of educating children and people should be nurturing students to think critically, analytically, cultivate their own ideas and decision-making abilities, fostering the skills necessary for success in life. As a teacher of English as a Second Language for the elementary level, I believe language learning comes with many opportunities in life, whether they are personal, professional or academic. While not strictly necessary for success, acquiring a new language can greatly contribute to personal and social growth. English, being one of the most spoken languages globally alongside Spanish and Mandarin, holds significant importance. It serves as a gateway to information worldwide, with much of it being provided in English. Additionally, access to higher education often relies on proficiency in English, given its status as a universal language. In our role as Elementary English teachers, we lay the foundation for students to continue developing their language skills in later stages of learning. By fostering English proficiency at an early age, we give them the tools to access knowledge and opportunities, ultimately contributing to their overall growth and societal participation.

Fostering the ability to think and reason is primordial for learning to occur. Steering away from La Educacion Bancaria, schools should contribute to develop these capacities by fostering critical thinking skills, as mentioned above, so that students can develop the capacity to reason and think in order for learning to take place through constructivism. This produces individuality and agency; it prevents humans from following the masses, and allows them to have thoughts for themselves and to question everything around them. Furthermore, all students and people are intelligent and have the capacity to learn these skills. The peculiarity of this is how we help them to develop these capacities. We should also take into account that our students will be of the diverse sort. Nowadays we are receiving in school more and more children with exceptional qualities that render their learning process differently. Some of them will not know how to express their knowledge in these capacities but that does not mean that they do not know or understand them. There are also those students that are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) that come from different backgrounds and countries; students like these need to be taught within their sociocultural context like Vygostky’s says in his sociocultural theory. Some can have analytical thinking styles and others holistic thinking styles. The school system and education institutions should scaffold student learning by utilizing different strategies in an eclectic manner, getting to know students as individuals and their learning styles in order to offer them significant and meaningful learning opportunities.

Expanding on what schools should contribute to, they should contribute to the moral education of children. As mentioned before, children come from diverse social contexts and that could mean that some of these children are not being taught morals or values at home. The ethical virtues or morals that should be taught are universal and cultural. They should foster respect, honesty, empathy, collaboration, family, identity and more. Schools should contribute to this by modeling these values and practicing them at all times. It can also be addressed through instruction by teaching literature in a meaningful way and discussing the values present.

In order to contribute to students and their learning, the knowledge must be just like Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner stated, through constructivism. We do this by offering English language learners deductive instruction. This means that the teacher would ask students questions in order for them to construct their knowledge and deduce the rules of what they are being presented with. This inherently stimulates students' abilities of reflecting, intuition, investigation and experimentation. We should also take into account the affective filter theory by Stephen Krashen. This theory is represented by a continuum that can be lowered or risen and depending on its state, will be the kind of performance they will achieve. When the affective filter is risen student performance will be lowered; when it is lowered students will become confident, relaxed and motivated which will mean higher performance.

Learning and teaching are inherently interconnected. I believe that as educators, we are lifelong learners, constantly refining our skills and deepening our understanding of our subject areas. I believe that the best way to teach is practicing the immersion theory. This means that the best way to learn and acquire language is by exposing the student to an environment where the new language is all around and spoken naturally. This stimulates the student to produce new utterances and try out their hypothesis about the language. Another theory that is relevant to the process of teaching and learning is the transfer theory proposed by Jimm Cummings. This theory emphasizes how the first language influences students' proficiency in their second language. There can be positive or negative transfer and as teachers we should be able to identify them in order to help students modify the behavior deductively so that it is more meaningful for them.

Based on my experiences during my educational trajectory I want to adopt the role that my past teachers adopted with me. They were role models during my experiences and because of them I wish to be the kind of educator that guides and facilitates student learning. The kind that fosters students' active participation and construction of knowledge so that they can become active members in society that have critical thinking skills. In order to teach the English language and for students to gain knowledge the role of the teacher is to get to know the student and offer instruction that is relevant and meaningful to their experiences. Finally, the role of the teacher and the student should be characterized as one that is respectful, interactive and trustful. One where the student and teacher learn and teach together or from each other.

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Descarga de responsabilidades:  Los trabajos que presenta el estudiante en el portafolio electrónico son responsabilidad de éste y no representan, necesariamente, las posturas de la Institución.  La Universidad de Puerto Rico no se hace responsable de los errores. El estudiante tiene la responsabilidad de cumplir con las políticas de tecnología del Sistema Universitario de la UPR.