My Teaching Philosophy

Teaching is exhilarating! To me, teaching is like skydiving. Right before your students enter your
classroom for the days lesson, your heart is beating so fast because of being nervous, scared and excited all at
the same time. It is time for the students to come and there is no turning back; it is time to teach. Your heart
feels like it is about to burst and then before you know it, youre coasting. The time goes by fast, but there is a
short moment where time slows down in the middle of everything and you reflect on the work and learning that
is taking place with your students. You see that everything is going fine, sometimes really fine, other times
maybe not so fine. Either way, by the time youre done and your students leave for the day, youre inspired, and
you cant wait to do it all over again.
I believe that teaching is to be inspired by and to inspire opportunities and experiences. I have had the
opportunity to be a K-6 computer science teacher for the last three years. The experiences of teaching,
collaborating, and professional development that I have on a daily basis always inspire me to become a little bit
better each and every day as a teacher and person. I believe that my skills as a teacher are constantly evolving. I
will always keep learning and growing as a teacher and in my area of content.
My philosophy of teaching in computer science consist of the following three purposes that I believe are
a necessity to being a good teacher. The first is to build trusting, caring relationships and to provide a
welcoming, safe, and respectful environment for my students. My second purpose for teaching is to provide
meaningful, purposeful, and retainable experiences. And the third purpose is for my students to grow into good
digital citizens and efficient digital users. Each of these purposes allows for experiences and opportunities that
help one strive to become a better student, teacher and person each day. These three purposes provide a basis
for me to make curriculum decisions that align with one another and connect to my daily teaching.
Purpose 1: Build trusting, caring relationships and provide a welcoming, safe, and respectful
environment for my students. First and foremost, relationships, relationships, relationships. No true learning can
take place in your classroom until you develop meaningful, trusting, and caring relationships with your students.
It all starts with relationships.
I believe it is vital to have structure, order, and safety to help provide learning in the classroom. One
way that I demonstrate this, is by having six guidelines for the students to follow in my classroom. My six
guidelines to being awesome and successful are: great effort, never give up, improve, whining free zone,
positive talk, and the golden rule. At the beginning of the year we talk about each of these in depth and I strive
for my students to recite them throughout the whole year. These guidelines drive students to make decisions in
their everyday actions and effort. When having a core value system in your classroom to help maintain structure
and order, you need to have motivation and consequences. Students need to be held accountable and responsible
for the good and bad decisions they choose to make.
Something new that I have learned about is growth and fixed mindsets. It is the new hot topic in
education right now and my co-workers and I have begun study groups over mindset material. Through these
studies, I have become a believer in teaching children about the brain and mindsets. Students are going to learn,
not only as much as you believe they can, but as much as they believe they can. To fully understand how a
growth and fixed mindset each work, teachers and students need to learn about the brain. We need to understand
how our brains work and how our brains learn things. Everyone has the ability to learn and increase their
intelligence, but it is all about who believes they can. Intelligence is consistently changing based on effort,
persistence, and motivation.
Purpose 2: Provide meaningful, purposeful, and retainable experiences. Experiences can be so very
powerful. It is our duty as teachers to provide our students with the absolute best experiences and opportunities
that we possible can. Hands-on, engaging, demonstrations, and choice are just a few things that go a long way
in creating powerful experiences. Every child deserves an opportunity to learn, but there is no one way to learn.

Everyone has his or her own preferred learning style. I believe that differentiated instruction is so important in
our everyday delivery as teachers. When I teach a lesson, I strive to produce instruction that can reach all types
of learners. I always have a visual, create a kinesthetic movement for an action or task, always verbalize
instruction, and always repeat and/or have students repeat back. I believe in finding time to give 1-on-1
instructions to any student that needs or could benefit from it. I have several students with special needs who
require more attention when learning about and using computers. I have developed a program, AT Assistive
Technology, where I meet with these students once a week. The purpose of this program is to find assistive
technology devises and/or programs, that will help students with special needs and/or limited mobility
to operate a computer successfully and to teach/assist students in learning how to use these devices
and/or programs successfully.

One of the most important tasks, other than having quality experiences, is how those experiences
connect with one another. In order for experiences to be educative, each experience needs to connect with
the past and future experiences. It is crucial to make connections to prior knowledge and experiences and to
have a path to where youre going to enhance and strengthen student learning.
It is vital for us as teachers to ask ourselves, before giving students an experience, does this experience
matter in our surrounding world? Can it be used and applied in todays world? And, can each student take
something away from the content and experience being taught and provided?
The biggest thing that I learned after my first year of teaching is how crucial and successful student-led
experiences can be. There are times that teacher-led experiences are needed but student-led should certainly
play a larger role. Higher-order thinking questions steer students towards explaining things rather than just
answering yes or no questions. Peers helping peers reinforces student explanation, engagement, and selfconfidence.
Purpose 3: To provide opportunities for my students to grow into good digital citizens and efficient
digital users. In a more broad sense, this purpose is about evaluation and assessment. When my students leave
my class at the end of the year, my goal is not only for them to have the skills, but to be applying the skills in
their everyday life towards being good digital citizens and efficient digital users. Throughout the year, I assess
students formally through graded projects and quizzes, as well as informally assessing students abilities to be
problem solvers and explorers through self-discoveries. I will never just give a student an answer. I always set
them up for ways to self-discover through searches, tutorials, wikis, etc.. I make them do the work and selfexplore to find the answer. I am there to guide them through this process. I want my students to be active and
engaged learners who construct their own knowledge.
By informally and formally assessing students, I can measure student growth. Growth can go in either a
positive or negative direction and it is our job as teachers to monitor that growth in a positive direction. When I
assess my students I am more concerned with measuring students by their individual growth and not comparing
one to another. Everyone learns and connects things at one point or another; it just might not all be in the same
time period. I want each student to grow from the first day they enter my classroom to the last day. I want their
growth to be continuous to ensure that they are building off of each experience and are getting better each time
that they are in my classroom.