Running head: Teaching Philosophy Statement

Teaching Philosophy Statement

Jazmine Moore
Howard University: EDUC 212
December 6, 2014

Teaching Philosophy Statement

What is an educator? Well according to the dictionary it is a person who provides

instruction or education; a teacher, which is correct, but personally I see an educator as someone
that not only teaches but, motivates and someone that value children and their education and the
process of how they learn. When I become an educator I would love to teach first, second, or
third grade. There is no specific subject I would like to teach, but at that age they are in one
classroom majority of the day so I will be teaching all subjects. While reading Creating
Opportunity to Learn I found myself interested in the concept of the multicultural differences in
the classroom, and how to handle the many different situations that may occur is my class. With
the many cultural differences in the classroom it brings achievement differences and as the years
have gone by this has created an achievement gap between the minority and the majority, and
most of the time the minority are African Americans. So may ask what does race have to do
with the way a child learns? Well it is not always the way they learn but it but it can be the way
they are taught. Of course as a teacher you do not have the choice to be racist, but there are some
teachers that may not notice, but are racist and agree with some of the stereotypes put on
African-American students, and some teachers may lack the motivation to try when it comes to
the education of an African-American, because they do not think they are capable. In the
introduction of the article African Americans in Schools:Tiptoeing Around Racism a middle
school teacher they interviewed said If you look for African American students achieving low,
you may see that. But maybe you're expecting them to achieve low, too. It's like writing a
detention or referral beforehand. You're just assuming that kid is going to be bad that period or
day. You can't do that (Rozansky-Lloyd, 2005). With that being said it is clear that this has been
a problem and will continue to be a problem if we do not start doing something different in the
classroom. In Creating Opportunity to Learn it mentioned the color-blind approach in the

Teaching Philosophy Statement

classroom, meaning racial ideology that posits the best way to end discrimination is by treating
individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity. Yes, this method
may not work in all classrooms but I will be sure to use this method in my own classroom, but I
will be sure to let my students know that they need not to be ashamed of their culture, race, or
religion.There was one method I did not agree with that was mentioned in the Creating
Opportunity to Learn, like the Americanization method which is the process of an immigrant
to the United States of America becoming a person who shares American values, beliefs and
customs and is assimilated into American society. I do not agree with this method because, if
they try to Americanize immigrants they are going to try to do the same to those that may be
minorities, so they can be seen in a better light. I believe with Americanization the children
will forget their ancestors past and that takes away from them culturally, and I believe cultural is
a very important concept in education. In the article Building Trust Through Culturally
Reciprocal Home-School-Community Collaboration from the Perspective of African-American
Parents, the authors talked about the distrust that African-American parents have against
teachers, and administration due to past integration and segregation in schools. Participants
were of the belief that a state of amnesia with regard to the historical realities of their ethnic
group contributed to a disregard of the modern day legacies of slavery, institutionalized racism,
and desegregation. The need to acknowledge the dilemmas and challenges presented by
inequities were cited by each participant (Baber & Williams, 2007). Which is why multicultural education is important, not only to the educators but to the students as well. Multicultural education is defined as a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major aim
is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social-class,
and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire the knowledge,

Teaching Philosophy Statement

attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society and to
interact, negotiate, and communicate with peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic
and moral community that works for the common good (Banks & Banks, 1995). This type of
education is successful because it gives the educators some background knowledge on their
students and on the many different types of cultures they will come across in the classroom and
they will be able to understand how a child may learn, or why a child learns the way they do. It
also will give the students a better understanding of the different types of people they may come
across and will maybe give them an understanding as to why it is important for them to not judge
or bully one of their peers because they are different. As mentioned in the article Who I Am?
Which discussed identity and why it is important; The truth is that the dominant (majority) do
not really know what the experience of the subordinates (minority) is (Tatum, 2013).

Teaching Philosophy Statement