Teaching Philosophy

During my seven years of teaching in the public schools, I never really had much time to stop and reflect on the education profession as a whole. I was always too busy "teaching" to put much thought into why I'm doing what I'm doing. As a result of going back to school and working on my doctoral degree, I had some time to focus on what was really important to me in education. I will begin this philosophy with a general explanation of my feelings towards teaching and then concentrate on two of my major areas of interest: social Studies and technology. Finally, I will focus on teacher education and emphasize how this philosophy influences me as a college professor.

Educators have a difficult task in trying to instruct all of the children who come into the classroom. Young people today constantly face a myriad of problems, and teachers must adjust to meet the challenge. I believe that all children can learn, but if the traditional ways of teacher-directed, teacher-controlled classrooms continue, many students will not gain the necessary skills to be able to survive in the 21st century. While I believe that there is a place for lecture and the like in the classroom, it must be supplemented with discussion and deliberation, cooperative learning, hands-on activities, etc. During my years in the classroom, I tried to remember Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and incorporate activities to accommodate different learning styles. With increased emphasis on standardized testing, it has become more common to "teach to the test." While I understand the pressure that faculty and administrators face to raise test scores, stories of kids getting sick to their stomach out of nervousness or fear disturb me greatly. If teachers are able to engage children in a variety of meaningful, thought provoking activities, I think that test scores will take care of themselves.

Social Studies has generally been the subject that students have found the most boring. While I had my share of weak teachers, I also had those select few that made history come alive for me. Those teachers provided a love of history that led to my becoming a history major and steered me towards a career in teaching. In my seven years in the classroom, I had the opportunity to cover a variety of areas in the Social Studies including: World History, American Government, Economics, International Relations, and Geography. While each subject was very different, the goal of instructing students about their role in an ever-changing world remained central to my teaching. It concerns me that in many parts of the country, the Social Studies curriculum is being condensed or even eliminated in order to spend more time on "testable" subjects. One thing that appeals to me about Social Studies is its interdisciplinary nature. In a subject like Geography, I used science to cover physical geography, math to explain scale and absolute location, and English to teach about keeping a travel diary. If any subject should be emphasized in schools today, it should be Social Studies.

When I was still in the classroom, I tried to keep up with appropriate technology to use with my students. This was not always easy as each of the four schools I worked at had varying levels of hardware and software. I personally bought programs such as 3-D Atlas and America Rock to help middle school students with Geography. I used the Internet with high school students to do a stock market simulation where we tracked stocks for two months. In my doctoral program, I was able not only to create web pages, PowerPoint presentations, movies, and WebQuests, but also to have studied the Digital Divide, distance education, Internet safety, and other issues facing educators concerning technology. I believe that technology can be a useful tool in helping students become more engaged in their learning, but it is not a panacea for all of the current problems in education. In a visit to a Florida middle school, I saw a science teacher use computers to help her students track the flight of birds in a joint project with 15 other schools around the country. The computer was only one part of this venture that enabled students at a variety of ability levels to grapple with some “real life” issues. This is the direction technology needs to be going in education, not just doing the same things we are already doing with paper, pencils, and textbooks.

Even though I am now a university professor, I am a teacher at heart. While I enjoy research, conference presentations, publications, conducting seminars, and the like, I receive the most gratification working with students. I continue to learn each day from them and am constantly amazed at the efforts they put into their coursework and their creativity. It makes me feel much more secure about the state of public education to know that young people like these are joining the profession.