PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

To be a teacher is both a responsibility and a privilege, awesome in scale and yet simple in concept, as equally able to invoke frustration and doubt as joy and great certainty.  Teaching is the greatest culmination of myself as a person and a professional. As a teacher I believe it is important to embody care, respect, integrity and trust. By embodying these traits as a teacher you become worthy of the great responsibility and privilege that is: teaching students to be their best selves. In the spirit of embodying care, responsibility, integrity and trust I hold several beliefs to heart when acting as a teacher and as a person.
No student in any way shape or form should feel like they are not welcome in our classroom environment. No factor such as race, sexual orientation, gender or ability will ever be consciously discriminated against in our classroom. However, with that, while bullying is not tolerated in our classroom, a student who has previously bullied has as much right to be in the room as well. That is to say that if a student who has been bullying another student wishes to make amends, and continue on in the classroom, like everyone else, they will be supported in doing so in a way that allows for everyone to feel secure within the class. With that I believe in a person first approach. No child should be forced to live under a label. Whether it is the label of learning disabled or problem child, no student should enter our classroom feeling like their identity has been ascribed to them from without. It is important to remember that they are their own unique individuals with lives that don’t begin and end with the ringing of the bell. The child with the reading disability is not the disabled child. He is a person first, who feels that disability and all the emotions that go with it: frustration, anger, sadness, happiness, relief and accomplishment. It can be difficult, as a teacher, to remember they are people and not just products to turn out for review sometimes, but it must be maintained that they are people.
I believe that Maslow’s Hierarchy has a place within the classroom. With that I believe it is important to take a whole child approach and one needs to take the hierarchy into account when doing so. The child who is hungry from eating neither breakfast nor dinner the night before is not in a position to really take in what you are teaching. As a teacher then, I believe it is my role to do what I can to alleviate these problems where and when I can. With that in mind I believe it is important to embody and teach equity before equality and help students to understand why this concept is important. Students will be more understanding and accepting of others when they recognize that a student who is given an opportunity to demonstrate their learning in a different way, is being given a better chance to succeed, rather than seeing them as different.
Gone are the days where the teacher was a stern authority figure in the front of the class. A teacher is someone who, yes teaches, but is also able to relate. Not in the sense that we sit down every morning and talk about our personal lives in great detail, but enough should be shared that they know that you are as much a person with your own life as them. That you make mistakes, worry about the same things, get excited by the same things as they do. That we are all imperfect and able to grow, to constantly learn from each other and from the world around us. To be able to teach is the greatest honour because it can be the most rewarding of experiences but it comes with inherent expectations. Expectations that as teachers we embody care, respect, integrity and trust and I believe that by remembering our role within our student’s lives in the previous ways we best meet and exceed those expectations.