Teaching Philosophy
Classrooms across the country have become more linguistically diverse than ever and teachers should be prepared to meet the needs of the wide range of English proficiency they may encounter. Making resources and materials accessible and continually looking to improve instruction for English Language Learners (ELLs) are essential practices to meet the needs of these students. An ongoing effort to be up to date with and apply current literature helps to enhance my knowledge of educational issues and practices for ELLs and in all aspects of teaching.
I value the feedback and collaboration of my colleagues. Being willing to receive feedback or collaborate with others is an important quality for any teacher, but especially teachers that are new to the profession and just getting started. Being an island makes planning and teaching more challenging and benefits neither the teacher who does not collaborate nor their colleagues.
As a student, an intern, a student-teacher, and an interventionist, I have developed a philosophy around math education that guides my instructional practices and decisions. Through my licensure program, I have learned new strategies and frameworks to add to my toolkit to make my classroom more effective and put my philosophy into practice.
One of my guiding principles is that students learn best when they can learn from each other and communicate their thoughts effectively. Collaboration is vital to constructing knowledge in the math classroom and a key part of students’ social and emotional development. The five discourse practices have become a huge part of how I like to format my lessons and get students talking about math. I like how I can get many students involved and have them take ownership over constructing knowledge together.
It is important that math goes beyond rote procedure and becomes real, relevant, and useful for students. I jump at any opportunity to use manipulatives in secondary math. Manipulatives make the concepts more concrete and can make learning feel like playing, making the instruction more engaging.
Math can be used as a tool to understand the world and solve problems and integrating this into classrooms is a huge piece of the development of critical thinkers. The goal is to educate learners to be leaders and problem solvers once they leave school and to have autonomy over their lives through knowledge and skills learned in the math classroom. The cross-disciplinary nature of teaching content in this way also helps to expose students to real disciplinary math work which frequently crosses over into other areas of study, increasing career readiness.
A key practice in accomplishing all this is to make sure all students are included and challenged through the use of differentiation and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Differentiation to make instruction accessible and cognitively demanding for a wide range of strengths and needs. UDL to ensure that all students are given the opportunity to participate fully in the learning.
Assessment is key to making effective instructional decisions. Continually using the iterative process of planning, instruction, assessment, and analysis and feedback in my teaching helps to address the needs of students at all levels of understanding. Students should have as many opportunities as possible to grow and learn from assessments, and teachers should be looking to make instructional decisions based on those assessments.
As the use of technology has become far more prevalent in classrooms, it is important that we as educators are intentional about when and how we use it. Meaningful use of technology in the math classroom can be transformative when well-implemented, or it can be a barrier. When deciding to use a technology-integrated task, I consider the alternatives and decide which fits the learning goal best.
It is essential to the cognitive and social development of students that they feel safe in the classroom. Taking steps to limit negative social interactions and make students feel included are two of the biggest ways to ensure that. Limiting negative interactions can be done through explicit instruction on positive behavior and through setting up opportunities for positive interactions in collaborative spaces.
By creating activities that are social and engaging, we increase the likelihood of positive behaviors. Students that have struggled with positive social interactions need to be excited to be a part of a collaborative learning effort.