Teaching Philosophy

My philosophy of teaching has been molded by my experience with my own education as

a child and adult, and experience with helping others through my current teaching opportunities.
Ever since I was a child, I was always interested in becoming an educator, but it wasnt until high
school that I found my true passion was teaching students with disabilities. I found myself
wanting to get the students with disabilities interacting more with general education students
their own age and attending more of the schools activities. I worked with them by coaching their
basketball team, and volunteering hours to help out with their adaptive PE class. Through this
experience, it has made me strongly believe that every child has the ability and right to learn, no
matter their cognitive or physical ability. Within my classroom, students work on projects that
they then share with the students who have severe disabilities. As a class sponsor, I have also
worked with the class of 2015 to help include the students with severe disabilities when it comes
to attending dances and participating in other school events.
As an educator, I not only feel it is important that everyone has the opportunity to learn,
but that everyone has the opportunity to become a leader in their own way. In The Art of
Possibility, Zander mentioned that true power derives from ones ability to make other people
powerful (2002, pg. 68). Students master learning targets better when they are able to take
ownership of them and teach them to others. In my classroom, in a way, I will relinquish my
power of being the educator often. There are times when I demonstrate the delegative style of
leadership and assign learning targets to groups of students. I then ask them to teach the learning
targets to their peers. Through this method I enable students to develop the characteristics of a
teacher leader which, according to Charlotte Danielson, is expertise and skill in engaging others
in complex work (2006, pg. 12).

As an educator, it is also my responsibility to make student ready to be active and

productive members of society. In order to do so I will need to create leaders who are critical
thinkers, that are hard workers with character (McCoy 2011). Education is not only about doing
well on standardized test, but being prepared for life. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, It is today
we must create the world of the future. If educators only focus on preparing their students for a
test, these students will never be ready to successfully contribute to society after grade school.
In order to get students ready for todays society, technology must be utilized within the
classroom. The industrial world we used to live in has been replaced with a highly technological
one. Students are becoming more familiar with technology than teachers are, and the technology
they use impacts their communication style. We as teachers must incorporate technology into our
curriculum so that we can not only reach more students in terms of their learning style, but also
to be able to communicate with our students better. Through the use of technology in the
classroom, the opportunities we give our students will be endless.
Finally, it is important for students to know that they are a key part of the Contribution
game, according to Zander (2002). Not only do we as teachers need to think of ourselves as
contributions, but we also need to think of the students as contributions. The students we teach
affect our lives just as much as we affect theirs. We, as individuals, need to stop playing the
success/failure game Zander talks about and start thinking about how we will be a contribution
each and every single day (Zander, 2002, p. 68). I believe it is not only important for us to play
the Contribution game, but its also important for use to let our students realize that they
themselves are a contributor each day.

References

Danielson, C. (2006). Teacher Leadership That Strengthens Professional Practice.

Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Youtube. (2011, February 12). The ABCs of Educational Leadership [Video file].
Retrieved http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRAZ4iu-EgA.
Zander, B. & Zander, R. S. (2002). The Art of Possibility. New York, NY: Penguin Books.