Bare Bones Teaching Philosophy

As a future high school math teacher I want to build a classroom environment where abstract thinking and positive social skills are developed. It is my goal to help students become more proficient in math, lower their anxiety, and promote interest in future studies. I want to encourage students to analyze and challenge how they perceive both their learning ability and conditions outside the classroom.

IUSB #2 Growth and Development

During their high school years students are cognitively moving to abstract thinking. In personal development adolescents are trying to develop an identity through the use of conflict, exploration, and commitment to their findings. As a teacher I can help them practice these skills in the classroom. Proper lesson plans and learning environment can help them practice these skills.

Students need to practice developing abstract skills and social skills. Under my supervision these cognitive and personal skills can be performed in three steps: working on individual homework problems, working on group problems, and having groups develop problems and answers. To develop more social skills, teams will change after each assignment. This type of classroom environment will allow the students to develop their cognitive and personal/social skills. These lesson plans will help students develop abstract ways to look at problems; instead of using rote memorization. Interacting with their fellow students will help develop social skills and have them interact with people they may not normally socialize with outside the classroom.

IUSB #5 Learning Environment (Motivation)

In the classroom it is ideal to have all students mastery oriented, however, students may encounter problems. They may not have all their deficiency needs met. Other needs include not wanting to look foolish in front of their peers. Also, they may see their success and failures as something they cannot control. It is my responsibility to help them overcome these problems.

To move students to be mastery oriented I have to provide excessive feedback and attribute their success to their effort. This should raise their self-esteem, increase their expectations of success, and have persistent achievement behavior.

It is my goal to have students who have a low fear of failure, develop learning goals, attribute their success to effort, know that ability is improved with work, and learn self-regulated learning skills to encourage them to be life-long learners. I want to help students to stay focused and engaged by providing feedback, encourage them to finish their work, and avoid placing heavy emphasis on grades and competition between students. Most importantly I will model a positive motivation to learn by showing enthusiasm for learning and endurance when a problem occurs.

IUSB #7 Instructional Planning

In the classroom it is important to set up an environment that optimizes student learning. Students have a need to be engaged with abstract and scientific learning, and at the same time not look foolish in front of their peers. It is my responsibility to set up a classroom for both behavioral and cognitive learning. In regards to behavioral learning it is important that students have rewarding responses from the classroom stimuli, and have this paired to stimuli in the subject matter. I also want to eliminate behaviors that detract from the learning environment.

When students are learning cognitively it is best to teach them a deductive reasoning method. This starts with introducing the name and definition of a concept, demonstrating many examples, relating the examples to the concept, and giving students individual and group practice problems. I will encourage students to correct their homework so they can be prepared for continued learning.

IUSB #9 Professionalism

It is important for both students and I (as a life-long learner) to continually reflect on strengths and weaknesses, and how they know what they know. Together we can view how we see the world, and change our beliefs through understanding what is going on. This can work with studying both academics and situations outside the classroom.

As someone who lived in a Benedictine monastery while finishing undergraduate school I understand the need for community. Community is needed to develop individuals. I work with my fellow teachers, parents of students, and other members of the community to develop my skills as a teacher. I realize the importance of drawing on other’s experience to improve my ability to teach, and my understanding from where my students are coming.

Internet Filtering in Schools

I am in favor of Internet filtering. The Internet can be a dangerous playground if it is not supervised. I believe it is reasonable for a school district to ban pornography, criminal skills, gambling, and questionable chat rooms that online predators can access. I also think that the degree of which hate speech is censored should be determined at various grade levels.
Pornography, crime skills (including drugs), gambling, and general chat rooms need to be filtered at schools. Pornography is not a form of art, it is the belittling of people for purposed of money and entertainment. Pornography can be talked about in the classroom setting without having to display an example website on a computer. It is idiotic to think that a student needs to see a website to know it exists. Students encounter porn from simple searches of innocent material, like "Scooby Doo". My eleven year old step-son found a porn site while searching for basketball shoes. (I was over his shoulder during the search process and a site that looked like an online sporting goods store was actually selling online porn passes.) This same reasoning holds true for gambling and crime skill websites.
As for chat rooms, this can be a teetering subject. Chat rooms can be a great collaboration resource for students, therefore not all chat rooms should be filtered. So, schools should make their own chat rooms that only allow students to access it. Problem! Maintaining a chat room requires money and personnel resources. Also, savvy online predators will obtain access to these sites. It it is possible, have some school personnel either develop or find a chat room that they deem as satisfactory. Allow teachers to have an administration/god-like ability in the chat room. Students may think it is an invasion of the students' privacy to allow teachers that kind of ability, but students should only have privacy in the restroom when they are on school grounds.
As for hate speech, this should only be filtered at various levels of education. At the high school level, students should have some access to hate speech while under the supervision of a teacher. The teacher can provide some online material for students to get an idea of what it is, then the teacher can terminate the online source and lead a discussion on what was shown. This should only be accomplished at higher secondary educational levels, where the students can show some maturity skills. If the exposure causes a problem at the school, then the policy would need to be re-evaluated. Also, it could not hurt to have positive speech be shown to balance the hate.
The Internet can provide useful, educational resources to students. It can also be used to the detriment of students as well. Schools need to be careful what is displayed on the computers, but these schools, also, cannot dismiss this resource.

Opinion on best practices for Secondary Education

To determine what the best practices are to teach secondary mathematics, the following areas need to be look at: growth and development, and motivation.

During the secondary years, students’ growth and development involves moving cognitively from concrete thinking to developing abstract thinking skills. Students need activities that require them to think about concepts that cannot be directly observed through the senses. Students are also undergoing personal development to develop their identity. This is accomplished through conflict, exploration, and commitment to their findings.

As for motivation, it is ideal for students to be mastery-oriented. This cannot be accomplished if their deficiency needs are not met, look like a fool in front of their peers, and are extrinsically motivated. For classroom motivation, teachers need to provide excessive feedback and attribute student success to their effort. Students need to have a low fear of failure, develop learning goals, attribute their success to effort, know that ability is improved through hard work, and learn self-regulated learning skills. As for meeting deficiency needs outside the classroom, teachers will need assistance from outside agencies so the student can receive help. If there is a deficiency need that is not being met in the classroom, teachers must urgently identify the problem and correct it.

Students, at any level of education, are changing. Since teachers are supposed to be one of the most stable adult figures in the students’ lives, teachers have a requirement to guide students through those changes. With proper guidance, students will become the adults we want them to become.

Teacher-Centered vs. Student-Centered Teaching

Before I address my thoughts on the topic, I think I need to define the topics as I understand them. Student-centered teaching is an approach to education focusing on the needs of the students, rather than those of others involved in the educational process, such as teachers and administrators. When choosing mathematics examples, the examples need to relate to each student. If the example does not relate to each student, new examples need to be composed so each student has an example to which they relate. Teacher-centered teaching is when the teacher makes the goals for the students, presents the material for the students to learn, and provides the activities for them to learn.

I am in favor of teacher-centered learning. Due to NCLB and state-required topics that needed to be covered in every secondary subject, there is little time to simply look at what the student wants to learn. The I-STEP requirements do not care about focusing on the needs of the students, just on the needs of meeting state requirements and NCLB. It is teacher’s responsibility to make sure that these needs are met and the teacher needs to set the pace to make sure that all state standards are met. There is no room for the student to set the pace. That is why schools are offering “A” and “B” levels of courses (for example: Algebra II may have sections called “Algebra IIA” and “Algebra IIB”, with each letter designating the pace at which the course is presented.)

However, teacher-centered learning does not remove the teacher’s responsibility of relating the material to the needs of the student. The teacher needs to find examples that the students can relate to. In Algebra II, if there are students are interested in skateboarding, then the teacher should relate a parabola to a half-pipe and how the change in a quadratic equation changes the shape of the parabola/half-pipe.

Also, teachers need to let students make discovers together in teacher-centered teaching. Teachers need to allow students to work on group problems so they can interact in an academic setting, and mentor each other to accomplish the goal of solving problems. A stronger student who understands the material can help a weaker student who needs more help. The weaker student may relate the stronger student, and seek advice of the stronger student. The stronger student can state how they were able to understand the material, which can help the weaker student. After the students work on the problem together the teacher can assess what the student accomplished, and can either approach the topic in another way to meet the student’s needs or move on to something else. In either case the teacher decides what the students needs, but the decision is based on what the students have learned.

I advocate teacher-centered learning where teachers determine what exercises the students would be able to relate to students working in groups to develop their skills. Using this method the state and NCLB standards are met, and hidden curriculum issues like social-building skills are developed.