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TEACHING AND LEARNING PHILOSOPHY
Principles:
- A safe, caring, student-centered environment is essential to creating a learning community for students.
- Recognizing and respecting diversity in culture, prior knowledge, learning styles and ability levels within the classroom, and adapting lessons accordingly, is vital to reaching each member of the classroom community.
- Learning is rooted in rich, authentic, and relevant real-world situations, while giving students ownership and voice in their own learning.
- Students are respected as thinkers, each bringing life experiences and prior knowledge to the classroom.
- Students are shown connections between all content areas.
- Learning is a social process and helping students construct knowledge from different perspectives facilitates a better understanding of the world.
- Assessment begins the minute a student walks through the door, and continues through teacher evaluations, self-analysis, exhibits, portfolios and other student-chosen forms of representation of learning.
- Classroom management techniques are dictated by sensitivity to the individuals making up the community and establishing clear expectations, reinforcements and feedback.
Narrative:
Being able to facilitate learning by careful attention to classroom environment, determining what prior knowledge each student has and building on it, and maintaining positive, respectful relationships are responsibilities of every teacher in every content area. Students must feel that they are valuable members of the classroom community. Teachers help students make sense of things. Learning comes naturally as a result of student experiences. Learning should be a journey through interesting links and connections rather than memorizing bits and pieces of meaningless information. This is true for career and technical education as well as academic classrooms.
1. A safe, caring, student-centered environment is essential to creating a learning community for students.
Students need to trust the teacher and other community members in order to feel safe to question, make mistakes and experience learning in an environment that does not ridicule, make judgments or condemn. In order to develop their identity within the classroom, students must have positive, successful experiences to build on so that they can feel free to be themselves and learn naturally. Each student must want to be a member of the classroom community, which cultivates inevitable learning through unconscious, informal participation.
The physical environment of the classroom is another important component of creating a learning community. A bright, cheerful environment is more conducive to learning than dull, sterile surroundings. Arranging desks in a circle or in groups encourages interaction, decreases outside distractions and helps students stay on task.
2. Recognizing and respecting diversity in culture, prior knowledge, learning styles and ability levels within the classroom, and adapting lessons accordingly, is vital to reaching each member of the community.
Classrooms today are filled with students of every ability level, culture and learning style. This creates a diverse, rich learning environment but takes greater effort to create meaningful lessons that meets each student where they are. In order to reach all students, teachers must be willing to use different approaches to teaching. Also, attention to physical layout of the room can be critical to making learning accessible to students with physical or sensory disabilities. Using a variety of methods and resources and adapting lessons for different types of learners will give more students access to learning. Some students are visual learners while others are auditory and still others are tactile learners. Each student brings a different perspective to class and exploring these perspectives is imperative to giving students a larger view of the world.
3. Learning must be rooted in rich, authentic, and relevant real-world situations, while giving students ownership and voice in their own learning.
In order to gain and maintain interest and attention, teachers must provide learning situations that are relevant to students. Giving bits and pieces of information while making no connections to real-life circumstances is pointless. Students need to see that all content areas are related and the knowledge gained will be useful to them in a variety of ways. Teachers must help students cultivate intrinsic motivation to become and remain learners, for the sake of learning.
Students must also be given options in their learning. Students do not always want to learn what the teacher wants to teach. Their interests should be respected and guided so that they feel ownership. When allowed to steer their own learning, students are encouraged to become independent learners. They must be given the opportunity to use their own language in order to be heard in the larger world.
4. Students must be respected as thinkers, each bringing life experiences and prior knowledge to the classroom.
Every student brings valuable knowledge to the classroom to share with others. Through respect and appreciation of what each community member brings, knowledge can be constructed on all levels. Teachers should lead the way by acknowledging and appreciating student behaviors that are different from their own.
Students learn from those they identify with and admire. Given choices, students can learn in a way that interests them while collaborating with community members. When given the opportunity students often take charge of their classroom and keep each other on task.
5. Students must be shown connections between all content areas.
In the real world all content areas overlap. No subject exists in isolation. Literacy and reading run through all subject areas. Math is an essential part of science. Social studies incorporate literature, geography and science. All core subjects are an integral part of every vocational area. Students must be shown that everything we learn is connected in some way to what we already know and/or what we are learning in a different area. Integrating curriculum and transferring knowledge from one area to another is vital to helping students make sense of the world. They need to be shown the big picture.
6. Learning is a social process and helping students construct knowledge from different perspectives facilitates a better understanding of the world.
Learning is a social activity. Knowing how to collaborate with others is a valuable skill for students to have as valuable employees. Human interaction is a necessary component to the learning process. Students need social interaction to broaden their horizons and build their knowledge base. Learning takes place as a consequence of collaboration. The network of experience each person puts together constitutes his or her learning. Everyone's consciousness will be raised through honest, open inquiry in the company of teachers, students and parents.
7. Assessment begins the minute a student walks through the door, and continues through teacher evaluations, self-analysis, exhibits, portfolios and other student-chosen forms of representation of learning.
Students can represent their learning through many different forms. Testing alone is not necessarily an adequate tool for determining whether learning is taking place. Information placed in short-term memory can be memorized for a test and then forgotten. True learning needs a framework of knowledge to build on and needs to be meaningful to the learner. There are various evaluation tools that can be used. By observing the student and knowing where prior knowledge ends, where strengths and weaknesses are and then watching growth through journals, portfolios, presentations, artwork and/or dramatic representations, teachers should be able to evaluate learning.
8. Classroom management techniques are dictated by sensitivity to the individuals making up the community and establishing clear expectations, reinforcements and feedback.
By providing a well planned, motivating curriculum and developing expectations from the beginning, students will know how to act in the classroom. Teachers must model acceptance and respect for the other members of the community. This will set the tone in the classroom for others to follow. By showing sensitivity for the needs of others and listening to their concerns and ideas, the teacher provides a blueprint for classroom behavior. Allowing students to develop rules and consequences and posting them for all to see, arranging the room for easy access and proximity to the students, and letting students know what to expect supports a cooperative learning environment.