Idea Transcript
Statement of Teaching Philosophy My philosophy of teaching in a foreign language revolves around giving students opportunities to challenge themselves by providing them with authentic, useful, and real-life examples and activities in class. Apart from myself, I believe that an educational institution should take pride in creating opportunities for students to think critically and creatively; in other words, ways to broaden students horizons with out-of-the box ideas and teaching methods. As a professor of language and culture, my goal is to cultivate a student centered classroom, where I am only a referee to their game of learning. Through critical analysis of a language, one can broaden the scope of understanding of cultures, written text, people's history, and the world itself. While facilitating this type of learning, I believe that one must be aware of the different types of people and the learning styles that may need to be tapped from extraordinary teaching methods. The main focus in my classroom is comfort. If every single student isn’t at ease participating on a daily basis in class, then I haven’t done my job to foster the best possible classroom atmosphere. Teaching is a skill that can always be improved through practice and by listening to feedback. As a young teacher, I heed advice from older more accomplished teachers. I utilize their feedback by incorporating different ideas, techniques, activities, and classroom management tips, while at the same time maintaining my own unique teaching style. I love learning new teaching styles through observation, but ultimately a teacher’s style is unique and can only truly function if a teacher is at ease. Forcing a new style because it is “effective” will make a class seem forced and awkward. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with taking bits and pieces of observed pedagogy, but it needs to fit in a teacher's own personal style. Utilizing peer feedback isn’t the only way to learn how to better oneself as a teacher. I also value my student’s feedback as much as a peer. Listening to the people who are engaged in my course everyday, can provide the most valuable advice. From small homework tweaks to complete overhauls in my lesson planning approach, I love hearing how to better reach and keep my students attention for a full 50 minutes. Along with feedback, traditional education in the form of pedagogy classes can provide invaluable information to a better teaching process. Through my pursuit of a master's degree in Spanish pedagogy, I am striving to learn how to set myself up for success for the rest of my teaching career. I have found that after two years of teaching, while trying to challenge my students to think critically and creatively, I myself am challenged on a daily basis. Every class period, I try to rise to the next challenge and learn from past mistakes. The art of teaching isn’t perfect. In my opinion, there is no “perfect” class. I can always analyze a class of mine and find someway to improve. Finding flaws is human nature, and everyone is their own worst critic. Striving to continually better my teaching method, planning, classroom atmosphere, interaction with students, and general subject knowledge is what propels me forward in an ever changing occupation.