Philosophy of Education

I believe that the purpose of education is to prepare future generations to find meaning and joy in their lives. Perhaps it is idealistic to say that education shouldn’t be aimed solely at placing people into jobs that work well for them, but I believe that education should be far wider in its hopeful scope of influence than that. It should be able to teach students about the world, social issues that are both currently present and those that have occurred in the past. While it should still have a focus on hard skills like science and mathematics that are beneficial in future employment, it shouldn’t solely be limited to those topics. This limitation can lead to students entering a society that they don’t fully understand, and not understanding the society that you’re a part of makes it harder to live to your fullest within that society. Translating this into an educational discipline, I would love nothing more than to teach young people to love and appreciate science whilst also subtly fostering the ability to think freely and have confidence in themselves. Thirdly, I would want my education to spark curiosity about the natural world and push my students’ imaginations towards new scientific discoveries if they are so interested in the field. I chose education because I’ve always enjoyed tutoring and helping talk through concepts, especially when I can see that “lightbulb” moment when a student finally understands a concept, not just to the point that they can recite it to you from memory, but to the point that they can connect it to broader concepts and truly understand and appreciate the topic at hand.

Moving into the classroom, I would love for my teaching to be hands-on as much as possible. I always grew up with mostly lecture-based science courses, which made it very challenging for me personally to interact with scientific topics enthusiastically. I understand that not all students will have the same love for science that others will, but I would want to enact my philosophy in a way that engages students minds in such a way that, even if they don’t care for the scientific topics, they are still able to learn from experiments and other activities about how to think openly, to try things for themselves, and to not be discouraged from failure. I would also love to explore more culturally relevant topics, such as social justice and current politics, and it would be interesting to see how I could weave together those social teachings with science-based education. I would want my students to see me as knowledgeable, passionate, and approachable above all things. I would want to earn their respect, rather than just demand it, whilst also recognizing the talent and potential of each student and having them know I can recognize that within them and respect it. Throughout my career, I would love to grow further by continually keeping up with current scientific discoveries, whilst updating my curriculum, methods, and experiments often to make my classes as beneficial and enjoyable as possible for the students.

I would expect my students to make efforts to foster free-thinking abilities, to learn to think outside of the box and ask questions, and to develop ideas on how to follow up on their questions through experiments. These skills are fundamental to all disciplines of science, but also can be important to all fields and to the development of people as a whole. I would want my students to ideally be able to recognize that these goals are what are being fostered through the science curriculum, but also, I would love for the level of my teaching to be sufficient in such a way that even if they don’t recognize these goals, they can still walk away having learned big points from my classes. Ideally, the students would leave my classroom not only knowing more about science, but also knowing how to accept failure and grow from it, how to think openly about new or confusing topics, how to form experiments and enact them safely, and lastly, how to recognize their own talents and interests early so that they have all the time in the world to pursue the life they desire.