Brianne Robinson

Education Major at Georgia State University

Middle Grades: Math and Science
Teaching Philosophy

During my senior year of high school, I had the wonderful opportunity of mentoring/ teaching

my peers the basic information of business and marketing. With this title also came along the

responsibility of assisting the students solve non-academic related issues that ultimately affect

their class performance. I spent majority of the semester helping the troubled students in

behavior issues, course work, life lessons, etc. but the outcome was much more rewarding than

the process. After seeing my students at the end the of semester, better in every aspect than they

entered, and how much they have grown just by avoiding the same silly mistakes I made, I felt

empowered to do the same for the rest of my community. It has brought me honor to serve as a

mentor to the students at my high school and I thought about how beneficial and life changing it

would be if I were start with a younger group of children to help them along their journey be as

successful as possible. By starting at a younger age, it’s easier to break a habit or prevent one

from occurring, to help students in their higher education. With that being said, I envisioned

myself becoming the best middle grades math and science teacher while helping students reach

their goals in life and be the best student they can be while avoiding the same poor mistakes that

we made as generations pass. I made sure that I put forth in effort in assuring my students don’t

repeat our generational mistakes as they are our future and it is our duty to break the chain of bad

habits, the old fashioned teachinh, and implementing more investigation for our students to

understand the definition of learning.

After my course in studying topics in middle grades science, I reminisced on my days as a

student noticed my biggest goal was to always strive for the highest grade possible, similar to
many of our student’s goals now, we will find the most efficient way to obtain this goal.

Whether that meant to cram in study time, memorize material (but not understand), or even

simply finding the answers online to submit work. As a student I learned fairly quickly that it

wasn’t working for me when I was presented with generalizing information and struggled with

applying new material to new concepts. To better assist my students not repeat the same struggle,

I have to first reevaluate the way we learn to prevent memorizing (and just doing enough to get

by).

Learning can be addressed in many ways, but it is accessed best through experience, “A process

that leads to change, which occurs as a result of experience and increases the potential of

improved performance and future learning.” Experience could viewed as noticing a repetition in

material or applying a frequently used technique each when they see alike problems. I want my

students to be able to notice that they have already seen certain problems before even if it’s a

different format, for example if they become familiar with a concept in math, it’ll make it easier

for them to notice the same problem in different formats (like a word problem) and approach it in

the same way they normally would. I’m a huge believer in assuring the students understand their

material rather than memorizing it, so on tests I will frequently add problems from a previous

test for two reasons: to refresh their memory because it’ll help them on their final exam, and to

also help them find their own procedure to approaching certain problems. If it’s repeated more

than once, it’s bound to stick.

Repetition in anything can have adverse effect an individual’s, for the liability now lie in the

student’s hands and not the teachers. I would want for my students to have uplifting goals that

they can be repeatedly practiced to get the end result. Some example includes: think critically,

develop personal goals, and finding ways to make learning interesting. These can all be achieved
through self-reflections and working on time management, in and outside of class. I will provide

them with daily tasks/ jobs in the classroom to reflect on how students complete their job each

day without someone asking them, they will learn to be more responsible because the class will

be relying on them to do their job so the day will flow easier. This also promotes teamwork and

reinforces student success.

Thinking critically can involve certain steps such as giving them extensive homework or piling

their desk with several ‘critical thinking’ assignments; however, that’ll never help them, in fact

it’ll only hurt them because they are bored with doing the same things over and over again. I plan

to use an interactive math, such as math 360 (where the students are all on white boards and the

teacher can see how they are working the problem rather than leaving it up to them on sheets of

paper, easier to identify the mistakes quicker). In addition, frequently work in pairs so students

can help each other, peers feed off of each other and help one another better than individually or

just observing.

Goals for myself as a teacher would be to follow the principles of culturally responsive (vid

from Gary Howard) teaching, differentiating my instructional strategies (depending on what my

class gears more towards) and classroom management. Students are affirmed in their cultural

connections. They feel honored, recognized, and seen in their cultural connections. As their

educator, we must acknowledge the different cultures of our students and incorporate them in our

classroom. By including content/ examples that relate to the different cultures to the kids in the

classroom, the student knows that the teacher understands and accepts the student’s culture. This

is classified as content inclusion.

The classroom is physically and culturally inviting. From a student’s point of view, “school is

like me”. The environment of the institution makes a big difference when nothing surrounding
the student reflects them or their cultural. This principal involves paying attention to the

environment and making the students feel that diversity is noticed and honored. Can help resolve

achievement gap issues/ filling dead spaces, in which the spaces reflect the students.

Students are reinforced for academic development. This is the beginning of the instructional

strategies to assist with culturally responsive teaching. A common application is response

intervention, catching students falling behind and reinforcing the belief of intelligence in your

students. If we don’t believe they are smart and can apply their knowledge to several different

aspects, who will? Once we catch the students who are slipping in academics we must assure we

get them on track by emphasizing their strengths (while strengthening their weaknesses).

Instructional changes are made to accommodate differences

We must adjust our teaching strategies to meet “how our students are smart”. Gary explained

how in the beginning of his teaching he taught how he was comfortable with then realized that he

must change every year due to the many diverse students. It becomes inevitable to shift what we

do in order to meet the student’s needs. We can do this through the following:

1. learning styles: teaching to the different styles of learning

2. cultural styles: as mentioned before, content inclusion

3. Adjusting to age groups (twenty-first century/technology based)

Assess yourself as a teacher to accommodate for them and differ in the interactions in the

classroom.

The classroom is managed with firm, consisting loving control

One must understand that love is not in the same sense as love for your family, but “tough love”

or “mama love” as Gary called it. The student’s must learn to respect the teacher in which gives

the teacher a high demand for the students. Too much love could lead to having a perception as a
friend or a peer (leads to a low demand/ push over). Gary defines the concept as respecting the

adult then the student’s will be respecting. We do this by understanding a student’s background

and knowing not all students were raised the same. As a teacher, we establish the role model of

what respect looks like and by building relationships, this will lower the discipline issues in a

classroom.