Teaching Philosophy as of April 15, 2013 For Mukwa Ogitchida Building community though the development of engaged, creative,

critical thinkers. At the heart of my work as an educator is the desire to see my world work better. As human beings we are the most interesting things on the planet. However, our society runs a non-stop campaign encouraging us to operate on auto pilot. When we do this we often unwittingly, or even knowingly with justifications hurt each other. I believe that thoughtful, educated humans would work to limit the amount of hurt they inflict on others. An obvious argument against this is people who have lots of formalized education, and as such lots of power, which also inflict lots of harm. To that I simply say that in my definition of education, I have included critical thinking that question societys norms of behavior. This is different from the majority of formalized institutions that have a primary goal of continuing themselves. Important to note that underwriting all of my desires is a commitment to treating Gods creation in accordance with his teachings.