My Educational Philosophy

My Educational Philosophy

I feel that it is vital to have a classroom that is child centered with interaction among their peers. When a classroom is child centered, the teacher builds a solid foundation by encouraging the students and teaching core concepts like responsibility and freedom so that the students learn that their choices control their destiny. They learn to take responsibility for their choices and actions. The ultimate objective for a teacher is to give up authority in order to become a facilitator for empowered learning. The students will learn to be an advocate for themselves while achieving a higher level of success. Upon completion of the educational philosophy assessment, I found out that my philosophy is humanism. The seven key elements that form an educational philosophy are classroom organization, motivation, discipline, classroom climate, learning focus, teaching styles, and leadership styles.

The humanism approach to classroom organization is to reward the students for working successfully as a group. The groups should be small and heterogeneous. Each individual is responsible for a job to do within the group so that they can reach a set goal. Every student is part of a combined effort in order to support each other in learning so that each person in the group can grasp the concept being taught. According to The Learning Pyramid - You only retain 5% of what you learn through lecture, but if you work in groups, the percentage significantly increases. If you discuss what you learn in groups you retain 50%, practice by doing you retain 75%, and you retain 90% when you teach others what you learned.

My approach to classroom organization is to arrange the students into small groups. I can relate to Martin Buber when he gives the example in our textbook about having a large group without any one on one interaction with the teacher or peers. It benefits students to work together in small groups in order to fully grasp and...