My Teaching Philosophy

My passion for teaching grew even stronger when I had taken Dr.Smirnova’s social studies methods course. I learned a great deal of techniques, websites, and strategies, in order t engage students within the classroom. Dr. Smirnova provided us with a vast amount of tools and technology to use and teach social studies in an engaging and unique way. Teaching with these strategies brought social studies alive. Learning was fun! My personal philosophy about teaching is that it is the teacher’s role to educate all students in a supportive and respectful manor. Educators should have the ability to differentiate instruction techniques to meet the needs of each and every student is something that I value in education. Every child learns differently, so as a teacher I would use a wide range of techniques to help my students’ prosper and grow. I would approach an activity in numerous ways to help every child. I believe that every child learns differently; therefore it is crucial for a teacher to use different techniques and learning tools. I want to change the world, and I know education is where I could have the greatest impact. Future teachers, such as myself, can truly make a difference. To be an effective teacher, my students must have the opportunity to take responsibility for becoming life-long learners, while having fun. I want my students to become empowered by their own learning. I want to teach my students to love learning.

            An effective teacher is one who knows how to engage his or her students and properly meets the needs of each and every student. An effective teacher is one who creates a learning experience that is meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active, can build student leaning in all areas. To do so, teachers can apply numerous strategies and techniques in their lessons. I learned three excellent strategies this semester that I would be sure to use in the future! The three learning strategies included: direct instruction, inquiry, and cooperative learning. Direct instruction is when the lesson is teacher based, and the teacher directly teaches the lesson to the students. Inquiry lesson is when the students research information, make observations, collect data, and eventually devise their own way to report their findings to their classmates. Cooperative learning is when students work together in small groups to complete an activity or task. Students are working together in these lessons to achieve a common goal. I had the chance to apply my skills and use these methods during fieldwork. I was truly able to see the great impact these strategies alone had on the students.

My philosophy is based on the five characteristics of powerful social studies are: Meaningful, Integrative, Value-Based, Challenging, and Active. Social studies learning should be meaningful learning experience to truly grab the student’s attention and interest. When students are capable of making connections between new content and prior knowledge, students will learn and remember the content that is being taught. It is crucial to help students make text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-text connections. Helping children make these connections allow them to relate it to their own experiences and further their understanding. Engagement and hands-on activities help connect text to real life situations. I learned when students make these connections it would help them prosper and grow into well-educated individuals. As a teacher, I believe that the learning process should be integrative. It is crucial to incorporate a vast amount of topic and skills. It is important to keep students in touch with the world around them. One way to do so is inform students on the current events within their society. This will allow students to become more aware, involved, and engaged, within their society. This will help promote personal development and further students understanding allowing them to make generalizations, build their cognitive development, and promote personal development. Helping students do just this will allow them to make better connections in all areas and learn how to apply their skills and new knowledge in all content areas. Teaching should be value-based because it is meaningful to students and allows students to relate to the content. Learning should be challenging allowing students to build off their prior knowledge and educate themselves. Students should be active participants in their learning and build off of one another’s ideas and knowledge. In the future, I will be sure to include incorporate these five powerful strategies into my lessons and units.