Dear Students of the past, present, and future,
I want to
start off by saying, “I am so happy that you have been, are going to be, or you
are right now a part of my life.” I believe that each person that we meet and
spend time with, as we have been or are going to do, aids to shape one
another. I hope to help you to become
the person you are going to be and I know that you will help me to develop into
the teacher that I am supposed to be.
From the
very beginning of my teaching career, which is now going on 4 years, I have
always had a very clear and concise philosophy statement for how my classroom
is going to run. I have referred back to
this philosophy at the beginning and end of each year. I do this to see what I need to do to start
the school year off right and to reflect at the end of the year to see if I
followed through with my plans. My
philosophy always starts with the atmosphere of our classroom.
I start the first few weeks before school begins
creating a warm and inviting atmosphere.
I love colors, displays of learning, and both yours and my presence all
over the room. There is not an inch of
wall space that I do not cover. I make
sure that your places are all set up. The seat you will sit at, the place for
your backpack, and your mailbox for papers or materials. I want
you to walk in to the room and find those places in the room that belong to you
because for the next 10 months this is your home and I want you to feel safe
and comfortable in your home because that is the best way for you to learn.
Once you feel safe and comfortable,
you will be able to open up and allow for me and your classmates to get to know
you. I think it is very important for
you and me to create a personal relationship with one another. You are an individual and you should be
treated like one. You have different
thoughts and feelings from your other classmates. You have different interests and ways of
learning from your other classmates and those should be acknowledged and
celebrated in our classroom. This is
important to me because I think having a relationship opens you up for learning
and taking educational risks, such as answering a question even though you’re
not sure if the answer is right, reading out load to the class, completing a
math problem to show how you got your answer, or sharing you writing to be
edited by the class. This is also
important to me because growing up I remember always being a number in
elementary school. I was number 7
because of my last name. I always felt that
my teachers new me more as my number than they did as a person and it made me
feel uncomfortable and unsupported in my learning. I never want any of you to feel like a number
or just another one in the crowd.
While supporting you as an individual
I also want you to realize that you are part of a classroom community, that you
are one important part in a big whole.
It is important for you to learn how to work together and how to support
all of your classmates because they are on your team. We must learn to respect and care for one
another. As I mentioned earlier our
classroom is your home, but you need to remember that it is also their home and
my home too. Everyone is to feel
comfortable in our space and part of that comes from the way you treat one
another. My father has always taught me
respect. He put an emphasis on it my
whole life. Respect for my parents,
grandparents, siblings, friends, and any other person that may cross my
path. I expect that same thing from my
students. You respect me, your
classmates, other teachers in the building, and other students. I am a strong believer in; if you treat
others with respect they will do the same for you. I promise to respect each and every one of
you as long as you do the same for me.
My goal as a teacher is to support my
students into becoming successful adults.
You may see me at the beginning of your educational career, but my end
goal is the same as every other teacher you will meet. It is my job to prepare you for the world
outside school. Even though I teach you
the basics, these are the things that you have to take with you for the rest of
your life. I promise, that I will not
just teach you how to take and pass a test.
I will help you to use your new knowledge in your everyday lives. It is part of my philosophy to teach the
standards in a way that you will retain the knowledge for a very long
time. In my perfect world I would not
have to give you tests at all, unfortunately that is not the case. I have worked with teachers and in schools
that are so concerned with the tests that this is all they teach. They believe that by having students circle
the title of the story or count the paragraphs and split them into three parts
their students will know how to read.
They believe that having students be able to find the best answer out of
a list of questions teaches them to solve problems in math. I cannot teach like that! I want you all to walk away from my classroom
being able to say that you honestly learned.
I want someone to ask you years later what you learned in my class and
you are able to tell them.
When choosing my own personal
curriculum I think about each individual student. I am a visual learner. I have to see it in order to retain it. This was always difficult for me when
learning math and science. When
presented with abstract material verbally I could not see it. It didn’t make sense to me until I was shown
what it was supposed to look like. I try
to think about how at times learning was harder for me because I needed things
to be presented differently than the way the teacher taught. It is for this reason that I try to teach
using different forms of presentation. I
may teach with visual, verbal, and kinesthetic forms of the same lesson. I also
try to utilize my students as teachers as well.
I have learned that many times they can say things in a way that I can’t. They may be able to reach a student in a way
that I was having trouble. This theory
is especially useful when teaching math.
I believe that there are many strategies that can be used to find the
answer to math problems. I always teach
the strategies that work for me. I
always encourage my students to find their own strategy or to ask a friend or
family member to see if there is a different way to do it. To me the most important thing is that you
are successful in my classroom and outside of it.
The last thing I want to talk to you
about is how I use school chosen curriculum in our classroom. I have mixed feelings on school chosen
curriculum. I believe that if a
curriculum is going to be used, then everyone in the school should use it. I worked at a school where each grade level
was able to pick their own writing curriculum.
Each curriculum used different vocabulary and processes for
writing. This left for some very
confused students as they moved through the school. I also worked at school where everyone used
the same writing curriculum. The
differences were amazing. It was an easy
transition for students to go from grade level to grade level because they
already knew what was expected.
With a school wide curriculum in
place I feel that it should be used as a resource and not a lesson plan. The state or national standards guide what I
teach in my classroom. I use curriculum
to help plan lessons that reach those standards. In my experience, following a curriculum to
its entirety can leave gaps in the students learning. I work hard to make sure that those gaps do
not exist in my students.
I hope this letter helps you to
understand more about my teaching, my thoughts, feelings, and philosophy. I am over joyed to be a part of your learning
experience and I hope that you get everything out of my class that I plan for
you to.
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