Teacher Interviews

Building ideas to create my teaching philosophy

The teachers I interviewed gave me a good insight what teaching can be all about. I
interviewed Mrs. (Patti) Calton, a fifth grade teacher, who taught for about 10 years. I also
interview Mrs. (Loremae) Hom who taught 2nd grade for about 9 years. Teaching students is
not just standing up in front of a classroom, or teaching students a subject, or testing to see
what students have learned and moving on to the next subject. Anyone can do that! Its a
whole lot more than all that! A teachers job is connecting with your students, communicating
with your students and their parents, and finding the best teaching strategies to help students
reach their full potential. It is also communicating with your fellow teachers and colleagues
to learn form each other to help you, as a teacher, be the best teacher you can be. I will use all
this information that I have collected from my teacher interviews to help me create my
teaching philosophy that will be an on going task as I make my journey through the USF
Teaching Program and student teaching. I also spent some time observing the Mrs. Calton
and took notes on some of her teaching strategies that I could relate to the readings from this
class. The challenge for me after reading about all these theories and strategies is trying to
decide what is best for me on how I will connect with my students, communicate with my
students and teach my students.
As I put together my teaching philosophy, I will include strategies that will help me
design my lesson plans, making sure that I create a safe learning environment in my
classroom and build learning groups so my students can collaborate to learn and teach each
other. Strategies that I believe will help me design my teaching strategies will be based on the
Five Principles for effective pedagogy, Equity Pedagogy, Cognitive Apprenticeship and
Metacognition in the Classroom.

The 5 Principles for Effective Pedagogy

I want to use teaching strategies to help me nurture and guide communication in the
classroom. Communication is very important to have between you and your students so your
students feel that you care about them. I would like to design my teaching strategies and
lesson plans around the 5 principles for effective pedagogy. Last year I taught a kindergarten
class of 15 students. They were so young and new to a classroom environment with many
rules to follow. They were mostly engaged in class at circle time when I sat down on the
carpet with them. That is the time when most of the students wanted to participate in the
discussion and to talk about themselves and their families. In the circle, we worked together
as a team to listen and learn. I could see how comfortable and connected they felt with me
and with their classmates. Mrs. Calton keeps a line of communication open in her 5 th grade
classroom by always listening to them if they have anxiety with schoolwork or just having
problems with their classmates. When students communicate with each other and the teacher
communicates with the students, they are developing language and literacy by just talking
with each other about the ideas and reflections. One of the main points in Vygotskys
Theories of learning is the language is the main tool the promotes thinking, develops
reasoning and supports cultural activities like reading and writing. This helps the student
become comfortable talking with each other and the more they talk, the more knowledge they
will learn. During a group discussion or in circle time, this is their opportunity to make
connections and to talk about themselves and their families. When students start talking
about their families, they begin to make a connection with their teacher and their classmates.
Another effective pedagogy is to design activities that are challenging. Challenging activities
like hands-on problem solving techniques: puzzles for younger kids and hands-on science
projects to prove a hypothesis for older students will encourage them to think critically and
help them get a deeper understanding of what they are learning. Just memorizing facts and
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words does not help to learn with a deep understanding. The 5 th principle ties in all the
principles together which is teaching through guided conversation. This principle supports
that we learn through exchange and discussion to reach a specific goal, known as
instructional conversation. Talking with students and letting students talk with each other
will helps them gain control over their own thinking and in their behavior. To truly teach,
one must converse and to truly converse is to teach. (Tharpe et al 200)

Equity Pedagogy
Giving your students equal time of attention and opportunities to help them learn in class
is a very important rule to follow to be an effective teacher. Students come from all different
cultures and family backgrounds and teachers need to be sensitive to this because it will help
understand how the student thinks. Strategies to promote equity in our teaching strategies
will remind me to use techniques and methods to help students reach their academic
achievements especially those from low status populations.
Mrs. Hom has a few students in her class who speak Spanish at home and English at
school. These students need more time to process the lesson taught in school so she gives
them extra help or starts giving them easier work until they understand at the same level with
the rest of the class. We as teachers need to respect ALL students and believe that they have
the potential to be excellent learners. We need to be sensitive to their family backgrounds
and listen to what they bring from home and their communities. We need to understand how
learning depends on what students already know and help motivate them to participate in
their learning and create an environment where they feel confident to learn and participate.
Mrs. Calton firmly believes that students need to be treated with respect to create a learning
environment.

Cognitive Apprenticeship
As I build my teaching philosophy on how to teach, I plan to design my lessons using the
method of Cognitive Apprenticeship. This is not a teaching method that gives a formula for
instruction. It is an instructional approach that helps teach complex skills and reasoning
using authentic tasks like those involved in reading, writing, scientific experimentation,
artistic production and mathematical problem solving. When I observed Mrs. Homs 2 nd
grade class, her instructional approach was modeling a language art lessons on the board. She
would write samples of singular and plural nouns on the board to help them understand the
differences. Then she would go around the room and ask the students to give their own
example of singular and plural nouns. This is an example of modeling and coaching methods
to help students get a greater understanding of the lesson.
In 5th grade, Mrs. Calton models methods of collaboration like think-pink-share and
graphic organizers. She then breaks her class into groups so the students can collaborate and
teach each other what they know using those methods. She walks around the room to coach
students as they collaborate and learn from each other. This kind of collaboration keeps the
students engaged in interesting and challenging tasks and hopefully will motivate them to
strengthen their critical thinking and develop their own way of learning from each other.
Mrs. Caltons groups demonstrates the 3 key features of Cognitive Apprenticeship:
1) Her literacy groups read a 5th grade novel that is interesting and that they can connect
with each other;
2) Tasks are realistic but challenging that they can complete together as a group to gain
an understanding about the novel they are reading;
3) The tasks are motivating to students since the novels can be connected to the students
real world.
Cognitive Apprenticeship ultimately gives students the opportunity to explore many topics
and develop competency by choosing their own paths toward problem solving.
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Metacognition in the Classroom

What I observed in the Mrs. Caltons and Mrs. Homs classroom is that teachers need to
implement more lessons that give the students opportunities to think instead of memorize.
Teachers need to teach students to think about thinking. This is best explained through the
concept of metacognition. Metacognitions has 2 interrelated areas where a student is aware of
their own thinking, metacognitive knowledge and where the student can manage their own
thinking, metacognitive regulation. I want to implement lessons that will support a
metacognitive classroom where the learning environment is knowledge centered and learner
centered. Lessons to activate metacognition in a classroom includes activities like journaling
where students can reflect on what they understand, what they are learning and what they
dont understand. In group circles, students have the opportunity reflect on what they have
learned and what they dont understand and what they have learned. Metacognitive activities
should also include an opportunity for the students to assess what they have learned against
what they should be learning. These activities require each student to think about what they
are learning and thinking. Students in Mrs. Caltons literacy circles have the opportunity to
talk about their ideas about the novel they are reading and can discuss together to understand
what they are reading. This gets students to care about what they are reading and it helps
them develop awareness about themselves and how to truly think about what they are reading
and thinking.

Emotional Intelligence
Emotion plays a large role in a classroom. In my Kindergarten class, I had a lot of
emotions going on at one time and there were a lot of times that I had to stop the whole class
from and asked them to freeze and put their heads down. This was my way to get the
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students back on the same emotional level. Student emotions affect learning. Teachers will
need to make judgments about when emotions are interfering with learning. Emotions are
important in the classroom in 2 important ways. First, they influence the students ability to
process information and help us understand what they encounter. Second, students need to
learn how to manage feelings and relationships to help them develop an emotional
intelligence that will help them be successful in reaching their academic goals. Mrs. Calton
says that is it important to remove the student from the classroom who is showing negative
emotion so the other students can have a positive learning environment. Speaking with
students with respect and trying to find out why there was an issue is important. Students can
be coached to develop tools and skills needed to manage their positive and negative emotions
known as Emotional Intelligence. Students can be taught five skills to help them with their
emotional intelligence:

Being aware of ones emotions;

Managing those emotions
Motivating oneself
Relating well with others in a groups
I would like to give lessons to help students be aware of their emotions, when they feel

sad, angry or when they feel they cant sit and focus in class. I would like to work with them
on how they should act if they feel sad or angry doing some exercises together as a class and
help them learn how to work together in groups for support on their emotions. It is
important for teachers to create a positive, emotionally safe classroom environment to
provide learning of students.
Teaching is more than sharing knowledge with students. It is more than just teaching
students skills to help their learning and be engaging and productive. As a teacher, I will do
my best to shape a learning environment that is built on mutual respect and a positive
classroom. The key to create an emotionally safe classroom environment is to make sure that
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students work collaboratively to help each other because learning takes place through their
interactions and communication with others. Communication between teachers and students
also need to be open and positive. In my classroom environment, students will be free of fear
of ridicule and humiliation. Teaching is giving your students the opportunity to make their
learning environment a place where they are inspired to learn from each other and a place to
connect new knowledge to knowledge they already internalized and a place to make the
choice to become life long learners.