Teaching Philosophy Many people have asked me why would you want to teach history?

Honestly, I never had such a passion for a subject of academia than history. I believe the value of a history teacher lies in his or her ability to engage students with the material they are learning. I want kids to be interested in what they are learning and how history can and has affected their lives today. I plan to encourage my students to develop their own questions about the past. An effective way for students to generate questions about history is through group work and discussion. I favor group work and discussion much more than lecture. I believe that lecture promotes drilled information and memorization as well as blocking students from applying abstract historical ideas and critically think about what they learn. I think that lectures have the capability to put students to sleep and shut down their learning stimulation. In addition, I believe lecture is very teacher centered and demotes a democratic and community centered classroom. I strongly believe that group work and discussion provides more for students compared to lecture because it promotes an interactive community and stimulated learning by encouraging students to ask questions about why and how historical events happened and the way they did. One idea of a group work activity is to divided the class into small groups and assign them to a topic in American history and have the students evaluate their text book. I strongly believe that textbooks are very dry and biased which prevents students from knowing that there are two sides to every story, especially throughout our nations history. I will have each group evaluate their textbooks based off a rubric I will conduct that questions the text accuracy and inaccuracy. Students can learn a lot from this activity, but more importantly knowing that textbooks can leave a lot out and present historical fallacies. I believe that history provides identity. Conceptualizing history helps students understand and develop their own identity in society. I am firm believer that your experiences are connected to those of the past or your ancestors. To help my students build their own identity I plan on provided self based projects. A prime example would be retracing their own family history when discussing a unit on immigrants entering America and Elis Island. Students can look deeply into the reasons why, when and where did their ancestors emigrant from.

Many topics in history are current and controversial which many teachers shy away from teaching. I believe that teachers cannot avoid such issues ---- not if they are going to teach history responsibly. For example, you cant teach about the American South without discussing slavery or about Jim Crow. Clearly these are uncomfortable topics, but I believe its necessary to teach them. Current and controversial topics are key for the critically thinking of my students. Teaching such topics will help my students become more informed and making them more active citizens. Overall, I want to encourage my students to become active citizens, making them more likely to vote in later life, support basic democratic values, have confidence in their ability to influence public policy, do charitable work, and take an interest in the welfare of their community. I believe teaching history has many important benefits for students. By studying history I want my students to start to construct their own opinions, perspectives and identity. There are many different agents that heavily influence how we think main examples being our family, peers, media, and even school. Being an educator, I hope to help students to mold their own perspectives by what and how they learn. In order to mold their own perspectives it is important for me to help them break away from that foreknowledge they may have about history already. Relying on foreknowledge encourages for students to view historical misconceptions as correct. In addition, this allows students to disregard that history consists of multiple perspectives and that there is two sides to every story. It is important for my students to pose questions but I want my students to gain the ability to answer and support their own answers to those questions with the exposure of multiple perspectives of all kinds of history. Students often approach history with the idea that it is a course about truth, but that isnt true. I want my students to know that it is a discipline full of contested theories open to re-interpretation in light of better evidence. This is why I plan to incorporate a diverse set of historical materials in my lessons. As the educator, I must help students learn how to construct an argument and defend it with evidence. This is skill that must be developed through example and practice. I constantly ask myself Why did I choose history? There is no doubt that I have a passion for the subject, but thats not all. I choose history over everything else firstly because of the family of teachers I come from. My grandmother and father are teachers and they have showed me how positively influential and progressive teaching can be for students and I am

eager to do the same. I see teaching and a giving experience. I love to give back to my community in multiple ways like charity, but more importantly I see teaching as a way of giving back to the community as well as being actively involved citizen. Although, there is a trend of educators in my family, I genuinely feel teaching is worth doing. Banduras Social Cognitive Theory and Social Reconstructionalism support and connect with my own philosophy. When teaching history, it is important to emphasize the addressing of social questions and to encourage students to create a better society by being active citizens. I believe in focusing on a curriculum that highlights social reform as the aim of education. By promoting this focus will encourage students to be active learners and have a better understanding about history and its connections to present day. I am a firm believer that human are cognitive beings whose active learning processing from the environment plays a major role in the learning and human development. My goal is provide my students with an effective and successful learning environment so they can reach the fullest potential as students in my classroom. I understand that very student is going to have a different way in which they learn so its important to have a balanced teaching style in order to cater to your students learning needs. I am a big proponent of group work and discussion and because of that I will like to utilize the turn and talk approach. I will pair or group students together that mastered the material with students that are struggling. This is an effective way of learning from others in a social environment and many times students generate ideas off of one another. I need to be aware and able to adapt to complex situations. Public education is supposed to be seen as the great equalizer, according to scholar, Mary Ginley. I strongly agree that many people give into the America Dream ideology that public education provide active policy to ensure that every child has equal access to quality and where every child is in a supportive, respectful, and safe environment. However, thats not the case and we may want to believe this fallacy but in the end, some children are privilege over others. The children who are most privilege are usually the white middle class children who always have their parents by their side. According to Mary Ginley, it isnt always the teachers fault, but administrative demands which forces teacher to act as crowd control than concentrating of the quality of education of each child. As a future educator, I have to strive to continue by

deter from the demands of crowd control. I need to find ways to create places where everyone can grow and learn as a community and find out who they are and what can they be. I am aware that my teaching philosophy is still in the making, but I believe its beneficial to have a start. My teaching philosophy is a living document if its stannic then I am doing something wrong. Today is not tomorrow and theories will evolve and what I believe now will most likely change when I am an educator. In the end, finding yourself, growth and identity is part of the continuous journey of life.