My educational philosophy is student-centered and will help me with my quest to ensure that students are able to achieve the impossible. I believe in taking a progressive approach to my teaching in that I want to be able to provide an environment that is collaborative, encourages group discussion, a rigorous curriculum, engagement, and differentiation of instruction. By including these aspects each day students will be given the best education that I can provide.



Any lesson can be made into a progressive and collaborative activity. During language arts student's share their thoughts on what will occur in a story, work in groups and pairs to sort words with a phonics skill we are working on, share ideas for what they will write about, and discuss writing within a whole group setting. In Math we discuss the skill we are working on together and students play math games that helps them review and reinforce. I like to give my students a voice in every activity we complete; it keeps them engaged and involved in the lesson.



No matter what we are working on, It is always the same topic, but if I am to teach a rigorous curriculum that will challenge each student at their level with differentiated instruction I have to vary what the individual does and the support I provide. During my practicum and student teaching students who struggle in reading, writing, and math have been given extra support. This has included mini lessons on a subject they need more direct instruction on, sentence starters, and different forms of math fact and phonics practice using technology. I challenge students who are on level with the curriculum to write one more sentence, add details, read with more expression, and encourage them to come up with their own challenge problem in math to continue their progress. Students who are above the standards in their understanding of the content are asked to comprehend at a higher level with higher levels of Blooms Taxonomy questioning and the quality of work asked of the student is higher than the standard. These are instructional strategies that I have used during my practicum and student teaching and how I view myself as an educator.

​

Being able to center the curriculum around students is most beneficial to students. It gives them the ability to have a voice in what they are learning, allows the teacher to be in the discussion, but not the only person talking, and gives them a reason to want to continue to learn and succeed. I have found that having an environment that is collaborative, has a rigorous curriculum, is engaging, and provides differentiation of instruction allows me to focus my teaching around students and provide them with an education centered around the progressive philosophy.