As a kid I was smart and had very
little difficulty in school. This didn’t
always mean that I liked school or had the best scores. Education should be fun, engaging, and challenging. I learned better when I knew that my teachers
loved what they taught and spent their time teaching it to me because they
cared about me and my education. That is
the type of teacher I will continuously work to be.
I will have a degree in Mathematics
Education with an English Teaching minor.
This will allow me to teach math and English in 7th-12th
grade classrooms. However, I will teach
kids. That is what I will teach. They will be my main priority and I will work
very hard to share with them my love of education, especially math and
English. I believe when the person, the
student, is placed first it is easier to educate them. None of us care to listen to people who don’t
care about us. I want to have a
classroom atmosphere of acceptance, discussion, learning, and cooperation where
ideas are shared and accepted from teacher to student and student to
teacher. I see myself moving throughout
my classroom and interacting with all of my students. I want them to feel connected to what is
happening in our discussions and learning process.
I will work within a few different
educational philosophies. I respond to
the ideas of realism, progressivism, and social reconstructivism. I like the idea of having my students learn
to problem solve first by example and then on their own. I want to be a source of knowledge and a
resource to my students, but I want them to be a large part of the
process. I want them to have a voice in
what and how they learn, I want them to research ideas and problems, and I want
my classroom to be student centered.
My effectiveness as a teacher won’t
always be immediately visible. I don’t
believe that effectiveness is measured in assignment and test scores. That is a way to know if I’m being effective
in my teaching methods, but it doesn’t tell me if I’m an effective teacher or
not. Sometimes it may be years before I
know how effective I was, and it’s possible with some students that I will
never know. When I worked at the middle
school there were days that I didn’t know if I was really making that much of a
difference or not. While I was a special
education aide, I worked with many students in all different subjects. It was always a wonderful feeling when those
students thanked me for what I did that day, when I say that look when a
student finally “got it,” or when a student returned once they had moved on to
high school to thank me for what I taught them and how much I cared about
them. I look forward to experiencing
those same things as a teacher. There
may be times that I wonder if I’m helping at all, but as long as I keep
teaching like it is the most important thing in the world to me and my
students, I know it will be effective and make a difference.
I agree that sometimes it will take years to find out if you had any results with your students. My math teacher in high school, 25 years ago, is who has inspired me to teach math. Caring is the first step to helping students learn.
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