Philosophy of Education Statement 1

Philosophy of Education Statement

Kelsey Turcotte
Philosophy of Education Statement 2

J.K. Rowling once said I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she
could with the talent she had. This speaks to me as that is my goal as a teacher; to be the best
teacher I can possibly be and utilize my talents to benefit my students.
Why is teaching important to me? Teaching is important to me because I believe each
student deserves the chance to say I had a good experience in that class!. I am under no
illusion that not all students will get to say that, however, I am hoping to give students the same
experience I was lucky enough to have. Too many teachers at my high school cared more for the
curriculum than for the students. Yes, curriculum is important, but the students are more
important. When I was in grade ten, I had an amazing teacher. It is actually him who inspired me
to go through and become a teacher myself. With other teachers, we simply listened to the
recordings of the novel or play every class. There were no activities, only tests and essays. With
Mr. M, we had activities relevant to our lessons and lessons were far more enjoyable. He not
only made lessons more enjoyable for his students, but in addition he also spent a considerable
amount of time getting to know each of his students. If any of us did not do particularly well with
a given assignment in comparison to our usual work, he asked if everything was okay, and would
give a chance to redo the work. Now, I am not saying this will work with every class because
guaranteed it is always possible that students may take advantage of this, but I did respect the
fact that he took the time to know when something was wrong in a students life based upon their
work. I used Mr. M as a model for some of my teaching styles and methods that will be seen later
on.
First and foremost, when I begin thinking of my educational philosophy, I believe that
acceptance is utterly important. Acceptance that I will make errors, errors which I will learn from
and improve upon. Acceptance that there will be bad days along with the good. Acceptance of
the diversity within my classroom, school, and community, and acceptance that I will not always
agree with my colleagues, nor will they always agree with me. It is important to realize that each
educator holds their own personal philosophy regarding education, and providing that each
educators core values are acceptable, expectations are met and standards are followed, it is
entirely valid for each educators philosophies will differ.
My philosophy has changed in the sense that my methods will change. As an educator,
my goal is to not only educate my students, but to educate my students in interactive,
exploratory, and entertaining ways that will help my students learn and retain information. My
influence on this was for one, Deweys philosophy that education should be based upon
experience and experimentation. As a future English teacher, one of my goals is to show my
students that learning does not have to be dull, my prime example on this is learning
Shakespeares works. During my first placement, I had the pleasure of teaching both Romeo &
Juliet and Hamlet. I personally enjoy Shakespeare, but I understood from the start that my
students would feel differently. In both classes when I had introduced that we would be reading
Shakespeare, I was met with groans and sighs. I asked my students what exactly previous
teachers had done that they disliked. Most students said we only listened to recordings all
class. My plan of action from that point was to include my students in the planning process.
They told me what activities they would like to do during the unit, how they would like to
proceed with the unit, and throughout I included my students and listened to their thoughts and
Philosophy of Education Statement 3

concerns. After seeing how thoughtful the students were during my initial planning process, I
took it upon myself to include my students in the planning process of the structure of the test that
they would have. I asked the students what they felt would be fair way to cover the topic and the
suggestions were amazing. They took the matter very seriously, and in the end, they made their
own test. I personally believe that including students in the planning process will allow them to
feel a sense of responsibility and allows for them to feel that they matter in the process which is
important to me now that I see the benefit and result of it.
Along with including my students in the planning portion of lessons, I tailored my
lessons to each specific group of students. With the Romeo & Juliet unit, the group of students
was extremely interactive, and enjoyed having activities to accompany their learning. For this
group, I tailored the lessons to include time for reading the play, discussion, and an activity that
went with the content read. Some activities included modernizing the famous balcony scene,
debates on topics scene within the play, Kahoot! Games, and Jeopardy games for review
purposes. The group that had the Hamlet unit on the other hand, preferred reading the play and
discussing the topics. I tailored lessons for this group to include reading the play, stopping when
needed to discuss the content covered, having small group as well as class discussions, Jeopardy
games to review the content they struggled with, and analyzing the acts of the play while finding
specific examples of the themes we were focussing on. The theme scavenger hunt as I called it,
stayed on chart paper around the room and was made useful for test purposes as well as for those
who chose to do the culminating essay as opposed to the creative culminating project. I am a
firm believer that tailoring lessons to each specific group of students can prove to be successful
and beneficial. This brings me to my next point.
Options. What works for one student will not always work for the group or another
individual student. Providing options for some assignments can also prove to be beneficial and
receive great response. I had a teacher in high school who would provide plenty of options for
assignments, ways that students could be creative and portray their knowledge in a way that they
knew worked for them. He would also provide essay options for those who did not feel that they
would be as successful with the creative option. I did this with my groups on my own placement
and received better results than I had initially anticipated. I had students create wonderful
artwork, I had essays handed in, soundtracks were created, a great film project, even a cake! This
was a way for each student to show their knowledge in a way that played to their own strengths.
What I had the students do in addition (in order to prevent misinterpretation) was each student
wrote a one to two page written piece to accompany their work, explaining their project, how it
demonstrates their knowledge, as well as the process of their project (i.e. did they face any
struggles? How were these struggles overcome?). This proved to be a great addition to the
creative projects as with many of the projects there were so many little details that I would not
have picked up on had they not been explained for me.
In regards to further improving my teaching, I would like to believe that in the future I
will use feedback from my students in order to improve methods that perhaps are not working, or
need to be worked upon. I want my students to be comfortable enough in my classroom
environment and with me as their teacher to feel that they can be honest and let me know if one
of my methods needs work or just is not working for our class or their individual needs.
Philosophy of Education Statement 4

I always want to develop new skills and methods. I can do this from attending
workshops, conversing with colleagues in order to find out what is working with their rooms,
keeping in contact with friends who will be teaching, and nowadays many teachers have blogs
where you can converse with other teachers and find out what methods other teachers may be
using and having success with within their classrooms. I believe it is important to collaborate
with others. Not always working together per se, but having someone there as a support system
and for guidance when it is needed.
Another important part of being an educator (in my opinion) is forming positive
relationships. Forming positive relationships can help better a students education process, and
also the educators. However, I do not solely believe that it is only the students who the educator
should form a relationship with. If/when possible, form relationships with staff, especially the
guidance staff- you never know when you will need their help or advice for a students, students,
parents or guardians, and the community. I also believe it is important to maintain these positive
relationships. If/ when a student does not have a good day and acts out in class, I do not think
that should be held against the student. Greet your students everyday and treat it as a fresh start,
it is a new day after all!
To sum up, my own personal philosophy of education relies upon me being a continual
learner, always learning and finding new ways to improve my teaching skills and methods. This
includes being the best that I can possibly be, for both my own well-being as well as my
students, their parents/guardians who are relying on me to give their child a good education, and
the school community. Including students as opposed to excluding students in the planning can
give the students a feeling of responsibility in their learning. Tailoring lessons to suit each group
of students and creating options with assignments can be beneficial as it will provide the students
with the opportunity to contribute to the lesson to the best of their abilities.
As optimistic as I may seem in this statement, I am under no illusion that these ideas and
methods would be dependent upon trust and will not work in all classes. This is when forming
positive relationships would prove beneficial, it will create trust between the students and their
teacher. These methods may have worked for Mr. M, and in turn worked for myself, but they will
not necessarily work for every teacher. As seen in our own experiences as well as our readings
throughout these modules, there is a plethora of teaching methods and philosophies; we need to
implement much the same idea some of the philosophers we read about had: experiment and
learn through experience. Through experimentation we will learn from experience what does or
does not work in each of our classes. What works for the individuals in one class will not work
for individuals in another class, but experimenting, including students, and taking their feedback
as constructive criticism will teach us how best to teach them, which in the end I believe to be
the ultimate goal. How can we best educate our students?