Running head: MY EDUCATION PHILOSOPHY

My Educational Philosophy
Katie Temps
Molloy College

MY EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

While trying to figure out what kind of teacher I aspire to be, I realized it was harder than
I thought it was going to be. Teaching as a profession cannot be done in a singular way. Every
individual has their own perception on styles of instructing, learning, and anything that has to do
with education. Each class that a teacher walks into, is going to have a new set of challenges and
experiences that will be both positive and negative. How an educator adapts to each students
needs, is what makes them remember able or not. In one class, there could be students with
social-economic needs, behavioral needs, learning disabilities, etc. Each student is unique and
are individuals and they should be treated as such. The hardest part of creating lessons could be
figuring out ways to target all the special needs that are present in the classroom at one time. An
issue that may occur, is certain environments effecting students abilities to learn in a given
classroom setting. Each person achieves in different situations. A difficult situation that a
teacher must figure out is how to place children in a classroom that fits their specific needs. The
most beneficial outcome for students would be if they were placed based on both environmental
and learning reasons.
Each teacher must encompass a variety of characteristics to keep their students engaged
and learning. We are poets, philosophers, diplomats and architects, among other things. If I had
to choose one to be the most important, I would say the architect characteristic. For a student to
learn they must have a solid foundation, just like any structure. Being an architect means that as
a teacher you can help students build off previous knowledge to achieve anything they are
striving for. Any lesson cannot be accomplished without structure. Being an aspiring math
teacher, its even more prevalent to have structure and foundation. Math is basically a scaffold,
every lesson builds off the next. It is crucial that students understand fundamentals all the way
through to the finality of a lesson before the next idea is even presented. In the Common Core

MY EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
Standards, math problems are being presented most of the time as a word problems. The
children are being asked to use inference to find the general answer, rather than the exact
numerical answer. As in many other subjects, this approach in math is not easy for the students
to follow easily. A way for a teacher to encourage his/her students to want to embrace this new
way to look at education, progressivism is a highlighted theory to accomplish this goal. John
Dewey was at the forefront of the concept of progressivism. With this type of learning the
students will be more hands on and have more experience with group work. If students get the
chance to experience this theory of education, they can experience the greatness that can come
out of cooperative learning.