July 14, 2013

My philosophy encompasses three basic tenets:

1. All students can and will learn when in an environment that encourages curiosity and fosters the desire to satisfy that curiosity.
2. Before learning can take place the classroom needs to promote an environment of mutual respect for all.
3. Learning needs to be both transparent and purposeful.

Education in the twenty-first century will require that students are able to think critically, problem solve, and communicate effectively. Technology will play an ever increasing role in the lives of our students, and it is essential that they have the ability to integrate technology into all aspects of their lives. As educators it is imperative that we learn  how to incorporate  the latest technologies into our classrooms to allow us to better serve our students.

All students can and will learn in a conducive environment.

What is curiosity? Curiosity is the desire to learn, sounds simple enough. I, as a teacher, must access that curiosity and direct it towards the content of the lesson. According to Dewey, students should learn by doing.  Students should take an active role in learning, relating it to or   building upon personal experience. I believe that students learn and retain more when hands-on activities are included in the lesson. As a teacher, I must act as the facilitator in order to foster the development of the learning process in my students. Children are naturally curious, and the classroom should be a place where students learn how to satisfy that curiosity and continue along the path to further questioning and solutions. Learning is an endless, ongoing process that needs to be nurtured in the classroom and carried on in the rest of one’s life.

Another important aspect of learning is the concept of “student choice”.  Maria Montessori espoused the theory that within certain limits students should have “freedom to work uninterrupted on purposeful  activities”. Students who are involved with choosing how a concept should be presented will invariably be more involved with their own learning. For example, my colleague and I took a unit on the digestive system and rather than spend four days on “teaching” the system to them we introduced the topic, colored a diagram of the system including identification of the components and then assigned “the project”. Students were asked to explain how a piece of “whatever” went from the mouth to the toilet.  A list of mandatory vocabulary was given as well as a rubric as to how their project was to be assessed. The outcome was phenomenal! Students were able to work at their own level, some of the groupings included special education students which worked really well as one student could draw, another colored, and still another labeled the components. Student reflections were unabashedly positive and students even carried the lesson across disciplines into their Language Arts poetry assignment.

Classrooms must promote mutual respect.

I feel that before teaching and/or learning can take place an aire of mutual respect must be established within the classroom, not only between teacher and student but between the students themselves. The classroom needs to be a place where both students and teachers can interact with one another-communicate, collaborate, cooperate. Paolo Freire maintained that “education is dialogical and that dialogue itself involves respect”. There needs to be communication in a multi directional sense, that learning can not just be teacher centered where content is transposed from the educator to the students, rather it should be the exchange of knowledge, ideas and experiences. Students need to feel free to express and explore their own ideas and understanding. Feedback needs to respectful and non-judgemental.

Learning is transparent and purposeful.

In order to promote purposeful learning students need to be aware of what it is they are exploring.Transparency involves providing direction for student learning - there should be no mystery about the topic or focus of the lesson. All students should be able to state what is being explored.

Learning must be purposeful and authentic. When students have a goal or purpose for their learning they are more likely to remember the experience and incorporate it into the schema that they are building in order to  understand and participate in the world around them. Piaget believed that learning takes place in stages and that students use “assimilation and accommodation” for the acquisition of knowledge. When students are aware of the goal or are involved in creating that goal, then learning occurs. As teachers we aide this process by scaffolding lessons - content and skills - in accordance with the needs and development of our students in order to facilitate learning.

Of all of the educational theorists, the one I find the least inspiring is B. F. Skinner, who paradoxically has had an enormous impact on the practice of education for at least the last 30 years. Skinners approach to learning seems to me to be simply a matter of behavior modification. I find this to be too static and narrow an approach. Learning takes place in many ways, has many forms, and varies from learner to learner. The idea that we simply need to reinforce specific behaviors and negate others leaves out the creative and dynamic nature of learning. My philosophy of education addresses the realities of individuality, diversity, and human interaction in the learning process and seeks to encourage learning in diverse and adaptive ways.

As far as the next twenty-five years in education, technology will be both the good and the bad. It will provide many challenges and will also provide the solutions, along with some human help. As technology plays more and more of a role in the classroom school districts will need to provide the resources necessary to meet the growing demand. At present many urban communities do not provide sufficient access to, nor have the means for providing students with the tools needed to access the vast information on the Internet. This will be one of the greatest challenges of the next decades. However, if we teach our students to be lifelong learners and provide them with the skills that enable them be curious, knowledge seekers, I believe that they will be the ones to solve this problem. After all, most of our students already have cell phones.