Philosophy on Domains of Education

I. Planning, assessing, evaluating

I pride myself on my strong commitment to continual reflection and evaluation. I
focus my teaching on daily reflection of lessons, assessments, conversations, specific
students, and the day as a whole. I find that the frequent assessing and reflecting lends
itself greatly to specifying my planning. With constant reassessing and reflection, I
can tailor my plans to better meet my goals for both the students and myself.

II. Knowing and representing subject matters

During my student teaching experience, I had the opportunity to adapt units for both
Everyday Mathematics and Lucy Calkins’ Essay curriculums. I found the ability to
make adaptations to curriculum to be crucial to the success of my students. Along
with planning, assessing, and evaluating comes the need to adapt curriculum to better
fit individual students. My ability to represent subject matter in a number of ways has
also helped me meet the needs of individual students.

III. Knowing, motivating, and engaging students

I strongly believe that knowing my students’ interests, backgrounds, and needs is
absolutely essential to motivate and engage them in school. Each student is an
individual person with individual needs, and therefore is motivated and engaged in
unique ways. I am committed to building a learning environment that embraces
diversity in all forms.

IV. Building classroom community

The establishment of a strong, comfortable classroom environment is imperative to
the engagement and success of students. I want my students to feel comfortable
participating in class (without ever fearing rejection by neither their peers nor
myself). I value each individual student’s thinking as a vital asset to our class family
and encourage frequent discussions and collaborative learning. Within the first week
of school, I will make it known that we are all thinkers and learners and can greatly
benefit from hearing each other’s thoughts.

V. Becoming a member of a profession

Above being a teacher, I consider myself an eager learner. I am constantly seeking
ways to continue to learn about my profession, my students, my content, and my role
as a professional. I have joined professional organizations such as Kappa Delta Pi and
the Michigan Council for Teachers of Mathematics. I have also attended professional
development workshops such as Handwriting Without Tears. More importantly, I
have built relationships with my colleagues that have helped me daily throughout my
student teaching. I have found my work with fellow educators to be the most crucial
assets to my success as a teacher.