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Personal Teaching Philosophy

Bailey Yates

Regent University
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Personal Teaching Philosophy

When I first began teaching throughout my practicums and my first student teaching

placement, I was tentative of the PBIS system and the emphasis on positive reinforcement.

Although those things are obviously helpful and good, I thought of it more as a parental role, not

an academic or teacher role. I was more familiar and comfortable with a more traditional

classroom environment of silence and stillness. My philosophy of teaching as well as student

learning has definitely shifted in the last year or so. As I have been immersed in these systems

and PBIS schools, I have seen the benefits and the differences from a more traditional style and

how my early education was conducted. I now see the very apparent benefits of a Positive

Behavior Intervention Support system. My teaching philosophy now is to guide students to find a

curiosity or interest and use that to pursue knowledge. This is done by first creating and

maintaining the classroom environment through classroom and behavior management via

positive reinforcement.

My teaching a philosophy involves a good portion of student self-efficacy. The student is

in no way left on their own, as the teacher will continue to guide and coax the students’ best

efforts forward. This philosophy and strategy involves setting specific goals. I’d like to instill a

certain set of goals within my students. Intrinsic motivation is so crucial to a student's prolonged

and lifelong sense of learning.

So first and foremost, I want to instill intrinsic motivation. No matter who you are or

what age you are, you're not going to learn any material unless you want to learn that material. In

other words, they must have something that drives or motivates them. So giving my students that

internal motivation to govern themselves, to a point, will be a beneficial pattern not just for

learning, but for a living. Secondly, I want to continue to teach my students all about having a
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growth mindset. Everyone is familiar with failure, we will all experience it many times, the

important part is that we don’t let that define us or keep us from trying again. In an academic

sense, I think that this is most often done in connection with Math. After a certain number of

attempts or failures, it common for students to decided that they’re just “bad” at it, and there’s no

changing it. Instead, we should all be using our growth mindset to see how much further we can

grow from where we are currently at. Thirdly, and most importantly, I want to instill a curiosity

within my students. I believe that a love of learning comes from a love of asking questions and

of being curious about certain things. A good strategy I found so far of instilling curiosity in

students is to spend that one-on-one time with my students within guided groups, or whenever I

can, and differentiate to find topics of high interest to them. It requires a lot of attention and

detail from the teacher as well as that foundational relationship with students, and a mutual effort

between student and teacher. It is not the teacher doing everything and spooning it to the student,

and not the student working on their own. Rather, the teacher promotes an intrinsic work ethic.

The student and teacher can work in tandem to find those high interest topics and the teacher

helping the student to ask the right questions and guiding his or her curiosity.

Whether or not I can openly teach my faith, I bring it with me everywhere. As a teacher, I

will know students in some of their most formative years of their life. The way they handle

socializations, think of their own intellect, and whether or not they like learning is all impacted

by what their teacher instills them. I will be teaching students how to read and write, as well as

how to get along with their peers, and how to handle hardship. I am there for those students when

they are losing family members, or they are coming from an abusive household, or their

suffering neglect, and I am there for all of it, not just the academic part. With all of that, and with

these real lives in front of me every day, I could not continue to do what I do without my faith
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and the strength I get through Christ. My most comforting verse is Psalm 46:1-3, “God is our

refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth

give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the

mountains quake with their surging.” (NIV) I am still learning new ways to love every day, and

that comes from trusting God in a big way with my future, and my students, and my students’

future. The more ardently I am loved by God, the more I need to share that love with my

students.