Teaching Philosophy
Goals and Classroom Implementation
Curriculum
Develop and implement units and lessons based on standards, materials available, student interest, and cross-curricular subjects.
- Create lessons that are founded in the Common Core State Standards, and provide each student with differentiation and choices so that all students may apply basic concepts to real-world contexts.
- Promote literacy, critical-thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and 21st century skills so that each student sees value and their place in critically thinking about the world around them.
- Provide opportunities for cross-curricular learning to increase relevancy and students' abilities to analyze and synthesize meaning from their learning.
Assessment
Apply varied assessment methods to measure the knowledge gained by students and to improve student learning.
- Student Choice and Project-Based Learning: providing students choice in how they showcase their learning is important for different modalities of learning (multiple intelligences) as well as differentiation. Similarly, project-based learning allows for these flexibilities in style and levels of mastery, but with an added level of application of learning. At the end of units, I get excited to provide students with choice in their projects, as I know they'll be able to showcase what they know in the way that best suits their needs as learner; they'll be able to build on their understanding gained in a unit to produce a new product that applies their learning.
- Summative Assessment: use of pre- and post-test to show growth. Additionally, opportunities for mastery of concepts are important. I've used many forms of reflective summative assessment with success, including: anticipation guides, Socratic seminar discussions, student-generated assessments and projects based on learning, and more!
- Formative Assessment: integral part of my instruction; permits for adjustment of instruction to increase student learning. Additionally, when learning is divergent among a class as evidenced in formative assessment, I've found that implementing instructional groups helps me instruct students at at various levels of understanding a concept to build on intervention, mastery, and enrichment of that concept.
- Informal Assessment: ongoing monitoring to evaluate student comprehension and modifying lesson plans as needed. In my experience, the best informal assessments have been in one-on-one conferences with students due to the relationship-building where students share specifically what they are working on and, as their teacher-guide, I can provide in-the-moment strategies, tips, and mini-lessons.
- Student Formative Assessment: allows students to reflect on their own understanding of the lesson's or unit's learning goal. This type of reflection/assessment not only permits me to see mastery through a different lens, but also permits students to internalize the value of their learning for the future. I often use student formative assessment and feedback.
- Standardized or Norm Tests: such as QARtest, STAR, lexile, or PSSA and ___ data; use the data to determine what needs to be a focus for instructional material. As a reading teacher, I not regularly administer reading tests, but use the data to group students by need and help students monitor their growth. Additionally, I have used curricular data (like PSSA) to help determine the needs of my students and the focus (reading, writing, content) of units as needed throughout the year.
Differentiation and Diversity
Working in both rural and urban schools across the state of Pennsylvania, I have gained experience in diverse classroom settings. When creating lessons, I have students' cultures, backgrounds, levels of knowledge/skills, and learning styles into consideration and provide multiple means of access to materials.
- Coordinate classroom learning to achieve a balance between whole group instruction, small group collaboration and individual work. I have done this in numerous ways, but have found stations and workshop model to provide the consistent flexibility to teach students where they are with the structure needed to be able to do so effectively and with proper student engagement.
- Use diverse methods of instruction and assessment to allow for students to access learning--and demonstrate it--in various ways (multiple modalities and multiple intelligences).
- Utilize technology resources to enhance lessons. Technology is an important component in teaching when used effectively. I've learned so much in my 1-1 experience with technology and love sharing and helping train my colleagues. I've found that technology can help develop community (as in pen pals or peer feedback in GoogleDocs) or provide an experience that is otherwise unavailable without it (virtual field trip to the Globe and author visits/guest speakers).
Life-Long Learning
As a teacher, I aim to encourage life-long learning in all of my students. I like to mentor this to my students not only by modeling by sharing how I do this in my own learning communities, but also by exposing students to opportunities beyond the classroom to foster their love of learning.
- Develop connections/opportunities and take advantage of surrounding environment to provide meaningful field trips (or virtual trips/guests) that relate the content to resources, background, or application of what I'm teaching. For example, in Winter 2020, I completed implemented a "Teachers in the Workforce" unit, where I applied our understanding of propaganda in Animal Farm to marketing with various marketing public speakers and student final product.
- Relate the material to students' lives. In the independent reading program in 8th grade reading, I consistently look and provide books to students that relate to each student's life. Additionally, I consistently look for real-world applications or similarities when teaching new reading and writing skills to show its value beyond the classroom.
- Use personal experiences to teach students about the world beyond their community. Whether through personal experiences abroad, or through the communication of current events via texts and multimedia, I try to broaden my students' view of the world and its application to what we're learning.
Collaboration and Communication
the cornerstone of good teaching is built on relationships; it's how students become eager to challenge themselves to learn more, and it's also how we realize the value of what we're learning
- building relationships with students is paramount. Not only does it make learning more fun, it becomes more engaging for the students. Additionally, as a teacher, I am able to learn from my students about their developing understanding of the world (all that lingo!) and I am able to understand them better. In getting to know each other better, we are able to "meet in the middle"-- I can better make my lessons relevant to students and students are more likely to have "buy in" to our learning.
- contact parents/guardians with important school happenings. It's important to communicate when problems arise, but also when successes occur. Positive teacher-parent relationships are so important to a student's success.
- collaboration with fellow teachers to share ideas, support, and curricular alignment. Currently, I meet with same-grade level English teachers to dissect and discuss best practices related to standards; I also meet with lower and upper-level reading teachers to share similar insights and provide curricular alignment and rigor within the reading program. Additionally, my experience has taught me that collaboration among teachers of various disciplines not only provides amazing opportunities for student learning, but also opportunities for teachers to learn about the skills of the disciplines which would be used in future teaching (for instance, I co-taught an 10th grade history/English research paper, co-taught a Current Events course, and asked the gifted teacher to co-supervise my Battle of the Books student meetings).
Classroom Management
increase student success by creating an learning environment that enhances students' academic skills and competencies, as well as their social and emotional development
- I hold each student accountable for his/her/they learning and actions, with the ultimate goal to succeed within the classroom (learning and environment).
- I provide an environment that fosters respect for all, responsibility for actions, and readiness to learn. Students often help develop the rules in the classroom, which provides a sense of ownership in learning environment of our learning community.
- Descriptive classroom procedures direct students to the types of behavior they are expected to demonstrate. Continual practice and opportunities for leadership allow my students to develop habits that promote learning.
- I have high expectations for all of my students. I ask that students put forth effort on their work and use all of their capabilities. When a student doesn't reach this expectation, we talk and I provide them a chance to reflect on what they did. Additionally, I provide the opportunity to improve on their understanding.