Personal Philosophy of Education
In personal philosophy of education essays teachers share their personal values and thoughts about educational and teaching processes, so am I going to share these thoughts in this essay. A belief about how education should be implemented in order to profit the student is defined as a philosophy of education. There are five philosophies of education: essentialism, existentialism perennialism, progressivism, and social reconstructionism. Progressivism is my personal philosophy of education. I believe in order for a child to develop intellectually, they need to have a personal experience or connection with the material they are learning. I also believe education is about learning skills that allow us to analyze material and to think critically. As a teacher, I am not only supposed to teach these two concrete skills, but I am also supposed to help my students learn how to utilize them in the real world.
In James Hamblin’s article, “Buy Experiences, Not Things”, he writes about how our brain remembers past experiences over past purchases. After reading that article, I began to relate experiential purchases to experiential learning. After a vacation, we are prone to remembering the geography of Australia. This is the same way we are going to remember the anatomy and physiology of the human body after taking a field trip to Bodies: The Exhibition. Thus, students will be able to effectively comprehend and recall the material by connecting what they learn to a real-world experience.
Some examples of how I would teach content in my progressive classroom are the following: English puzzles, science experiments, and field trips. The English puzzles would help my students understand the structure of sentences and the function of each word in a sentence. A sentence would be constructed after each word or phrase is carefully arranged. My next example is science experiments. Conducting science experiments would give the students a hands-on experience. The students would comprehend the material by utilizing it during the experiment. My next example is field trips. Field trips are a huge part of experiential learning. During a field trip, learning is enhanced due to the innumerable visual and audial stimuli surrounding the students. Field trips would serve as a real world illustration of the material I have taught my students. The trips would help my students get a grasp of what they have learned by making connections to the real life experiences.
In addition to each example listed, I would grade my students based on how they perform during each activity. I would not use standard tests to measure my student’s skills. The reason behind this choice is due to the fact that standard tests only test recognition skills. Being able to recognize certain topics related to the material is not as important to me. I want to know if my students understand how to utilize the material they learn.
In conclusion, my duty as a teacher is to prepare my students for the real world. There is no better way to do so than to incorporate tangible learning in each lesson. This helps the students build a solid connection to the material that is taught. My other duty as a teacher is to create a safe place for my students to develop intellectually. The foundation of a class should be mutual respect. Students should not feel inferior to the teacher. They should feel comfortable to learn and make mistakes. In the class, the teacher is the instructor but, they are also a part of the class. They teach and learn with the students. As a teacher I would encourage each student to be an excited learner by showing them that I am still learning as well.
