Philosophy of Education

Education is perhaps the greatest source of human ingenuity and achievement, and I believe that
education not only lays the foundations of success and aspiration, but also instils both individual
worth and the spur for change. Education should not be a monotonous memorization of facts of
figures, but a source of ideas and concepts that can be applied and expanded upon for both their
individual success in their society and beyond. As a teacher, it is my passion to encourage
students to learn, to spark their interests in expansion of their minds, but it is also my duty to
promote the establishment of their system of values, morals, and ethics in application to
themselves and others. As a source of knowledge, I have both a desire and obligation to invoke a
thirst for knowledge within my students, but also a desire to promote cohesion in an ever
globalizing world.
Regardless of an individuals faith, gender, socioeconomic background, and ethno-cultural ties, I
believe that every child has the right to an education, and that every child possesses value as an
individual and in contribution to the classroom environment. I vehemently believe that it is a
teachers duty to encourage the individual to value themselves, but also to establish an
interpersonal relationship to promote classroom cohesion and individual achievement. A teacher
should know each students talent and abilities, and pursue a classroom environment where the
students can thrive. My policies guarantee that each individual are treated with the highest
amount of fairness and equality. My student centered classroom not only promotes my students
to achieve higher levels of critical thinking, but also independence through a relation of mutual
respect and trust between teacher and student.
I reject the notion that the transaction of knowledge is one way, but I believe that there is an
equal transaction of knowledge between student and teacher especially in an ESL environment. I
believe that an ESL teachers curriculum should promote this transaction, thus promoting not
only the transaction of knowledge but also culture, and my curriculum accomplishes exactly that.
My curriculum encourages my students to think more critically by challenging them to obtain
higher levels of proficiency in the English through listening, speaking, and reading activities, but
also through discussion and exchange of culture. As an ESL teacher, I discourage the idea that an
ESL student must emulate the speech and writing of a native speaker to the letter, but encourage
the concept of obtaining proficiency so that native speakers and the international community can
understand them with little effort. I believe that a curriculum should not spur the concept of
forced assimilation or abandonment of a native tongue, but a coexistence between languages.
Finally, I believe that a curriculum should be flexible to the students needs, and my curriculum
allows flexibility to different levels of English proficiency by allowing sessions of questioning
and tutoring outside class time.
One of the greatest factors in immersing an ESL student to the English language is the classroom
environment. I believe that establishing parallelisms between languages is one of the key factors
in student comprehension, but also a bilingual classroom environment helps facilitate this
parallelism. I believe that a monolingual classroom hinders a students progress, because of the
rapid immersion to a foreign language they hardly understand. A bilingual classroom however,
allows a parallelism to be established and an easier transition into the language. Finally, not only
will my classroom function as a bilingual class, but also encourage a positive environment
through my devotion to the humanist philosophy along with an admixture of my own cultural
upbringing.