Geoffrey Miller

Teaching Philosophy
Over the course of my studies in preparation for becoming an English teacher, I have
developed a theory about American education. I construct many parts of my teaching philosophy
to combat what I perceive to be dysfunctional aspects of the system. The United States model of
preparing students for careers focuses on being able to identify the best candidate for a given
position, which is understandable, especially given the competitiveness of some heavily soughtafter jobs. What I object to is the criteria established for what constitutes the best candidate,
and how those criteria affect the candidates prior training and education.
In an ideal system, the measures of competence we currently use to determine student
and worker readiness would work accurately without any changes from their current forms. The
ACT and SAT correlate incredibly highly with the likelihood of student success in college,
writing a good five-paragraph essay does predict ones ability to write for other reasons, and
having the right connections tells an employer that workers have had good experience. However,
these methods of assessment all rely on correlative, not causal, data. When learning becomes a
process of explicitly preparing for these assessments, much of their validity evaporates.
Teaching to the test prepares students worse for the test than teaching the full range of material
students will actually need to know. Students who practice more forms of writing than the fiveparagraph essay have a better understanding of structure and purpose which allows them to write
better five-paragraph essays.
Therefore, while standardized testing does help predict readiness, it should not be used to
suggest what needs to be taught. State education standards are better, in that they cover a broader
array of skills, but again, they measure the skills that can be objectively assessed, not those that
cause successful outcomes on assessments.
My goal as a teacher is to teach students to use thinking skills that do actually enable
students to perform well on the variety of both artificial and organic assessments they will be
faced with. I believe that intelligence is about critical thinking, asking the right questions rather
than knowing the right answers. I want my students to practice asking questions going into a
learning opportunity and then to ask questions of those questions to ensure they focus on the
right information. I want to spend time early in the year giving students a firm grounding in
logic, as, while assessments rarely cover it explicitly, it is the process by which all questions can
be asked and answered.
I will certainly model the process of moving, for instance, from identifying literary
devices to interpreting themes from literature. After all, the process is complex, requires
intuition, and is an entirely new paradigm of reading for students who have been reading for
three quarters of their lives already. However, I will model this process, asking students questions
all the way from observation to conclusion to force them to follow the entire thought process
themselves. I will teach certain prerequisite facts but will focus primarily on algorithms and
heuristics.
Respect, by my own definition, is the understanding that there is something to be learned
from someone. As I teach these methods of thinking, I will also learn them better myself, and this
is the basis on which I respect my students. My discussions with my students will enable me to
think more critically of my own teaching, and new generations of students will bring new
insights. Therefore, while my extra experience will give my voice added weight, I will also give
them the tools they need to responsibly question figures of authority, including me. For the same
reasons I demand their respect, I must give it.