My Educational Philosophy
Karl Dekock
Trinity Christian College
EDU 203
Dr. Bill Boerman-Cornell
December 1, 2020
My Educational Philosophy
This paper will be looking at what my view of what teaching should be and how it plays out in a school setting. This will also use the philosophies of an educational philosopher to better understand how these ideas work. The first step to understanding this is to answer the question of what makes a teacher. The overall job of a teacher is to grow the student in understanding. This can be of a subject or topic but can also apply to other areas like how to treat others with respect or important life skills. This is very closely related to the purpose of education as what teaching is should resemble the purpose of it. The purpose is to nurture minds to be well equipped for what life hands them and what they want to do with what they are given. So directly following these two ideas a teacher should see it as their task to give a student tools like math skills, reading skills and basic knowledge of how things works in order to accomplish these things. When using these concepts to see the structure of teaching it shapes many things within the system itself.
One such thing is the relationship between a student and the teacher. When you have these visions of what a teacher should be and what they should do this shapes the way a teacher views a student. The student should not be viewed as just an object of a job that is your task of filling with information but a person that is being shaped by the things you want them to know. This then only works if you understand the students that you are teaching. If you assume that every student is the same or that they all learn the same way the target that you are shooting for will miss many of the students as they are all different people with different life experiences. This is where the teacher student relationship plays a large role. In the book How then Shall we Care this class has been looking into what it means to care for a student. In this book one concept stood out and that is that there are three dimensions to care in education. These are personal care, pedagogical care and interpersonal care. The first is looking at the student as a person, the second the student as a learner and the third is the student as a member of the classroom community (Shotsberger & Freytag, 2020). This was very influential in how I then looked at the classroom. There are all these individuals that are complex in themselves with different ways they act as a student and as a person but then there is also all of these brought together and how all the pieces work together. Therefore, I find the concept of care so closely related to the operation of a classroom. You need the three parts to work together for the whole to function if one part is lacking the whole system is lacking. This is where it becomes very important to understand not only the individual student but also the student body as a whole. Sending time to understand a student is very important to this with questions like what their family life is like, what do they enjoy in their free time and what makes them the person they are. This can then play a part of how you can care about them as a learner when you use these things to help make it easier for them. It also helps to find a place in the classroom where every student can excel in their own way. When all of this is combined into one mindset of teaching it produces this idea that students should not be taught facts. They should however be taught that by learning is a way to enrich life and can be made personal. This makes the desire to learn increase as you are no longer being taught things but want to learn things. This educational philosophy is expressed well by the philosopher Paulo Freire.
In a book written by Freire he states “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher the depositor” (Paulo, 1999). This way of doing things as he explains leaves the students filled with all this knowledge but can’t make sense of it beyond two plus two equals four. This is explained as the limiter to learning as a student doesn’t use this to think freely but only spit out facts. This ties into what I said about teaching as a student needs to be able to take what they learn and apply it to how that can change their worldview. This makes it so that not only are things being deposited into the container that Freire talks about, but this stuff can be applied and used more than just the facts. An example that he uses is the capitol of a country. You can know what it is but what does that do for the student. It’s when the student can make a connection like one of their favorite paintings is from that city does these facts provide more than being stored. This was best showed in his work when Freire took 300 sugarcane farmers and taught them how to read and write in forty-five days. This was accomplished with what he called ‘circles of culture’ which allowed students to have an open dialogue with the educators (Gadotti & A, 2009). In his mind students need to have this open line of communication to think and communicate with the educator. This is important because it changes learning from being deposited information to learning in a way that makes sense to the student with influences from culture and the things around them to make sense of the new information.
There is one event in history that stands out in Freire’s impact that sums up what a teacher should be. In the town of Edinburgh, Scotland a model taken from Freire was taken to develop a place to create “the sense that ordinary people became involved in an extraordinary political process which changed the life of Scotland forever” (Gadotti & A, 2009). I think this was such an incredible event that spoke to what Freire was trying to say. Instead of having a classroom where the teacher is on top and is feeding you information to later read off and get points, this takes the person and gives them knowledge to then ask questions and learn how their voice and knowledge works in the world. This then creates people that are talked about in this book, ones who ask questions and use knowledge in their everyday life to change the world around them. This is the most important thing a teacher can teach a student, how to use the information they must voice what they are seeing in order to bring change. Any big change that has happened in a country or the world is from people using their voice and knowledge to ask questions. If a teacher can nurture this in a student, then when it comes to important things the student won’t back down to voicing how they feel. This kind of teaching ties directly into what kind of methods are most compatible with my teaching philosophy.
The biggest way that my philosophy plays out in teaching is having a student-based classroom. This would mean that while as a teacher I would still have authority I am on the same level as the students. This simply put would look like a classroom where student questions matter as they are trying to learn they way that makes sense for them. This is shown really well in the book called To Teach: The Journey in Comics when the students receive a class pet a turtle named bingo. The class loves him and sings a song about him. The teacher then uses this as a chance to teach record keeping, observational skills and writing creativity because the students love the turtle (Aryers & Alexander-Tanner, 2010). This is a great example of the methodology in which I look at learning. It is not a stagnant thing but can change when students become interested in something. The turtle probably changed how things were being taught, the material stayed the same but realizing that the students would learn better with something they are interested in. By seeing the students on the same learning plain as the teacher changes like this are easier and made possible.
This kind of teaching is possible anywhere a public school, private school or anywhere learning can be accomplished. For me as a teacher though I feel most called to work in a public school. There isn’t anything wrong with teaching anywhere else but the reason I feel called to teaching in a public school is the need that is there. The reason for this is not that public schools have greater need than private schools but rather a need in demographic. In order to have a world that respects all different types of people, people need to be exposed to different kinds of people. As a Christian from a suburban/rural area I provide a way at looking at life that many students in a private Urban school would not have. This is important for forming what other people are like and forming coherence and understanding. If I can make a difference in a student’s life by simply showing them that someone with this background can act in a way that isn’t harsh or plays into their preconceived notions, then I would see that as a success. This then ties everything in this paper together when considering a Christian worldview.
One of the biggest things that Christians are called to do is to be in the world but not of the world. This is so that others may experience what a person who calls themselves Christian is like. I feel that I can do this with my teaching philosophy. By showing students compassion by how they fit into the classroom. This is by looking at them not as containers to fill but equals to go through the journey of learning together. To tie this back to the desire to be in the system of school that I described I again am looking through my Christian worldview. To use the gifts given to me by God in the place they are most needed would be practicing what Jesus has told us the best way I see fit. Therefore, I have the educational Philology that I do and the desire to create a classroom that I think achieves this in the setting that does the most good for the development of God’s kingdom here on earth.
Aryers, W., & Alexander-Tanner, R. (2010). To Teach: The Journey in Comics. New York: Teachers College Press.
Freire, P. (1921). The Politics of Education. Westport, CT: Bergin and Gravey.
Gadotti, M., & A, T. C. (2009). Paulo Freire: Education for Development. Development and Change, 1255-1267.
Kirkwood, G., & Kirkwood, C. (2011). Living Adult Education: Freire in Scotland . Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Paulo, F. (1999). The "Banking" Concept of Education. New York: Bedford/ St. Martin's.
Shotsberger, P., & Freytag, C. (2020). How Shall We Then Care. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers.