TEACHER

Through my work as an classroom teacher, I have refined teaching and  leadership skills with a focus on support and service to others. I develop and implement student focused, constructivist lessons that combine research proven strategies with educational technology to build higher order thinking and problem solving skills. I continuously build my capacity to collaborate with colleagues through programs such as the Mentor Academy, Vision: Balanced Literacy, and both the Coaching and Gifted Endorsement programs. Woven through all of these undertakings is a spirit of collaboration, and this principle informs all levels of my work. In the classroom, I draw strength from co-planning interdisciplinary lessons with teammates. As Curriculum Chair, I facilitate resource sharing and team building through positive relationships that require flexibility, perseverance, and data driven decisions. At the county level, I have broadened my ability to merge the contributions of a diverse team into a coherent product by serving as a Vision workshop facilitator, GCPS Benchmark Specialist, and member of the County Lesson Planning Committee, among other positions. From all of these experiences I have drawn immense satisfaction from knowing that my ability to positively impact students and colleagues has been growing.

Personal Philosophy of Education

“ Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand. ” 

- Chinese Proverb

My personal philosophy of education has been evolving since the first moment I stepped into a classroom, and that’s a good thing! I believe a teacher's personal philosophy of education should continually evolve as he informs himself of new discoveries, technologies, and pedagogical innovations that help to facilitate learning in the classroom. I pledge to…

• Maintain positive expectations in a nurturing environment while employing research based teaching techniques;

• Maintain fair and consistent classroom management with five simple class rules: be respectful, be prepared, be focused, be responsible, and be honest;

• Deliver student focused, constructivist lessons that build higher order thinking and problem solving skills.

A Constructivist Approach

Constructivism is a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world. Each of us generates our own "rules" and "mental models," which we use to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences. There are several constructivist educational principles that guide my work as a Language Arts teacher and Literacy Specialist:

• Learning is a search for meaning. Therefore, learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning.

• All education is inherently interdisciplinary, combining global issues with local application. Meaning requires understanding wholes as well as parts; parts must be understood in the context of wholes. The learning process must focus on interconnected, real-world concepts, not isolated facts.

• In order to teach effectively, educators must understand the mental models that students use to perceive the world and the assumptions they make to support those models.

• The purpose of learning is to construct one’s own meaning, not just memorize the "right" answers and regurgitate someone else's meaning.

• Assessment must be integrated into the learning process as a diagnostic tool to refine instruction. Feedback gained should be used by students and teachers to evaluate both educational progress and quality of learning.

• Successful integration of these constructivist pedagogical tenants is the theoretical background that guides all of my educational endeavors.

Life Long Literacy

While creating an educational environment that reinforces the individual creation of meaning and synthesis of knowledge is an important achievement for practitioners of all academic disciplines, it is perhaps most essential to the development of meaningful literacy experiences. The mastery of the literacy processes, specifically, reading, writing, and an knowledge of text structures and functions, is the foundation upon which all content area learning is built. At its core, my role a Reading Specialist is not just about phonics, decoding, vocabulary, and all the specific strategies and skills I teach; instead, it is primarily about awakening in students a love of reading and a thirst for knowledge that will sustain them for a lifetime. Connecting to concepts and values we already hold and building on this prior knowledge is the key to establishing for students the value of literacy. Ultimately, it is this individually edified commitment to the value of literacy that will be the determinant of whether each student will reach his or her educational potential. I embrace my calling to guide the formation of literacy commitments as together my students and I explore our unique educational journeys.

My Action Plan

I believe every individual can learn and that we all deserve a stimulating, challenging, caring, and safe classroom that will help us reach our potential as unique beings. It is my responsibility as an educator to create this environment for the students entrusted to my care. I will achieve this by focusing on four areas of action:

1.      I will act as a facilitator, guide, consultant, change agent, and resource. I will lead the way, but ultimately we are all responsible for our own learning.

2.      I will employ a variety of research based teaching methods that address all learning modalities. Students must be exposed to an assortment of activities via differentiated instruction that present learning opportunities with authentic, real world problems to solve.

3.      I will create a classroom that promotes respect and cooperation. Learning is maximized when students feel they are in a safe environment that fosters teamwork and honors differences. Establishing sensible rules and enforcing them consistently creates a space within which students are more likely to take risks and grow.

4.      I will generate an enthusiasm for the pursuit of knowledge that creates lifelong learners. I will inspire students through my personal passion for learning and teaching and generate the spark that ignites each student’s passion for discovery.

Quite a Character

Character development is a vital part of my educational mission, but my role as an educator should complement, not displace, the influence of home, church, and community in my students’ lives. Daily I observe behavior that indicates not all students have internalized the ideas, standards, and goals valued by our society. This dilemma creates a classroom reality riddled with questions. Do we impose our values and possibly contradict what the student’s parents or religious leaders have taught them? How does a child resolve that contradiction? How should teachers go about the practice of teaching values? How do we prepare for our work in this affective domain? How do we handle teaching values we do not hold ourselves? Is there any flexibility or academic freedom when it comes to values education? Do we even want to open this Pandora’s box of problems?

I see the central question of values education as “should teachers impose social values or do we help students to develop the skills necessary to form their own values?” In our multicultural and religiously diverse society, morality has been individualized. There is a clear distinction between subjective values and facts that can be proven scientifically. Values are expressions of feeling and are not objective truth. With school instructional time as precious as it is, we must dedicate it to constructing knowledge and practicing skills students need to succeed in our demanding society. Standardized character education mandates that the teacher rigidly foist values onto students, creating children who do not necessarily connect with the values being imposed.

The Hidden Curriculum

I follow an alternative, and I believe a more effective, approach: limit character instruction to the processes of values clarification and critical thinking within a consistently safe and moral classroom. This technique invites students to make values-related choices and to play a central role in the decision making process. Students draw upon family, community and religious guidance to influence the content of their character and then test these new values in a positive environment. This environment is established and maintained through the consistent implementation of a well-organized management plan allows all the mundane details of “keeping school” to get out of the way of higher levels of learning and development of self.

In order to build student confidence and inspire increased self-discipline, which, ultimately, is the key to prosperity throughout life, I structure my classroom in a clear and logical manner, concisely communicating high expectations, maintaining an orderly and cooperative system for rewarding academic achievement, managing discipline issues quickly and quietly, and controlling the pace of instruction to maximize time-on-task and minimize distractions. I strive to be perceived by all my students as fair, competent, and consistent in my application of my management plan. My every action as a role model and authority figure conveys ethical principles to my students. In this invisible curriculum, which I do not explicitly teach but which all students learn, values are central. Through personal example, selective reinforcement of student behavior, principled curriculum design, and the establishment of a safe, courteous, and fair class environment, I continue to transmit values the way concerned teachers always have, without devoting specific class time to the topic. Ultimately, a student’s moral character should form naturally as he or she interacts with family members, community leaders, and religious guides and then clarifies these ideas within a consistently moral environment. In such an environment, the combination of higher order thinking with modern pedagogical technologies eventually blossoms into both positive moral choices and increased literacy skills. These are my visions, my ambitions, my goals; they illuminate my educational persona as I follow my passion and build social and moral literacy.