PHILOSOPHY IN TEACHING

ELIZABETH L. TAWATAO

Teaching philosophy should commence with a statement that articulates the teacher’s acquired World View on education and behavioral aspect as one. This is a personal statement that shares the teachers understanding on how lofty the calling of the teaching with a heart. The faith and hope for the world to come permeates everything teachers do. This statement becomes the foundation of the vision for teaching. The hope for the future to come is the predominant idea to value; vision is how to bring this about through teaching.

In this philosophy, discuss all aspects of the following four dimensions:

A

1. What is your understanding of the world as it contributes to the learning growth of every learner?

2. What is your vision for teaching that reflects your understanding of the world and the students’ development?

3. As you consider aspects of your vision for teaching, reflect on: a. Planning/ Implementation b. Inquiry/ Assessment c. Diversity/ Relationships d. Reflection/Self-correction e. Active classroom engagement

4. What other dimensions inform your vision for teaching that you discovered as a teacher that can contribute to the learnings of the student as he/ she proceed to the next level?? (Other dimensions may include but are not limited to: What is the purpose of education to the students that you are handling? ; How does learning happen and the technique that you are using to make it happen? What is important to teach/ learn base from the students that you are handling? ; What kind of learning environment supports the teacher world view?

B. The second section of the portfolio is a seven-part narrative relating the School of Education Program, Goals to their work in the classroom during the school year. For each Goal, the narrative should contain the following:

1. Explain what the VMO means in ways that demonstrate ability to embrace its complexity and its role in realizing the teacher’s world view and vision for teaching.

2. Select, include, and discuss at least one piece of evidence from your student teaching that demonstrates: a. Your understanding of the VMO; b. How your vision for teaching that is connected to the VMO.

3. Show the evidence you include relates to one or more of Department Of Education’s Standard. a. Include the School of Education Standards/ K-12 Curriculum Standard and indicators addressed in the narrative. b. Address each of the standards.

C. The third section of the portfolio focuses on the unit. It is a work sample analysis. This requires that the teacher had planned, taught, and analyzed a complete unit as basis to show the impact of instructions on student learning. The work sample analysis will provide an excellent opportunity to analyze the teachers practice and will prepare them for the performance assessment during their future teaching evaluation/experience. Within the work sample analysis, teacher will address a series of questions on planning and teaching of an instructional unit. Teacher will analyze student performance during the unit. The act of analyzing and reflecting is evidence of;

1. Describe the instructional environment. a. Describe the physical environment; include photographs, diagrams, and/or social maps. b. Describe students as a group and as individuals. Identify the content, grade level and number of students. Using pseudonyms describe several diverse students and focus on their journey throughout the unit.

c. Describe the learning context and implications it held for teaching the unit. Address on any critical climate issues that may have affected students’ ability to handle planned tasks. What aspects of the teacher’s context were they able to adapt to better align it with their view of the world and their vision of what it requires of a teacher?

2. Describe the goals for the instruction. a. What are the key concepts or Big Ideas/Essential Questions on which the unit focused? Why are these important for students to understand? b. What were the goals and major objectives for the unit? c. What Core Content, Common Core Content, and/or areas of the Program of Studies did the d. What dispositions that needs to be nurtured? e. What levels and categories of student performance were expected? For instance the teacher might think in terms of Bloom’s Taxonomy, or of Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, but the teacher may also wish to describe Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, or other ways of considering student performance.

f. Reflect in one to two pages on how to approach planning the unit. Explain what prompted the choice of topic. Knowledge on the students that caused teacher to think the activities, selected would work well; etc.? Cite specific examples in the unit itself. How instructional goals are aligned with the teacher view the world?

3. Describe your assessment plan.

a. Briefly describe your efforts at pre-assessment, assessment and post-assessment. Explain how you attempted to determine what prior knowledge students had, what interests they may have had in this topic, and what might serve to focus their attention on the content goals you had for the unit. If you employed a formal assessment, describe the method, whether pre-test, or some kind of activity/assignment. If pre-assessment was informal describe.

b. Describe and reflect briefly on the efforts at formative assessments during the course of the unit. These would be the kind of steps a teacher should take to ensure that learning was occurring as they taught that students were approaching tasks/activities correctly, etc. How were students enabled to use the results of the formative assessment and to engage in self- and/or peer- assessment?

c. Describe the summative assessments (tests, final projects, assignments, presentations, etc.) employed for this unit. Make sure to include the instruments, including any rubrics and student work samples, with the unit.

d. Explain how the assessment plan is congruent with the teacher’s view of the world and vision for teaching.

4. Describe your unit and lesson planning. a. Present an overview of the plan for the unit. What is the specific planned flow of events that constitutes the unit? This can be a schedule or chart. b. Describe the activities in detail. Describe the plan for each activity in the instructional unit. c. Describe the tool use to support instruction from the perspective of its effectiveness. d. Explain how planning is congruent with the teachers world view and vision for teaching.

5. Describe your instructional decision-making.

This should be a narrative describing the flow of the instructional decisions. It should be based upon the results of pre-assessments, formative assessments, and reflective journals written during the instruction analyzed. It should include description/analysis/reflection on how to the teacher negotiated the inevitable hurdles that occur requiring to alter initial plans. Teacher should be clear how their world view influenced specific decisions they made while they’re teaching, including alterations teachers may have made to their original plans.

6. Describe the methods and results of the analysis of student learning. a. Provide a summary of the data describing how students achieved objectives. Include data from all assessments formal or informal, qualitative or quantitative. This can include tables and graphical displays, but descriptions of qualitative data will be important as well.

b. Describe any patterns in the way students met the objectives. Describe the relative success of any groups of students (describe and identify numbers). Be sure to disaggregate according to the standard demographic groups. What the teacher think contributed to the success or failure of any students?

c. Select one of the objectives on which students were most successful and describe what the teacher think are reasons for their success (with supporting evi dence) .

d. Select one (of your objectives) on which your students were least successful and describe what you think are reasons for their lack of success (with supporting evidence).

7. Write a reflection and self-evaluation. Reflect on the efforts to create an instructional environment in which students’hearts and minds were engaged. How did the teacher intentionally address changing students’dispositions in your planning? What the teacher learned about himself/herself as a teacher? What did the teacher learned about children? What did the teacher learned about teaching and learning?

— oOo—

The author is Teacher III at Dolores Elementary School

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