My goal as an educator is to allow a safe learning environment for every type of student and to meet each individual student's needs. I would like my teaching to have a life- long effect on my students and to know that someone is always in their corner. By using the humanism learning theory, I will give each student freedom to take responsibility for their learning and allow them to grow in a timely manner while mastering the content needed to continue on to the next grade.
To reach these goals, I will assess each student and their progress before learning new content. I will then create an individualized plan to allow my lecturing and lessons to be able to reach each student to that they can all absorb the material at the same rate. I want to reach these goals also by giving my students supervised exploration- which means allowing my students to have control of their learning and learn responsibility about how to manage their learning with goals in mind.
I believe that grading does not define student learning or progress. I will give homework but only when it is truly needed to make sure students are on task and are grasping the subject content. I will also give occasional quizzes and group projects in order to evaluate their progress as a whole. I also believe that in order to give a student a grade that will affect their class average, it is our goal as educators to make sure the student has what they need in order to receive a fair grade. If I see active engagement and participation and then that student bombs an assessment, I won’t take that grade heavily into consideration due to the fact that they understood the content in class but may just not test as well as other students
When it comes to classroom management and discipline strategies, I have to take into account the age of the students that I will be teaching. Middle school ages are the hardest ages to go through and with that in mind, I will access “punishment” and consequences accordingly. We as humans all make mistakes, especially at that age and when that does occur in a classroom that disrupts the learning process of others, it has to be handled. I will allow the student to take a step outside the classroom and gather their emotions and if the behavior continues, more extreme readjusting will be put into place. I do not believe in sending a student out on the first occurrence of wrong behavior because that is only allowing them to miss content that they will need to understand their material.
Student feedback is a huge priority to me as an educator. Without student feedback and student engagement, there is no point in getting in front of a classroom just merely talking to them. It is my goal to have students connect their learning to real-world experiences that will benefit them outside of my classroom. I will improve my teaching by heavily weighing my students' opinions and honest feedback about how they felt about a certain lesson or activity.