My Philosophy For Teaching And How It Came To Be

It was 1993 and I was beginning what would be my life’s greatest adventure to date…high school.  Full of excitement and anxiety, I ventured down the hallways towards this new unknown.  Everything was going to be so new and so different.  And then, I entered my first class.  It was 9^th grade English.  I entered the room and sat down in my assigned seat among the rows of desks.  I pulled out my notebook and ink pen and began to dutifully take notes as the teacher lectured about the semester ahead.  There was no interaction from the students other than to answer “here” for the roll call or to answer the occasional question.  And as this English course progressed and my following Math course progressed and the rest of high school progressed, it wasn’t that different after all.  No teacher asked me to step outside my comfort zone and learn in a way that contradicted my elementary and middle school experiences.  High school was just like the rest of my education:  structured and traditional.  Is this so wrong?  Was I somehow cheated in my education?  No.  I don’t feel that way at all. I love the structure of a lecture-based classroom. I love to listen to the teacher impart his or her knowledge on us as we feverishly take notes.  But did everyone in my high school feel the way I feel?  Absolutely not!  I thrived in these traditional academic settings, but every student is different.  Every student learns in different ways and thus instruction should not be so “cookie-cutter.”  Or should it?

When I reflect on my own education experience, it is the principles of essentialism that most closely align with the practices and procedures used by my teachers.  By making this assertion, I am merely testifying to the traditional and systematic methods with which my teachers sought to impart through a mostly lecture-based learning environment.  While I feel that I gained a solid educational foundation for my adult life, the principles of progressivism seem to offer missing pieces to what could have provided a more complete experience for me.  By studying John Dewey and progressivism and actually experiencing these tactics in my collegiate courses, I can see how it fosters a more engaging experience that assists in retention of the knowledge.  I was resistant at first to the ideas of cooperative learning and differentiation, but this semester has opened my eyes to the many benefits it can have.  Through group projects, incorporation of technology, and just a basic sense of being pushed to find the answers and uncover the knowledge for myself, I feel that I became more intrinsically engaged in my education.  I am walking away from the semester with knowledge that has been solidified by experiences.  Additionally, in my observations, I watched as my teacher employed the same strategies with her middle school students.  Even at this age, the students were more receptive to the lack of lecture and the challenge of “getting their hands dirty” with the material.  Through these collegiate and observation experiences, I can see the benefits that progressivism will offer both my students and myself, as a teacher.  

While I embrace many of the philosophies that progressivism presents in terms of teaching to the whole child, there were some thoughts to which I opposed.  One article published in the International Socialist Review described John Dewey’s thoughts to an extreme by stating that “He [therefore] urged that manual training, science, nature-study, art and similar subjects be given precedence over reading, writing and arithmetic (the traditional three R’s) in the primary curriculum. The problems raised by the exercise of the child’s motor powers in constructive work would lead naturally, he said, into learning the more abstract, intellectual branches of knowledge.”  My concern with this statement would be the omission or lack of emphasis placed of the formal teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic as I feel these are fundamental and necessary in spite of a need to diversify overall methods of teaching.  It is my belief that the ideal educational experience would offer a combination of essentialism and progressivism. 

After studying the depth and dimensions of student learning types and 4MAT training, it is clear that one method of instruction will not offer the students with the maximum opportunity for knowledge acquisition.  I am confident that an educator that embraces diversity and differentiation in their teaching style will reach the most students and offer the most memorable educational experience.  At the beginning of the semester, I wrote an initial philosophy for education that answered the question "What do I believe about the new vision for teaching and learning in American schools?" (see image below)  I feel that I still believe in an integrated style of teaching, but I now recognize that lecture has a specific place in the classroom…and it fits snuggly in a 10 minute window of time.  Lecture-based instruction will only get you so far in reaching your students, and even then, it will reach just the handful of students that do not completely shut down when the lecture begins.  It is imperative that I try to engage the students on a variety of levels to ensure that the instruction is being digested and retained for maximum success.