Click here to review my resume.
Click here for a multimedia presentation of my educational philosophy.
Origins
Click here for a multimedia presentation of my educational philosophy.
Origins
I never wanted to become a teacher. Although I always loved
school and had wonderful connections with my teachers, I did not truly
understand the value of what those great educators gave to me and my
classmates. I initially majored in
Biology. Then, I went to work for a
child care center simply because it was closed on the weekends. The rest, as they say, is history. Falling in love with teaching felt very much
like falling in love with a trusted, longtime friend. And my passion for education just continues
to evolve and grow.
A
Relationship-Centered Constructivist
My bachelor’s degree is in Child Development and my first
teaching experiences were in the preschool setting. I learned to value, preserve and nurture the
teacher-student relationship above all. According
to A.H. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, learning can only take place once all
basic needs are met. After basic needs have been met and a trusting relationship
developed, then a student can learn through experience. A two-year-old child is
not able to learn to count if the child is hungry or distrusts the teacher.
Those early experiences and training still shape the way I structure the
learning experiences for my middle and high school students. For example, I almost always start the first
five minutes of my class with “Good News.”
During this time, we can briefly share any positive happenings in their
life that they wish to share. I always
start Good News with happenings from my own life so that there is a genuine
two-way connection developed with the students. Nurturing that connection is
one of my primary goals.
Secondly, I strive to build students’ self-efficacy by
guiding them through problem-based learning activities that push them slightly
beyond their known limits. My approach
is staunchly constructivist. I make
every attempt to link their learning with the real-world and career
applications. To that end, instead of
completing “assignments”, my students complete “challenges.” That slight shift
in language reframes our classroom environment and focuses the students on
discovery. For instance, any time students complete an assignment before the
allotted time, I encourage them to define their own extension projects that
follow their interests. I have some
eighth grade students who learned programming languages from Codecademy just
because they wondered what programming looked like. Students who are
intellectually curious and assertive will be effective with any subject
matter.
An Educational
Technology Progressive Conservative
Being a “progressive conservative” may seem like a
contradiction, but I firmly believe that educational technology should only be
used when it improves the state of learning beyond what the classroom
environment can offer. However, when
employed, the technology used should be current and fully integrated (hence my
“progressive” stance). For instance,
this year, I implemented Edmodo as our communications point for all of my classes,
middle and high school. The transition
from teacher disseminating information to them seeking information on their own
was rough, at least for the first six weeks.
But by the end of the school year, students knew to automatically look
on Edmodo for any class PowerPoint presentations they missed while absent,
rubrics for assignments, instructions and examples for projects, resources,
etc. My students understand firsthand
the benefits of personal learning networks because we dove in with both feet. As a counterexample, my first year teaching
technology applications to seventh graders, my curriculum planning guide
suggested I use an online collaboration site that simulated sticky notes so
that students could post brief comments and read the comments of others. Students quickly deviated from the
assignment, stopped reading the notes, and started resizing the pretend sticky
notes, changing their colors, changing the text already written by other
students and all manner of chaos ensued.
After assessing the exercise, there are many things that I could have
done to prepare the students to appropriately use the new technology. Or I
could have just passed out sticky notes from a notepad and had them place them
on the whiteboard. Sometimes, a sticky
note should just be a sticky note. My
goal is to conservatively utilize progressive technology with my students.
Aspirations
After teaching for nearly a decade and working in the
non-profit sector for six years in between, I want to eventually pursue my PhD
in Educational Psychology. I am
interested in researching total technology integration in the classroom.
