Teaching is important to me because I feel education provides an opportunity for any child to reach for their dreams. Learning in a positive school environment can be beneficial for students both socially and academically. Students can discover their interests and passions through learning about the world. They can be given a safe space to be inquisitive and grow. Despite the hardships one might have in life, I believe that a strong educational background can be one of the tools that helps a student go on to have a personally satisfying and successful life. Education can break down barriers and baggage from past generations, and equip our young learners to be the leaders towards a better future.
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Educational Belief
My belief about teaching and learning is that no two students are alike. Students need to be valued as individuals and each has a capacity to learn. The trick is trying to discover which methods work best and helps a student build on their natural strengths. I also believe that if the subject matter can be presented in an engaging way, it will help students achieve the learning objective and also enjoy the learning process.
Research Based Theory
One research-based theory that I feel inspires my teaching goals is the theory of multiply intelligences. I recognize that some students are just naturally “book-smart”, and will pick up material quickly. Yet for every student that excels in a traditional school environment, there will be another student who struggles and gets discouraged. By recognizing that each student will have their own strengths and weaknesses, and own styles for learning best, I hope to provide a variety of educational experiences that can nurture any student’s natural abilities. For example, some students will learn best from small group, hands-on activities and some students will learn best from quiet individual exploration. My goal will be to provide enough different types of learning experiences that a student will always leave my classroom feeling inspired by what they can do well, and not discouraged by what they cannot.
Desired Learning Outcome and Strategies
A learning outcome I want to foster in my students is that I want the students to proficiently understand the material. This essentially means that they can competently achieve the standards-based learning objective.
Two strategies I will use to helps students achieve competency with their learning objectives is employing problem based learning and gamification. Small-groups with problem based learning where they have a task to achieve or a problem to solve, and they must work together to do so. I believe that working from a problem and finding a solution is a good strategy towards overall comprehension of a learning objective. I also believe that working together socially in small groups helps students understand the learning objective because they can learn from their peers. Students who grasp the concept quickly can help explain things to the other students in terms appropriate for their age level.
Another strategy is gamification of the material through resources like Kahoot, or role-playing games such as being a detective to discover the answer or being a surgeon to construct the answer. I believe that making activities fun and unique, especially with the use of technology which the younger generation is growing up with, can help students stay engaged and on-task. This can be another strategy that will encourage students to enjoy the activity as they work towards overall comprehension.
Assessing Student Learning
Two specific assessment tools I will use to measure student mastery is rubrics and checklists. Rubrics can be used to measure small group activities which have specific points of mastery at varying levels of proficiency. I believe this is an effective tool because it allows nuance for gradual levels of comprehension, rather than just right or wrong scoring. This type of assessment tool helps me gauge whether my goal of learning objective comprehension has been achieved to a satisfactory degree. It allows me to see which students will need additional enrichment, and also which students are able to go beyond competency and can be challenged at a higher level. I find that rubrics are ideal for summative assessments, because it looks for different criteria and gives more students an opportunity to succeed with a competent score, rather than a traditional right or wrong percentile average.
A checklist can be another assessment tool which is great for informative assessments to determine who understands and who does not. Often informative assessments need a scoring tool where a teacher can gauge comprehension at a quick glance. Like rubrics, the use of checklists still measures for understanding (rather than a percentile score of right answers), but it’s faster and easier to get an overview of the entire class on one graph. This is ideal for formative assessments because it gives to teacher a starting point to work from for future lessons and how to better prepare the students for a final summative assessment.
The Importance of Relationships
I believe that building a positive relationship with other school stakeholders is so important to the overall success of each student. The stakeholders, whether they are school administrators, other grade level colleagues, community members, or parents, all have a role to play in each student’s educational path. It is to the student’s benefit if all of these stakeholders can agree on common educational goals and work together to achieve them. This helps for better alignment across all important school issues, such as curriculum, respectful classroom environments, and obedience to school rules. The positive habits that students can develop in the classroom can lead to their continued success in upper levels and future careers. It starts in elementary, and it helps if all involved are in agreement on important issues. Even if an agreement cannot be reached, it is helpful to have the input from other stakeholders to consider alternative views and seek resolutions that are win/win scenarios.