goal-1

1.c. Refer to Evaluations

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 06:23:25 +0100

Please refer to my Final Intern Evaluation for evidence that I have met performance 1.c.. For Goal 1, I received a rating of “5”: “Exceeds Goals”.

Intern Evaluation, Spring 2011
Please note that this final evaluation summarizes all relevant material from my Fall Intern Evaluation.

1.b. Refer to Teacher Work Sample

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 06:24:41 +0100

Please refer to Factor 1 (pages 2-10) and Factor 6 (pages 47-49) of my Teacher Work Sample for evidence that I have met performance 1.b.:

Teacher Work Sample

1.b. Portfolio Writing: Connecting Philosophy to Practice

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:26:10 +0100

Written June 2011

Portfolio Writing:

Connecting Philosophy to Practice

Write a paper in which you link your philosophy of education papers in 1a to the development and implementation of the units in the appendix. Make direct references to specific aspects of your unit plans to make it easy for the reader to understand connections.

In my philosophy of education, I note that to create a healthy classroom community, a successful educator much recognize that her students usually differ from her in many critical ways; their profiles of strengths or weaknesses, cultural backgrounds, notions of gender roles, and history of school experiences are just a few of the possibilities. Whenever I get an idea for a unit, then, I consider the various students in my class and make modifications to the theme, content, activities, and other variables accordingly to appeal to my students. For example, in teaching my House on Mango Street unit, I choose a book that could appeal to a broad swath of my class population, the majority of whom are first-generation American immigrants, just like the author and the book’s protagonist. Also, by emphasizing the theme of the American Dream, the way in which it differs from individual to individual, and generation to generation, and the issues of equality that it raises, I drew on a theme that many students experience in their everyday lives.

In my philosophy, I note my believe that students often pay rapt attention during experiential classroom activities with real-life implications, such as when participating in mock-trials or translating Shakespeare into modern vernacular. I believe that such experiential lessons appeal to students because they build directly on what students need to know for success in their environment, in life. As a result, these lessons are also better remembered and used later in life. In my “Uniquely Alaskan Lesson” I used hypothermia as a “hook”, drawing students into the dark Alaskan tale of “To Build a Fire” and teaching them the message of the Naturalist literary movement, and an important lesson for their survival in Alaska; nature overpowers man. By having students go outside and experience the cold and then write about it descriptively using the five senses, I am giving them the opportunity to write about something that they have lived, rather than just writing about experiences in books.

This ties into another one of my ideals; I do not think of writing and reading as the sole language arts. I want my students to understand the English language not simply as letters on a page, but as the way we communicate, written and read, spoken and listened. To this end, I hope to engage my students in listening to and creating oral storytelling projects. In the “Podcasting Lessons” I created for Jason Ohler’s class, I detailed six lesson plans that involve podcasting. In one lesson plan that I actually taught this year, students created a satirical podcast about their pet peeves in the course of learning about Huck Finn and vehicles of satire. My favorite lesson detailed in “Podcasting Lessons” (developed from the culminating project for my earlier “Moral Ambiguity” unit) involves asking students to go out into the community and interview an elder about their experiences growing up. I like this project because it not only involves students in the process of producing and editing a podcast; it helps them to connect to adults in their community and gives them perspective on the past and their value as a teen as a transmitter of history. Teens are at a stage of development in which they are trying to figure out who they are; I hope that projects like these will give them perspective on their own values and let them know that they can play an important role in society. With a similar goal, the anticipatory set from Lesson 1 of the “Moral Ambiguity: Good and Evil” unit prepares students to empathize the crotchety old “Eddie” the hero of the Five People You Meet in Heaven. It starts with a Read Aloud of “The Sneetches”, then a stand-up-sit-down activity, and then asks students to reflect on negative stereotypes held by teens about the elderly and the elderly about teens.

These exercises get at the heart of my ultimate teaching goal; to help my students develop the language and social skills necessary to connect with and relate to whomever they wish to in the community, to put on whatever shoes they would like and be able to skip around in them comfortably.

Finally, in my English classes, I not only want to teach my students to be more effective writers and more passionate readers, I also want them to learn to be more imaginative, about their own lives and the lives of those around them. In my “House on Mango Street” curriculum, the primary skills focus is in helping students to understand, interpret and value figurative language, including similes and metaphors. Their knowledge culminates in the production of acrostic name poems, in which students describe the meaning of their name using the five senses and figurative language.

I thought this project was one of the most successful of those that I assigned this year. Students enjoy expressing themselves, and I enjoy those assignments most that teach me something new about my students. I firmly believe that if I can communicate to my students this personal investment in them, they will want to learn from me.

As an earnest new teacher committed to improving my craft, my philosophy will change, and my unit plans will as well; someday, on a time scale of years, however, I hope to attain “master teacher” status, where I can approach that asymptote of perfection in which my unit plans and my philosophy of teaching almost perfectly align.

1.a. Portfolio Writing: Evolution of my Philosophy

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 04:27:53 +0100

Written May 30, 2011

Portfolio Writing:

Reflection on My Developing Philosophy

Write a paper on in which you reflect on how your view and philosophy of education have developed during the program.

Informed by a vigorous student-teaching experience at West High School and the courses I have taken through UAS, my views on the purpose of education and proper methods of conducting it have greatly evolved over the course of the MAT program. As my written philosophies have become more cohesive, streamlined and succinct, some of the beliefs I held at the start of the program have strengthened and others have waned.

I believe more than ever in the importance of classroom management, and now consider creating a positive classroom climate and classroom culture to be the primary ingredient. To paraphrase the sage advice of one of my informal mentors at West: “Forget about the content; teaching is 70% relationships, and 30% subject matter. Build the relationships and the learning will come.”

As I recognized in each of my philosophies, being attentive to student differences is the critical ingredient toward creating a positive classroom climate. The more I learned about each of my students, the better-managed my classroom became. While it is important to pay attention to the oft-quoted demographic variables for the purpose of creating accommodations and modifications, such as students’ cultural and language backgrounds, past test scores, and past school performance, students are most starkly differentiated by their experiences and personalities, factors that are not captured by those statistics. As the year went on, I assigned work which gave students more opportunities to share with me their personal interests, family lives, dreams and aspirations, likes and dislikes about themselves and others, and found that the more I learned and responded to these details, the better behaved my class became. Whether it came from unconscious adjustments I was making, the fact that students felt more comfortable having expressed themselves to me, or any number of other possible explanations doesn’t matter. What matters is that it works! I have learned that it is very important to allow students to tell the teacher directly what makes them who they are, and differentiate from there. Many of my most effective accommodations and modifications resulted from my informal conversations with students rather than my examinations of test scores or IEPs.

Though I recognized at the start of the year that my individual students would vary quite a bit, I thought that classes with the same label might bear some overall similarity to one another. However, I very quickly that classroom cultures vary drastically at West High School, from class period to class period, and year to year. My English 9 class was talkative, energetic, and social with one another, with more than a couple smart students who failed because they did absolutely no work (these students failed their classes across the board). By contrast, my mentor teachers’ English 9 class was almost mute, with lower test scores in general, but no failing students. Similarly, my other mentor teacher, who has been teaching Honors English 10 for six years, found her honors students this year to be far-and-away some of the least focused honors students she has ever had. Many of her “tried and true” assignments, such as creating a satirical podcast for Huck Finn, were not completed to the normal effort level, or indeed, completed at all. Both of us struggled consistently and often failed to get the thirty-five students in this class to stop socializing and focus during direct instruction.

As a result of these experiences, I have come to believe that units and lessons should be catered and modified to fit specific classes. Though my final philosophy of education states that a progressive teaching model can be beneficial, I strongly believe that such a model can actually lead to worse educational outcomes for certain groups of students. My first hour English 10 class was “a class of misfits”, as my mentor teacher put it, with students so culturally, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse as to almost not know how to talk to each other. Many of them were relatively recent immigrants with little or no experience with cooperative work, and while some strongly identified with school achievement, others were almost completely indifferent. The most prototypically progressive projects that I assigned this year also created the largest range in success rates, with students who normally struggle doing significantly worse, often not completing the projects at all, and students who normally excel doing just as well. Projects that involved group work and/or took several days to complete were the most problematic, due variously to poor attendance and an inability on the part of the students to balance socializing and work.

Though I still seek to create experiential lessons with real-life implications, I now do my best to either make them individualized projects or to create specialized individual roles for students within their groups. I also try to limit my progressive lessons to either one-day projects, or have students work from an internet platform so that they can access and work on the project at home. Students with poor or inconsistent attendance will still have trouble making up missed assignments under this model, which can be a headache for all involved (this was a very common problem in my first hour, with a 25% absence rate during 4^th quarter). However, I believe the benefit of project-based, experiential learning to the students who are present outweighs the cost to those who would have missed class regardless of what we were doing. To sum it up, though progressive learning strategies can be an excellent way to learn, what works for one class may not work for another; with certain classes and groups progressive learning strategies must be used in a very limited fashion to ensure student success.

Since the start of the year, I have started to place less emphasis on parent-teacher communication in my personal philosophy. Though I believe that improved parent-teacher communication and parent-school involvement is an integral component of improving public high schools, I have found my original thought of communicating with all parents consistently (or even having communication with all parents of struggling students) to be naively idealistic. Though I regularly communicate concerns via telephone and email and respond to parent emails within the hour, it is often with some difficulty that I communicate. Many parents in the community in which I work are not invested in school, or had a poor relationship with school as a student, and feel inconvenienced or even accosted when contacted by a teacher. Others are impossible to reach, exert little control over their child, or are poorly informed of their kids’ whereabouts or study habits in the first place. For parents of the students of greatest concern, I often receive no response to my calls or emails. I would love to be a part of a larger school-wide or community-wide effort to improve parent-teacher-school communication and help educate parents on how they can be involved in their child’s education and help their child to succeed in school. However, this is almost impossible to achieve on a one-classroom level given the culture of the school.

For next year, I plan on creating a protocol for more consistently contacting parents. On their first day of class, each student will fill out a notecard for me with parent contact information so that I have parents’ real contact information, as the school’s records are often outdated. Within the first month, I will try to contact three to five parents per day to test the contact information out, introducing myself and explaining how they can check their students’ grades and how I can be contacted. After that, even if a parent is not involved, and never responds to later messages, I will at least have covered the bases from my end.

After a year on the front lines of teaching, I feel more strongly that students must take responsibility for their own learning. While I provide opportunities, new information, resources, support, and feedback, it is a student’s job to follow my instructions and create their own learning. A students’ ability to take responsibility for their learning is actually inhibited by the more punitive aspects of school, which include punitive grading when it comes to class work and punishments when it comes to classroom behavior.

There is a difference between “grading” and “assessment”; while the former lets a student know, regardless of their effort or ability, how well they have done on some arbitrary A-F scale, the latter informs the student of whether or not they have properly demonstrated their learning, how they excelled, and how they can improve. Grading is often punitive, reflecting some level of judgment (you get 100% except if you make mistakes), and ends by labeling a students’ performance, and, simultaneously, the students themselves, with a “grade”. By contrast, assessment takes into account how a person is doing relative to a standard, and, with the accompanying feedback, allows students to take personal responsibility for improving specific areas of their learning. While both grading and assessment are necessary, it is important for teachers to remember that assessment is what truly helps students to learn. With this belief, it is the teacher’s responsibility to assess and grade assignments in a timely manner so that students have the tools and time to take steps toward improvement.

Just as we must empower students to take personal responsibility for their skill improvement, students must also take personal responsibility for their classroom behavior. Unfortunately, the current “punishments” for bad behavior do not help students in this regard. “Punishments”, such as detention, assign the same unpleasant task of “doing nothing” to students, regardless of their offense. When a student is done “accepting” the punishment, they can walk away, and ask, with all sincerity, “what do you want from me now? I served the time.” Consequences, on the other hand, follow more causally from the students’ actions. Students who talk too much may not be allowed to sit with friends. Students who use all their bathroom passes in the first week of the quarter will have to “hold it” after that. Consequences encourage students to take personal responsibility for improvement, and reinforce the link between bad decisions and bad outcomes that students will encounter time and time again in the world outside of school.

I became an educator because I want to be a life-long learner, and I believe strongly that teaching is the best profession from which to do so. I am also a perfectionist, and, luckily (or perhaps unluckily) for me, there are always ways for a teacher to improve their craft. My earnest efforts to further developing my philosophy, I hope, will take me far. Looking forward to next year, I am excited for my philosophy to be tested, and to evolve.

1.a. Philosophy of Education #6 - Final

Fri, 27 May 2011 01:22:01 +0100

Fiona Worcester

Educational Philosophy

May 26, 2011

An effective educator is a life-long learner. She takes advantage of the inherent opportunities in the educational process for teachers and students to exchange ideas, to experience mutual revelations, and to expand their knowledge together. Both teachers and students should gain a sense of personal growth and accomplishment from being a part of the classroom, school community, and the community at large.

In creating a healthy classroom community, a successful educator recognizes that her students often differ from her in many critical ways; a student may have a different profile of strengths or weaknesses, a different cultural background, a different notion of gender roles, and/or a different history of school experiences. Similarly, she is sensitive to each student’s emotional, social, and intellectual maturity levels. By being aware of these differences, an educator can select and implement appropriate curriculum, classroom management, and instructional behaviors, making individual as well as class-wide modifications to ensure optimal learning conditions for her students.

Classroom management comes first; without effective classroom procedures and rules, there can be no learning. A good teacher bases her rules on the idea that students want to be successful, and that it is the teacher’s role to help provide students with the skills necessary to attain success. In her rules, she recognizes the teacher’s right to teach and the students’ right to learn. Rather than “punishments” for behaviors, there are “consequences”, a perspective that places the responsibility for good or bad outcomes squarely on the students’ shoulders. Most importantly, however, an effective educator knows that the best defense is a good offense – in the form of interesting and engaging curriculum.

As the essentialist educational philosophers correctly note, students are not aware of what they need to know; the district and school necessarily decide what educational standards students should meet, and educators teach toward these standards. While rigid goals and standards are necessary for an education to take place, they are far from sufficient. Many kids are not intrinsically motivated to learn, and teachers cannot force them to do so. We must bring the proverbial horse to the water and then, make the act of drinking water look – if not fun or exciting – like the only sensible thing to do.

While lectures and independent work is often necessary, a more progressive approach to lesson planning can be particularly effective with many of today’s students. An effective educator does their best to develop and implement engaging units that include opportunities for students to engage in fact-finding and exploration through experiential and project-based components. Students often pay rapt attention during classroom activities with real-life implications, such as when participating in mock-trials or translating Shakespeare into modern vernacular. Such experiential lessons are more interesting to students because they build directly on what students need to know for success in life. As a result, these lessons are also better remembered and used later in life. A good education prepares students to be effective citizens of society, who can apply their learning to novel real-life situations.

Report cards are a necessary evil. Whenever possible, assessment should be rubric-based and informative, providing useful feedback, rather than consist of punitive grading. Students learn very little when told something is “incorrect” – this leaves a world of possible “correct” answers. To help students learn from assessments, teachers must both explain the process toward improvement and provide opportunities for improvement. This places the responsibility for improvement squarely upon the shoulders of the students. Whenever pertinent, teachers should present anonymous student work samples and assess their strengths and weaknesses using the rubrics, providing students with achievable models for their own work. Finally, as with B.F. Skinner’s mice, students learn much more when they receive feedback promptly; assessments and grading should be prompt. If students receive feedback weeks later, they may not care anymore or may have already internalized improper information.

When teachers create exciting curriculum and have high expectations of their students, it helps students think of themselves as individually important, part of a caring community. Teens are in a stage of development in which they are trying to figure out who they are. They regularly experience confusion and frustration centered on their individual values, priorities, and roles in society. In my English classes, I not only want to teach my students to be more effective writers and more passionate readers, I also want them to learn to be more imaginative, about their own lives and the lives of those around them; to become more empathetic and less cynical at an age where apathy is a high risk. If they feel that I am personally invested in them, they will hopefully want to learn from me.

In my curriculum and my demeanor, I want to aid my students directly in forming and navigating their roles in society. I want my students to understand the English language not simply as letters on a page, but as the way we communicate, written and read, spoken and listened. Ideally, I hope to emphasize the development of the language and social skills necessary to help them connect with and relate to whomever they wish to in the community, to put on whatever shoes they would like and be able to skip around in them comfortably.

Finally, what is most important for a new teacher is her earnest efforts toward improving her craft. As a teacher, it is my duty to address problems and seek out constructive criticism to improve my curriculum and classroom management; to work with other teachers, not only when I am struggling, but as a professional habit. As a new and idealistic teacher, it is important for me to be patient, celebrating successes while noting areas for improvement, with the recognition that brilliant teachers bloom on the timescale of years.

1.a. Statement of Professional Objectives

Mon, 23 May 2011 23:36:54 +0100

Fiona Worcester
UAS MAT Application
February 24, 2010

I want to be an educator. This is the simplest explanation I have for my goal in entering the UAS Masters of Art in Teaching program, but it also explains very little: I could envision my job as “educator” taking many forms in my lifetime, including that of a teacher, college professor, researcher, author, mother, coach, and public radio show host. I have decided, however, that the best way for me to continue my journey as an educator is as a high school teacher in the community of Anchorage.

I was born and raised in Anchorage, and received an excellent education in the Anchorage School district, attending Chugach Optional Elementary, Romig Middle School and West Anchorage High School. I grew up enjoying many of the outdoor activities Alaska affords: hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, and going on river float trips. My parents also involved me in the cultural scene of Anchorage; we attended opera, symphony, and theatre performances at the Performing Arts Center and went to local art openings. They enrolled me in piano and flute lessons at an early age. By high school, I was an accomplished flautist and ski racer, and was deeply committed to academics

I chose to go “back East” for college, attending Williams College in Massachusetts, where I graduated phi beta kappa and magna cum laude in June of 2009 with a BA in psychology and art. Though I received an excellent academic education at Williams, I was unhappy on the East Coast. I didn’t realize until I returned, however, how much I had missed Anchorage. I had thought that I was yearning for the mountains, trails, and wide-open spaces of my hometown. Instead, I discovered that it was the friendly frontier attitude I had missed: the way Alaskans make eye contact, strike up a conversation and are eager to help.

I think one of my greatest strengths as an educator is that I truly value a sense of community. The decision to pursue this masters program arose in great part from my experiences in coming back to the community of Anchorage to spend a “gap” year or two before graduate school. I have gotten a great sense of personal growth and accomplishment from working as a substitute teacher, mostly at West High School, and coaching cross-country skiing at East High School, and feel more engaged, vibrant, and productive than ever before as a result of becoming re-involved in these communities.

Though subbing is often billed as “a thankless job”, most of the time, this has not been my experience. On a good day (I will not pretend that they are all good) I feel honored to be included in the students’ lives, if just for a day. They are learning who they are and who they want to be, and adults who pay attention have the opportunity, the privilege even, to have a life-shaping impact. When subbing, I create a seating chart while taking roll and address the kids by their names for the rest of the period. I try to teach them not only the curriculum that the teachers left, but also to give them some insight about life outside of school whenever possible, and am often amazed at their courage and insight. After 58 days of subbing at West, I have become a familiar figure to many of them, and have received thanks from teachers, administrators, kids, and parents for my attentions. There is no greater compliment than having the kids greet me cheerfully in the hallway – after only one or two days of subbing!

Another teaching strength of mine lies in my creativity and originality. As a substitute teacher, I am occasionally faced with teaching situations that require innovative solutions and this is where my creativity pays off. Recently, for instance, I was substituting for a class that was supposed to be doing international policy debates that day. However, most of the students were unprepared, and were not versed in debate format, due to a string of recent substitutes. I thought that forging ahead with the assignment would be a no-win situation, (for the kids, the regular teacher, and me) but also did not want to surrender to the situation by allowing the students unstructured “work time”. Instead, I came up with a third option: orchestrating impromptu debates. The topics I procured included the following: Is NASCAR a sport? Should people need licenses to be parents? I wrote a debate format on the board, assigned groups, and made sure that opposing sides were separated for a more conspiratorial atmosphere. I circulated between the groups, nudging students in the direction of possible arguments and predicting counterarguments. After about 20 minutes of prep time, the students debated, and I coached and refereed. Though some debaters fell flat, I was quite impressed with the performance of most of the students. Most importantly, the students reported that they felt more prepared (and better equipped to prepare) for their upcoming debates. The beautiful thing is that this lesson not only exercised my creativity, but it also exercised that of the students.

My job as an assistant coach for the East Cross-Country Ski Team has provided me with a more stable community within which to be an educator. Among other things, this has allowed me to better exercise another one of my teaching strengths: my reliability and dependability. Over time, I have had the opportunity to develop individual relationships with each of the kids, and have learned their communication styles and quirks, something that is hard to accomplish as a substitute teacher. I am there every day and can be relied upon to assist every skier, regardless of initial skiing ability or talent, working with exchange students who have never seen snow before as well as with seasoned racers. I find that the skiers approach me with their concerns and questions, even when I am not the coach best equipped to answer them.

In this permanent role as “coach”, my reliability and creativity have compounded upon my commitment to community. I consistently promote the East Ski Team community outside of practice, sponsoring a girls’ movie night for the East skier chicas, hosting a “East High Distance Babes” skirt-making session to make costumes for the Ski for Women, attending every post-race team party and hosting one myself, and volunteering my time to chaperone and coach some of the more competitive athletes for a weekend of non-school-affiliated races in Homer. By acquiring a Masters in Teaching and teaching certification through UAS, I hope to bring the same level of energy and commitment I bring to coaching to teaching.

The joy I have experienced upon rejoining the Anchorage community as a teacher and coach has made me realize that I gain the most from my interactions with those older and younger than myself. This daily educational exchange between people of different ages and backgrounds has helped me to realize that my purpose in life as that of an educator, a life-long teacher and learner. For now, I want to pursue this goal through teaching in the public high schools of Anchorage.

1.a. Philosophy of Education #5

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 04:52:41 +0100

Fiona Worcester

Educational Philosophy

ED630 - Educational Technology

Professor Jason Ohler

December 13, 2010

For ED630, I created a Youtube video for my Philosophy of Education Project which you can view at the following link, or in the sidebar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlOLo01vRPI

1.a. Philosophy of Education #4

Mon, 23 May 2011 23:14:19 +0100

Fiona Worcester

Educational Philosophy

ED691- Secondary Teaching Internship

Professor David Marvel

October 30, 2010

An effective educator is a life-long learner. She takes advantage of the inherent opportunities in the educational process for teachers and students to exchange ideas, to experience mutual revelations and to expand their knowledge together. Both teachers and students should gain a sense of personal growth and accomplishment from being a part of the classroom, school community and the community at large.

In creating a classroom community, a successful educator knows that her students can differ from her in many critical ways; a student may have a different profile of strengths or weaknesses, a different cultural background, a different notion of gender roles, and/or a different history of school experiences. Similarly, she is sensitive to each student’s emotional, social, and intellectual maturity levels. By being aware of these differences, she can select and implement appropriate curriculum, classroom management, and instructional behaviors, making individual as well as class-wide modifications to ensure effective learning conditions for her students.

Classroom management comes first; without effective classroom procedures and rules, there can be no learning. A good teacher bases her rules on the idea that students want to be successful, and that it is the teacher’s role to teach them the skills necessary for success. In her rules, she recognizes the teacher’s right to teach and the students’ right to learn. Rather than “punishments” for behaviors, there are “consequences”, a perspective that places the responsibility for good or bad outcomes on the students’ shoulders. More importantly, however, an effective educator knows that the best defense is a good offense – in the form of interesting and engaging curriculum.

As the essentialist educational philosophers correctly note, students are not aware of what they need to know; the district and school necessarily decide what educational standards students should meet, and educators teach toward these standards. While rigid goals and standards are necessary for an education to take place, they are far from sufficient. Many kids are not intrinsically motivated to learn, and teachers cannot force them to do so. We must bring the proverbial horse to the water and then, make the act of drinking water look – if not fun and exciting – like the only sensible thing to do.

A more progressive approach to lesson-planning is often most effective with today’s students. While lectures and independent work is often necessary, an effective educator develops engaging units that also include opportunities for students to engage in fact-finding and exploration through experiential and project-based components. Students often pay rapt attention during classroom activities with real-life implications, as when participating in mock-trials or watching commercials for signs of propaganda. Such experiential lessons are more interesting as they build directly on what students need to know for success for life, and as a result, they are also better remembered and used later in life. A good education prepares these students to be effective citizens of society, who can apply their learning to new real-life situations.

Report cards are a necessary evil. Whenever possible, grading should be rubric-based and informative, providing useful feedback, rather than punitive. Students learn very little when told something is “incorrect” – this leaves a world of possible “correct” answers. When a teacher explains the process toward improvement and provides opportunities for improvement, students learn from grading and the responsibility for improvement is placed more squarely upon their own shoulders. Whenever pertinent, teachers should provide anonymous student examples and explain their strengths and weaknesses, allowing students models for their own behavior. Finally, as with B.F. Skinner’s mice, students learn much more when they receive feedback promptly – if students receive feedback weeks later, they may not care anymore or may have already internalized improper information.

When teachers create exciting curriculum and have high expectations of their students, it helps students think of themselves as individually important, and part of a caring community. Teens are in a stage of development in which they are trying to figure out who they are. They regularly experience confusion and frustration centered on their individual values, priorities and roles in society. In my English classes, I not only want to teach my students to be more effective writers and more passionate readers, I also want them to learn to be more imaginative, about their own lives and the lives of those around them; to become more empathetic and less cynical at an age where apathy is a high risk. If they feel that I am personally invested in them, they will hopefully want to learn from me.

In my curriculum and my demeanor, I want to aid my students directly in forming and navigating their roles in society. I want my students to understand the English language not simply as letters on a page, but as the way we communicate, read and written, and spoken and listened. Ideally, I hope to emphasize the development of the language and social skills necessary to help them connect with and relate to whomever they wish to in the community, to take on whatever role and put on whatever shoes they would like and be able to skip around in them comfortably.

1.a. Philosophy of Education #3

Mon, 23 May 2011 23:17:35 +0100

Fiona Worcester

Educational Philosophy

ED631 - Educational Psychology

Karen Macklin

July 30, 2010

An effective educator is a life-long learner. She takes advantage of the inherent opportunities in the educational process for teachers and students to exchange ideas, to experience mutual revelations and to expand their knowledge together. To attain these ends, she creates and promotes a positive classroom community while at the same time working to connect her classroom with the broader community, especially parents, through the contents of her curriculum, field trips, and projects. Both she and the students should gain a sense of personal growth and accomplishment from being a part of the classroom community, and the community at large.

In creating this classroom community, this successful educator is aware that her students are often different from her in many critical ways. For example, a student may have a different profile of strengths or weaknesses, a different cultural background, a different notion of gender roles, and/or a different history of school experiences. Along the same vein, she notes each student’s emotional, social, and intellectual maturity levels. It is crucial that she is aware of these differences in creating her curriculum, implementing classroom management, and, most importantly, in relating to her students, so that she can differentiate her instructional behaviors and curriculum to teach each student to his or her individual needs.

Classroom management is the most basic element of education: Without effective classroom procedures and respect for the rules of the classroom (written and unwritten), there can be no learning. A good teacher bases her rules on the idea that the students want to learn to be successful and that it is the teacher’s role to teach them these skills. In her rules, she recognizes the teacher’s right to teach and the students’ right to learn. There are no “punishments” for behaviors, merely consequences, a perspective that puts the responsibility on her students’ shoulders, and allows for positive consequences as well. However, while it is important to have effective classroom procedures, prevention, and intervention strategies, it is equally important to remember that the best defense is a good offense!

Many kids are not intrinsically motivated to learn, and teachers cannot force students to learn. A good educator develops, uses, and modifies strategies to entice and convince students to learn. We must bring the proverbial horse to the water and then, make the act of drinking water look – if not fun and exciting – like the only sensible thing to do. Students learn best when they are excited about learning. An effective educator develops engaging lessons, with built in breaks and active roles for the kids. In addition to knowing and addressing her students by name, she is also aware of her students’ interests, individually and as a class, and keeps up as best she can with popular culture. Using references and examples that feel exciting and relevant to the kids is not only appreciated, but also helps them to learn. Similarly, the educator needs to be genuinely excited about her lessons – either by design or by attitude – it makes the kids curious, and the excitement is contagious!

Furthermore, assessment should be informed by behavioral research. It should be seldom punitive, as students learn very little when told something is “incorrect”. In that situation, in the whole universe of possibilities, anything that isn’t marked with red pen might be “correct” – how can students know where to explore next? When a teacher explains the correct answer or process in her corrections, the students have a clear idea about what they should be doing. It is important to note that some students may require more feedback than others. Students benefit most from assessment when we show them examples from which to model their behavior, and provide positive reinforcement when possible and constructive feedback when necessary. Also, as with B.F. Skinner’s mice, students learn much more if they receive feedback promptly – the teacher’s grade is then related to their recent action, and they know what to change in their minds. If students receive feedback weeks later, the event is already in their emotional past, and they may have already internalized improper information.

As an educator, there are certain principles that apply to most, if not all teachers and subjects. However, lest it is misleading, I find it important to speak to my additional personal pedagogical goals here in the first person.

When teachers create exciting curriculum and have high expectations of their students, it helps students think of themselves as individually important, and part of a caring community. As noted by psychologist Erik Erikson, teens are in a stage of development in which they are trying to figure out who they are. They regularly experience confusion and frustration centered on their individual values, priorities and roles in society. In my English classes, I not only want to teach my students to be more effective writers and more passionate readers, I also want them to learn to be more imaginative, about their lives and the lives of those around them; to become more empathetic about the people in their world, and less cynical during a time in their development where apathy is a high risk. If they feel that I am personally invested in them; if my lesson plans address questions that they themselves are curious about in exploring their roles in society; if I express interest in pop culture, and notice their individual efforts; they will hopefully want to learn from me.

In my curriculum and my demeanor, I want to aid my students directly in forming and navigating their roles in society. I want my students to understand the English language not simply as letters on a page, but as the way we communicate, read and written, and spoken and listened. Ultimately, I hope to emphasize the development of the language and social skills necessary to help them connect with and relate to whomever they wish to in the community, to take on whatever role and put on whatever shoes they would like and be able to walk around in them comfortably.

This is a monumental challenge for any teacher, because each student has a unique background, a unique set of challenges, prior beliefs, misconceptions, and misgivings about the information being taught. We can (probably) all define alligator, but, as cognitive theorists will note, none of us experience alligators in the same way. We each have individual definitions (my alligator is smaller than my mother’s, less scary, and grayer) and we have to build on prior knowledge – or deconstruct prior knowledge – in order to learn anything new (just as you require knowledge of English vocabulary to tabulate the words I am writing to you now, and are even now slightly altering the way you remember alligator). In the constructivist style, I believe that each learner has their own experience and unique understanding, and I aim to build a detectable amount of new knowledge as best I can on top of that already existing in the minds of each of my students.

As is the case for any new teacher, my views are changing rapidly, and will undoubtedly continue to change, even drastically, over time. In this process, the effective teacher must choose her battles and may not have the requisite lesson plans, time, or skills implement her philosophy, except on a timescale of years.

However, what is most important for any teacher is her motivation, her earnest efforts. She wants to be a successful educator, and therefore actively addresses problems and seeks out constructive criticism to improve her curriculum and classroom management. She works with other teachers, both when she is struggling, and as a professional habit. She asks other teachers to look over her curriculum and finds out what works for them, in terms of curriculum and classroom management. She reads educational journals, goes to workshops, and allows herself to learn from her mistakes as well as her more positive teaching experiences. As a new and idealistic teacher, she is patient, recognizing that brilliant teachers often bloom on the timescale of years.

1.a. Philosophy of Education #2

Mon, 23 May 2011 23:18:38 +0100

Fiona Worcester

Educational Philosophy

ED692 - Educational Seminar

Stacy Golden

July 13, 2010

In a sense, I have always been a part of the community in which I intend to teach. I was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and graduated in 2005 from West Anchorage High School, where I will be doing my student teaching. For college, I went off to Massachusetts in search of solid academics and competitive skiing. Though I received an excellent education on the East coast, I was quite unhappy. I didn’t realize until I returned, however, how much I had missed Alaskans themselves, with their friendly frontier attitudes. I spent the year after college working as a substitute teacher, mostly at West, and coaching cross-country skiing at East Anchorage High School. It was the happiest year of my life. I got a great sense of personal growth and accomplishment from being a part of these communities. My experiences have helped me to realize my purpose in life as that of an educator, a life-long teacher and learner, in the public schools and in the community.

It became apparent quite quickly, however, that my experience in the highly (-tracked) gifted program had put me on the elitist fringe of the community for most of my life. Most of the 1,200 kids or so I taught in my days subbing at West I would never have met while attending West. I have learned so much from helping West students of all abilities, and I love to see the way their faces light up when I remember their names. I have to remember, constantly, however, that many are slightly different critters from me, and be vigilant in my teaching strategies, so that we both stay on track.

After a year of substitute teaching, I have observed dozens of classrooms, and the one universal truth I have brought away is that classroom management is the first, most all-important aspect of education. The way a class behaves is directly symptomatic of how much – or how little – they are learning. Without classroom procedures and respect for the rules of the classroom (written and unwritten), there will be no learning. To this end, I have an extensive classroom management plan, with intervention strategies and class rules, founded most importantly on the idea that my students want to learn to be successful and that I want to teach them. Beyond my classroom procedures, prevention, and intervention strategies, I think the best defense is actually a good offense!

As noted earlier, my students are not the nerds that I am. Many kids, for instance, are not intrinsically motivated to learn, and I need to be using and constantly developing strategies to entice them into learning. After all, teachers cannot force students to learn. We must bring the proverbial horse to the water and then, make the act of drinking water look – if not fun and exciting – like the only sensible thing to do. As a teacher, I plan to do my best to create engaging lessons, with built in breaks and active roles for the kids. Whenever possible, I include pop-culture references and examples; they are not only appreciated, but help to drive home the lesson. Kids learn best when I am excited about my lessons – it makes them curious. Calling each individual student by names is another critical method that got many students listening to and respecting me even as a substitute teacher.

Students learn best when they feel this sense of mutual respect; it helps to let them know that they are important, part of a caring community. As noted by psychologist Erik Erikson, teens are in a stage of development where they are trying to figure out who they are. They regularly experience confusion and frustration in discovering their role in society during these years. With my English classes, I not only want my students to be more effective writers and more passionate readers, I also want them to learn to be more imaginative, about their lives and the lives of those around them; to become more empathetic about the people in their world, and less cynical during a time in their development where apathy is a high risk. If they feel that I am personally invested in them; if my lesson plans address questions that they themselves are curious about in exploring their roles in society; if I express interest in pop culture, and notice their individual efforts; they will hopefully want to learn from me.

In my curriculum and my demeanor, I want to aid my students directly in forming and navigating their roles in society. I want my students to understand the English language not simply as letters on a page, but as the way we communicate, read and written, and spoken and listened. Ultimately, I hope to emphasize the development of the language and social skills necessary to help them connect with and relate to whomever they wish to in the community, to take on whatever role and put on whatever shoes they would like and be able to walk around in them comfortably.

This is a monumental challenge, because each student has a unique background, a unique set of challenges, prior beliefs, misconceptions, and misgivings about the information that I aim to teach them. We can (probably) all define alligator, but, as cognitive theorists will note, none of us experience alligators in the same way. We each have individual definitions (my alligator is smaller than my mother’s, less scary, and grayer) and we have to build on prior knowledge – or deconstruct prior knowledge – in order to learn anything new (just as you require knowledge of English vocabulary to tabulate the words I am writing to you now, and are even now slightly altering the way you remember alligator). In the constructivist style, I believe that each learner has their own experience and unique understanding, and I aim to build a detectable amount of new knowledge as best I can on top of that already existing in the minds of each of my students.

My beliefs about what assessment should (and should not) entail are based on more behaviorist principles of reward and punishment. Assessment should be seldom punitive, as students learn very little when we tell them something is wrong. In that situation, in the whole universe of possibilities, anything that isn’t marked red might be right – how can they know where to explore next? When we tell them what is correct or how to do something correctly, they have a clear idea about what they should be doing. Students benefit most from assessment when we show them examples from which to model their behavior, and provide positive reinforcement when possible and constructive feedback when necessary. Also, as with B.F. Skinner’s mice, students learn much more if they receive feedback promptly – the teacher’s grade is then related to their recent action, and they know what to change in their minds. If they receive feedback weeks later, they may have already internalized improper information.

My views as a teacher are changing rapidly, and will undoubtedly change drastically over time. Also, I am starting to realize that I may not have the requisite lesson plans, time, or skills implement my philosophy, except on a timescale of years. And this is the time scale on which brilliant teachers bloom. I earnestly hope to be one of them.