My Educational Philosophy

Being a teacher is hard.

There is a lot more that goes into it than most people expect. I think most people think, wow, weekends off, holidays off, summers off, can this job get any better? It seems like most people think our job consists of coming into school, teaching a from a book or handing out a test, and going home.

The reality is that every single moment of my day is consumed by different thoughts. Thoughts about a new way to use a tool in my classroom, thoughts about a student seeming extra tired today, thoughts about how I can make my curriculum more inclusive, thoughts about how I can integrate difficult conversations in the classroom, thoughts about what I am going to say to a student I know is struggling, and the list goes on. The reality is that I am a mom to 60 kids a year and I care more about them than I care about anything else in the entire world. I want to make sure my students feel cared for, respected, powerful, and represented. Creating this begins with creating a project based learning environment.

In classes where students have autonomy over their work, not only does the environment become more positive, but students actually get excited to come to class. In a school I worked in recently, their project based program included their Chemistry, History, and English class all connected. The students worked under the three teachers in block periods. We worked on projects loosely with the students creating their own timelines with check in slips, exit tickets, and constantly goal setting for both individual students as well as in their groups. It created this dynamic between teacher and student where the students felt they were always in control. The teachers would change lessons and directions based on the needs of the students.

If a week was going particularly poorly, educators would implement stricter goal setting and more time built in for student progress. But this “strict” nature would not result in negative consequences if work was not completed. There was always time for students to do what they needed to and if it really was not working, directions would be changed so that students could get the work completed. It was constantly student-centered with everything adapting around the progress of the students. It was not always easy, and often it felt overwhelming when the students were not on the timeline that was originally planned, however, as the year progressed, it became a lot easier to judge what would work with these students. The act of listening to your students is one of the most important ways to make a classroom a place where students want to be. Students cannot be heard if you do not listen.

In Cornelius Minor’s book, We Got This, he talks about the importance of listening to your students to create this student centered learning environment that I am striving towards. He says,

"Listening in this way means you are radically kid-centered, that you are adaptive, and that you are willing to take public risks. Not everyone at school is. Being these things will make you a better teacher, but sometimes being them can make you stand out. Standing for children is the most powerful thing a human can do, but it is never easy.” (Minor, 2019, p. 24)

I want to be the teacher that does stand out. I want to foster an environment that allows students to be at the front of the classroom, not me. A student should be in command of their own learning. As an educator, I am only there to support students by providing the necessary resources, curriculum, and space for them to excel.

This project based learning experience as well as the emphasis on listening has made me realize that the best educators do not have rigid, inflexible plans. They create lessons but know that at any point they can adapt. Every single student and every single class is different. You might create a lesson centered around journaling and quiet reflection that works great in one class, but then fails when you have a class of restless students after a lunch period. The most important aspect of my teaching is to be dynamic. You can almost never stick to plan “A.” The world simply does not work on this model anyway.

If I want my students to feel involved and in control, I need to take them into consideration more than any other teaching strategy, plan, or method. We have spent so much time thinking that we cannot take risks and we must go by what has been done before, but that is not how progress is made. Teaching is more than just giving students information. We are crafting a generation of people who are going to create a better tomorrow. Keeping the fixed mindset that we have to keep everything the same will never allow us to make the change we want. Minor (2019) says,

“The true masterminds- the real enemies-in this dystopia are the business-as-usual attitudes, binary thinking, and inflexibility with which we have been conditioned to approach these problems. There things have robbed us of our power and our curiosity. Without them our revolutions die before we can even think to start them” (p. 10). I will not let what the norms that have been in place for generations deter me from changing the game.

One of my favorite things to incorporate into the classroom is play. Elena Aguilar (2018) says,“Play shapes brains, makes animals smarter and more adaptable, fosters empathy, and makes possible complex social groups… Play lies at the core of creativity and innovation.” Play is such an important component of the classroom (and life) that we often do not think about. Starting a class with a fun activity that is about having fun rather than being “academic” is something that a lot of teachers think we do not have time for, but the building of a community is a fundamental part of learning.

You cannot build a community if you are not intentional about it.

I find that integrating play into every day academic activities is a way to not only check for understanding, but to really help students stay interested and engaged. We come to school every day to teach children, not just students. I may teach English, but first and foremost, I teach kids. There are a lot of important aspects of students that we do not address often enough and one of the biggest is their need for play. Creating space for students to enjoy themselves while they are learning is imperative to a classroom that functions well.

My philosophy may seem like a lot, but in order to create a classroom where students thrive, this is what I see as necessary. An environment were students feel independent but still guided is what I hope to achieve in my classroom. I hope that with this, students come in to my class every day excited to know what we are going to do next because that is when learning really happens.