My Teaching Philosophy

I didnt see myself becoming a Middle/High school English Language Arts teacher until my senior year in high school. Before my senior year if I hadnt made the decision to strive, then I would have failed. My English teachers didnt practice the activities that we discuss every day in my education courses, activities that engage students and promote real-life application. When I was in high school, we did everything by the book. There was hardly any variation. All components of my English Language Arts classes in my first three years of high school were to prepare us for the dreaded English Regents. Our teachers focused on three things literature, writing, and vocabulary. Today I could think up of fifty different lesson plans that would make those three topics engaging for my students, and would have a bigger significance than you need this to pass the Regents. When I was growing up, I always heard my parents say, I do not want to be my mother/father when I get older. The same goes for me. I do not want to be my high school English teachers when I enter my teaching career. I want to be the teacher that makes required reading engaging to her students. I want to be the teacher that makes it seem like we arent learning vocabulary in a completely different, unrelated lesson. Finally, I want to be a teacher that prepares her students not only for the Regents, but for life. From freshman year until the end of 11th grade, vocabulary came to us in the same miniature orange book. The only variation each year was the harder content inside, and the letter in the top right corner. Every week, separate from whatever book we were reading or type of essay we were practicing, we would have to complete all the activities in that dreadful orange book. We did everything from creating sentences, synonym/antonym activities, and word matches. At the end of the week we would have a test the teacher would give the definition and we would have to correctly spell the word. Im sure the teacher thought it was a success, because

I got a perfect score everything. However, the only word I will ever remember from those three years of weekly vocabulary words will be unkempt. I have no idea why, probably because I related it to my room being messy. Overall, the activities were just plain torture. Vocabulary should be a part of the lessons you teach. I understand have required vocabulary that needs to be taught that year, but there are better ways to incorporate them then with a cold, orange book. You can find the words within interesting articles and have class discussions about them or have your students write stories about their own lives that center around the words. Repetition is not the key to learning, making connections is the key; you have to become personally involved to be motivated enough to learn anything. As with any student, just as it was with me, repetitive activities help them achieve that initial good grade but long term learning doesnt occur. Repetition is the key to memorization, and that is the lowest level of Blooms Taxonomy. No wonder I didnt truly remember more than one word. Today, I am in the process of creating two libraries. One for my future home and one for my future classroom. These day, when I have time, I love to read everything. I reread those books that I will always love and am always picking up books from old bookstores that I have been told about or find interesting. This love, however, has nothing to do with my high school experience. Did I like the books that I read in high school? Definitely. However, I was a reader. Even my Christmas lists from the past were filled with ten to twenty new books I had to have. However, if I wasnt a reader during high school I would have struggled. Before my senior year in high school, I could have been a victim of readicide. Each book had a systematic plan: background information on the text, at home reading of the text, questions on the content of the text, teacher-led discussion on literary elements within the text, teacher-led discussions on character analyses, and finally the final assessment essay in which we highlighted how the author

portrayed two literary elements. No wonder I was the only person in my class who liked Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Sadly, I understand what my teachers were trying to do they were trying to make sure we at least understood the content of the books we read so that they could throw two literary elements the book featured down our throats just in case we had to regurgitate it on the regents. I know that the Regents is important for teachers, especially for their own assessment, but making it the sole focus of your curriculum hurts your students futures. I cringe at how many of my classmates probably never picked up another book after high school. When I begin my teaching career, that format of teaching will never enter my classroom. There are so many more creative ways to enter a text than through questions, lectures, and essays. For example, take the canon text Of Mice and Men. Instead of a lecture on whos who in the book, why not have students create character map of relationships and confrontations within the novel? Or, to highlight one of the more prominent themes in the novel, have students write monologues of conflicting characters points of views. Finally, I would help students make connections with the text from their personal experiences so that they have more to say about the text than just the facts. When their own values are applied to the text, they will be able to participate more in discussions, and most likely the class will learn more than just I could have taught with lectures and reading comprehension questions. It will help students learn what is required, but I guarantee that students will actually partake in the activities and be able to use what they learn in my teaching methods on the regents just as much as they would the boring activities that I had to sit through. Also, students might want to read outside of high school. Students need to be able to have fun and interact with others in their class. They also need to have different types of activities that meet their types of learning, especially visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. If the teacher only focuses on one type of learning, they are going to be met students who dont want to

participate, and when they do need extra help. These teachers who are trying to strive for their students success on the Regents will ultimately end up failing. Teaching literature has to be about more than just the Regents; teaching literature has to be passing on adventures to your students that they can enjoy and relate to their own lives. Finally, as an English teacher I want to change the way I was taught writing skills for my future students. In my high school experience, I was taught the main essays: the critical lens essay, the compare/contrast essay, the listen/take notes/write essay, and the research paper. I cant remember how many practice critical lens essays I did before the day I only had to write one, but it was too many. In my high school experience, at least from 9th to 11th grade, there was no type for creative writing. My creative writing took place at home. I wasnt introduced to it in high school until my senior year. When I teach, creative writing will be introduced from day one. How can your students develop any personality on paper when you are literally giving them a form to write? I can still here my teacher: dont forget the tag (title, author, genre), the thesis statement, and now your body paragraphs! One word can describe the month before the Regents: writing torture. Sure, I got a good grade on my Regents, but Im dreading the day I have to practice critical lens essays with my students because I hated it! Unfortunately, it is inevitable. Therefore, I will include plenty of creative writing in all aspects of what I have to teach. Writing interviews between characters in novels, creating news articles about the climax of a text, creating our own short stories and poems. Why cant this be done in a classroom? It allows students to explore writing (I would be sure to teach the proper formats and grammar with each style), but also allows them to develop their voice and personality in their writing. Above all, these more creative writing assignments create more motivated students. Motivation is the

basis of all learning, and without motivation a teacher should never expect to get far in any lesson they teach. My senior year English courses in high school were especially significant for me. Why? Because the English regents was behind us! After 11th grade students were required to take an English course, but they could take one of many: Mystery and Suspense, Creative Writing, Drama, or English 12. I took them all. Though I despised my teachers methods, I had always held a love for reading and writing. It was the best decision I had ever made because it opened up my love for English Language Arts, and gave me the courage to pursue a career in teaching ELA. In Mystery & Suspense we read and watched all sorts of mysteries, from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Alfred Hitchcock. With each book and movie came engaging activities such as conducting an interview with Alfred Hitchcock, teaching the class about a Sherlock Holmes story, and acting out the play And Then There Were None. The books were not only engaging on their own, but the activities our teacher paired with them helped us learn more than just the content. Creative Writing was also a joy. We covered an array of styles: short stories, flash fiction, poetry, memoirs. The course let our creative juices flow, and the way our teacher conducted the class was student based, with student reading circles and workshops. The teacher took a passive role, there for guidance. Finally, Drama led us to the stage. Every play we read was performed from the beginning, and contrary to popular belief it helped us learn a lot more about the text then reading it on our own. We got into the characters, and our personal connections with the characters influenced how we portrayed them. As the year moved forward, we were able to create our own plays and by the end of the year we performed skits for an audience. Not only did it help us learn the literature, but we worked on our public presence.

English 12, though it doesnt sound as promising as the others, was my favorite. It was almost a bridge to my future college courses. The teacher allowed us to read books chosen from a text set, and we would discuss them in literature circle, naturally analyzing them rather than being forced. Writing activities changed from boring essays to persuasive speeches and newspaper articles. Finally, we did a research project that wasnt just any topic, but a topic within our local community. This project was my favorite. We conducted interviews with members of the community, visited the sites of our topics, and incorporated factual research with our personal experiences. It was a great way to learn about something outside of the four walls of the classroom. My senior year in high school shaped me into the English teacher I want to be for my students. Not only did my teachers in my senior year English classes teach me English Language Arts content, but they prepared me for life outside of high school. Each assignment had real life application: public speaking, community building, expository/business writing, and college readiness. I was no longer just learning concepts within English Language Arts, but applying it to something bigger. When teachers dont apply what they are teaching to a bigger topic or purpose for their students that is better than you need this for the Regents, not only will students feel disengaged while learning but they wont hold onto what they have learned. My goal with every lesson I teach in the classroom is to make it relatable for my students so that they can see how it is related outside of school. People say that adolescents these days are so focused on their personal lives and so school isnt important to them, but it is the broken connection between content and real life application that causes adolescents to not want to learn. By relating it to their lives, you spark an interest in students. When you spark that interest, students will

become more engaged and a more profound learning will take place in your classroom. This is what I hope to accomplish in my future teaching career.