Teaching Philosophy

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My philosophy centers around the one key ingredient missing in many classrooms and ignored by standardized tests: curiosity. How can we expect students to be life-long learners if curiosity is not encouraged? Encouragement is not even enough, educators must instill the right tools for curiosity. The most important question educators must ask themselves is: How can a teacher not only encourage curiosity but implement strategies in the classroom that will help students act on their curiosity?

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My classroom practice is to focus on the forming of independent thought, creativity, and to veer away from the standardized thinking of right or wrong. It is especially crucial to encourage a more student-driven inquiry-based environment in a Language Arts classroom where literature and writing are far too complex to be simplified into a multiple-choice answer test.

 

In regards to Language Arts, analyzing texts does not concern itself with the right answer, but whether the reader is formulating their own questions from the text. It is imperative the middle school classroom environment is focused on inquiry. Middle school students range between 11-14 years of age, the time where an individual begins to form their own identity and corresponding beliefs. Middle school students may be timid and uncertain but they crave not only a deeper understanding of the world around them but of themselves. Using inquiry-based learning with flipped lesson plans allows for that to happen with these students.

 

Inquiry-based learning is putting the act of learning back into the hands of the students. The teacher is a facilitator and instead of simply stating facts for the students to memorize, the teacher will pose questions or scenarios. Too often literature and writing have been taught as a subject to memorize. However, the problem is there is no right interpretation of a novel so why not encourage discussion rather than memorization. As for writing, I can personally say as a writer myself, there is no surer way of learning proper expression through words without digging deep into one's own emotions and curiosities.

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For an example on a flipped lesson plan in a 6th grade Language Arts class, please visit Flipped Classroom.

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