A teaching philosophy“The task of a modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” –C.S. Lewis I imagine that irrigating deserts requires a mastery of planning and studying the terrain in order to supply water to where it is needed. There must be countless hours of observation, measuring inches and acres of earth, and hot days constructing the watery framework with a team of builders that seek to make seeds grow. It is a thought that provides so many similarities to the process that is teaching. During my development, first as student and then as educator, I have found that pedagogy is not simply a study of the cause and effect relationships that lead to the academic maturity of a child. There is an emotional investment that must be carefully and respectfully established in order for the “earth” to receive the water that satisfies the thirst of growth. I think that above all it is the connections with students that are the most powerful for success. Little can be accomplished without respect on the part of the student, or the teacher. As I have reflected on my own experience I have found this to be the essential variable in what has led to my commitment to this profession. Looking back on my experience as a student I feel compelled to recognize the adults in my life that motivated, inspired, taught, and held me accountable to my learning. They provided the opportunities for growth that I needed to succeed. With compassion, love, and respect, they instilled in me a need to learn, and the work ethic that motivates my hard work to succeed. In my adolescent years I found myself awakening to the world around me. I became alert to the fact that not only did I have the power to affect my environment but I had a responsibility that called me to examine my impact and make it positive. I regarded the adults around me and saw the influence they held in my development. I respected the hard work, and devotion they inserted into their work, a work that usually involved me. In them I selected role models, so when it came time to choose a path to pursue while studying at Michigan State University, it was to them that I looked for guidance and inspiration. On the day that I graduated from high school I was surrounded by friends, some who had not experienced the same respect for the adults in their life. Their lives had not been so well “irrigated” as mine. As I experienced the sadness that resulted, I felt a growing desire to join the ranks of those who had so inspired me. I adopted English as my major, a subject area that I felt lent itself well to providing the skills necessary to empower my students in their journeys of growth. I selected secondary education as a means to meet and support the minds similar to what my calling demanded. I transitioned in my experience as student and became a staff member in a mentorship program called Teens for Christ that I had attended my junior and senior year of high school. I developed relationships with my charges that provided me the satisfaction that I had chosen well in my profession. As I headed into my internship year at Holt Junior High I was expecting the relationships with my school community and my students to be a wonderful secondary commission, an expected byproduct that came with teaching. What I found as I invested in that community, and in my students, was precisely the opposite. Educators teach their students how to be civic members of the world around them almost more than their subject matter. It was essential to teach and model a good work ethic, responsibility, civic duty, kindness to others, and values that promote a dedication to improving the community, even if that path was difficult. I was delighted. I joined an after-school help program called the Writing Center, and was satisfied to see the relationships I developed with students directly benefit my students’ success in the classroom. I jumped in on a program called Rams on the Go, a program dedicated to walking and running while listening to works of fiction on audiobooks. My enthusiasm paid off as students saw I cared about them as people and as learners. Additionally, I developed relationships with my colleagues, who provided me a team from which to grow and work. As a teacher, I think it is vital to maintain an effort to be a continual student, to be a learner in my craft. I want to be persistently building on my practice, examining the data provided to me by my assessments, and then seeking resources to hone my reactions to this data. I want to maintain a flexibility to change for my students, and to change with them. As I encounter future generations immersed in technology I recognize that changes are swift, and in an effort to keep my teaching effective I must maintain a position with many resources. My colleagues provide a wealth of these, as does the community of parents behind every class. Throughout my internship I intentionally focused on communication between home and school, and discovered that parents are an enormously important resource in supporting a pupil academically. I believe that there must be a well-oiled system of communication between the adult role models in a child’s life to support the habits necessary for success. This communication must take multiple forms and be bolstered by the data I collect from my assessments. I structure my assessments around a design that seeks the demonstration of a mastery of objectives. My units are built backwards first, so that I know the end goal I seek for my students, and can share that with them and their parents. In this way we can partner towards that end goal, and use our daily assessments to inform on a student’s progress. In today’s world there is a constant emphasis on change and improvement, and it is connections between kids and their experience at school that will make a difference for these transitions. Using my assessments and reacting to the narrative that each test and handout has to give about a student’s improvement will supply me with the information I need to “irrigate” the already-existing seeds that I know are present in every student’s mind. I seek to provide the opportunities for my students to reach down roots, to unfurl leaves, and stretch up to the sun, to success. I want to join the network of influence that saturates this experience and watch the desert grow green with produce. Want a printable copy of this post?
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An essay of past goalsWhen I graduated with my bachelor degree and advanced to my teaching internship in 2011, I felt full of trepidation and naïveté. I knew I was fresh, ignorant, and inexperienced. I lined up my binders, sharpened my pencils, and hung my meager supply of “teacher clothes”. I pushed up my glasses and stepped before a group of wiggling seventh graders who probably mirrored my feelings on their first day of Junior High. It wasn’t long before my suspicions were confirmed. It was a beautiful year, albeit full of the blood, sweat, and tears that I have since come to associate with teaching. I walked out with confidence and not a little excitement for my first position as “Ms. Converse.” The spring passed and I waited eagerly for the letters, the calls, the interviews that I felt would inevitably lead me to my future classroom. I collected a handful of interviews-- none seemed promising, and no one called back. As September loomed, I realized that I would not be a teacher. Not yet, and certainly not in the middle of the Michigan Recession. The following spring, I tried again- and finally scored an interview for a Junior High English position. The interview was daunting, and I swallowed my nerves as I stared down a conference table with nearly ten interviewers. For thirty minutes I explained my experiences, my repertoire of classroom management strategies, my excitement about technology as it related to assessment. And then one question stopped me. “And what are your goals for the next five years?” I heard the answer in my mind bubble up automatically-- something about my future master’s degree and my excitement to devote myself to the community in which my students lived. But instead, I thought of the last year of failed interviews, of waiting for the new school year to turn over, of the year I spent working behind a cash register, thinking of the students who were not mine. “I just want to teach,” I said, my eyes stinging with emotion. “I just want so badly to be working with kids, it’s hard to see that far ahead. Wherever I am, my goal is to be working toward the success of students who are my own.”And they nodded with me like they knew. I got the job, and when I push up my glasses and step in front of my students every day, it is with the joy of those words that I have the privilege to plan for the next five years-- and beyond. My goals now are more sophisticated. I want to take my classroom-- now at the High School teaching American English-- and invigorate a curriculum of reading “dead, old, white guys”. I want to use technology to reach my low level, resistant readers AND my proficient readers. I want to teach with creativity, equity, and efficiency. I want to ensure that ALL my students can access the skills needed to deliver their own five-year plan. I want to inspire my students to dedicate their own blood, sweat, and tears toward their carefully crafted dreams. My goals haven’t dramatically changed, since all teachers want these things, but they now have the refinement afforded by experience, by real students, and the ability to iterate year after year in a job I love. And since the entirety of these was my goal in the beginning, I think I am well on my way. Want a printable copy of this post? |