Before writing my current theory of learning, I wanted to check out what I thought when I was still an undergrad in college (before I really started teaching). I found a paper from 2004 that was all about my educational philosophy. I won’t copy the whole thing here, but here are some things that I thought were important.
*Collaborative constructivist approach is the most important for my classroom- this is where my classroom can become a community of learners.
*It is important to give students some control and say in what goes on so that students are more willing and eager to learn and participate.
*In an adult-run classroom, students don’t have a say in what goes on. They don’t get to take control of their learning.
I find this interesting, because aren’t all classrooms (perhaps except for a true Montessori classroom) adult run? I think the degree to which adults lead the class versus kids leading the class and guiding their learning is the bigger question here.
* A student-run classroom (would be hard to meet all content standards if students completely led the classroom. – ideal setting but hard to do!
*A strong community in important because it encourages all students to get involved and to work with each other.
I do agree with this one. It can be hard to establish a community in your classroom—but it can be done! This greatly depends on the characteristics of your students and how you require them to work together. The teacher is a role model in this situation in how she interacts with students and how she pushes/encourage/expects students to work together.
*I will arrange the students into groups and include many group and partner activities in my lessons. I will combine my class both in homogenous groups and in multi-level groups.
This isn’t always the easiest thing to organize or execute- but I have seen many benefits to getting students to collaborate and work together. Once students know the routine, things run smoothly.
*We can all learn a lot from each other; not just the students learning from a teacher. Teaching is a great way to learn, even when you think you already know all about the topic.
Right on! I think that also shares why I think it’s important to have students work with each other.
This project was a great way to get me thinking. However, it was very hard to decide how I want my classroom to run. These are my ideas now. They have changed a lot since I began this major and are still changing today. When I am actually teaching in a classroom I think I will have many different parts of each of the educational philosophies present in my classroom. This will result from finding things that work and finding things that don’t. A lot of it depends on your students too. Each year as a teacher gets a new group of students I am sure that things are done differently and changed around to adapt to the new community of learners in the classroom.
I think I like my conclusion paragraph the best! You could view it as a cop-out that I don’t know what I’m going to do…but I think this is pretty accurate in the real world that things change and how you teach is affected by various factors. I also think that pulling features from differen theories that suit your values and beliefs is important. I feel that my method of teaching has a core set of practices, but does vary from year to year as I improve as an educator and as I have different compososition within student groups. I know I’m not teaching the same way I was when I first started, but I do know that I’ve held some of the same ideals throughout. As I voiced in my mission statement for Design Class, I said that I hope that at 80 years old I will be a refined version of my current self—with all the good traits and ideals from before, but even better!
There is a quote from learning theorist Paolo Friere that captures this idea well.
“If I was the same as I was 40 years ago, I would be profoundly disappointed. But, at the same time, if I was nothing of what I was 40 years ago, I would be profoundly sad.”