TEACHING CREDO

            As a child I always wanted to be a teacher so that I could boss other kids around, have my own classroom, and get paid for having so much fun. Now, of course, my reasons for teaching are very different.  Working with children has always been a dream of mine, right behind my dream of getting married and having kids of my own. As I got older I realized that I could have both, and the best way to accomplish this was to become a teacher. As a teacher I could have the same schedule as my children, and when they weren’t in school I also wouldn’t be in school and therefore I could spend more time with them instead of working.

I chose to get my degree in Elementary Education because I believe that younger children really want to learn. As you enter Jr. High and High School there seems to be too many students who don’t want to be there because they start to realize that there are more fun things to do than to go to school. Then as you enter the College you will see the children who wanted to learn all through school trying to earn their degree, because they want to learn and make themselves better. I know that I don’t want to teach college students because that means that I would have to go to college even longer and my dreams of having a family and working with kids would be postponed.

During High School I was a teacher’s assistant for a kindergarten class, and my job was to help the kids when they needed it and to assist the teacher. One day I was told to work with a little boy on the alphabet, because he seemed to be having trouble recognizing the letters. That day I used flash cards to help him, and he worked really hard to learn them and finally he got them all right. The look on his face confirmed my decision to become a teacher, his eyes lit up and we both started cheering at the same time.  At that time I realized that I didn’t have to bribe him with candy or recess he really wanted to learn the alphabet and I helped him. That one moment when everything went as planned made all of the hard work that went into helping him and the disappointment to me and him when he didn’t get them right just disappear. All that matter was that he got them all right and both of us were happy. It was a challenge to work through the tough times, but the reward is making a difference in some little child’s life that is why I want to become a teacher. I just hope that my style and methods of teaching are good enough to make an impact on their lives and to help them learn.

There are many different teaching philosophies that are very appealing to me, and the decision is going to be a difficult one because there isn’t one method that I agree with completely. I think that my style will be taken from almost all of the different types of philosophies. I agree with Essentialism the most because I think that it is important for people to know the basics, because that is what will get them through life. Most jobs today will require a person to know about Math, Reading, English, Science, and History. Even though I agree with this type of teaching I don’t think that you should completely get rid of the vocational classes especially for the younger children. I believe that this type of Progressivism is vital for the students, because it allows them to interact with other students in a different setting. This is good because not everything in life is going to be about the basics they will need to know how to interact with other people and they won’t learn that if they are just sitting in the classroom listening to the teacher. Existentialism is another Philosophy that I hope to incorporate into my methods of teaching. I think that learning to take responsibility for your own actions is very important. Every student needs to have a certain responsibility for their homework, actions towards other student, and their actions towards authority figures. If a student doesn’t finish their homework or they don’t show respect to another student or authority figure then they need to be able to accept the consequences of their actions. I hope that all three of these philosophies can be incorporated into the classroom in order to help the students learn in the best possible way.

I realize that teaching isn’t going to be easy and that there will be times when I will wonder why I ever thought that I could do this. At times like that I can just look back at all the good times and that will remind me of why I do what I do. I am very excited about becoming a teacher and I will do the best that I possibly can to improve the lives of all the children who enter my classroom. It will be very rewarding when I successfully teach my students the alphabet.