Matt Liston

Professional Educator
Teaching Philosophy

When this assignment was first introduced, I was a little nervous. Crafting a Teaching

Philosophy sounds like a daunting task, at least in my opinion. I feel that in classes and in my

head, I always focus too much on knowing the content, rather than thinking about my theories

of how to present it and how to ensure that my students learn in class. After reading the

chapter on teaching philosophies, I quickly learned that these philosophies are constantly being

crafted subconsciously when planning lessons and when thinking ahead to events like student

teaching and teaching in general. With that being said, the remainder of this document will

detail my teaching philosophy at this moment in my career and the details that correlate with

the framework of it.

To start off, I want to say that I am against the discipline-specific approach to teaching. I

believe that music can be connected to virtually every subject and that it would be nearly

impossible to teach music without bringing in details from social studies, math, science, and so

on. I believe that the content and lessons taught in school should have relevancy to students’

lives outside of school, if possible. This is an idea brought forth from the Experimental theory of

education, which includes John Dewey on the forefront. I believe it is very important to not only

be aware of your students’ backgrounds, but to know about the area you teach in as well.

These qualities could influence content that you teach and give you significant insight on how

to connect to your students, which is crucial for teachers to do. I believe that the teacher

should be the “intellectual leader of a social group”, according to Dewey, who is quoted in the
article. With this being said, I believe that students should also have chances to learn in-depth

about things that they have a special interest in. This idea comes in from the Romantic

Naturalists, and Maria Montessori specifically. Although it doesn’t necessarily fit in with the

Experimentalism theory, I believe in teaching concepts many ways and giving students many

chances to showcase their acquired knowledge. Lastly, I am in line with the Postmodernism

approach in the sense that I don’t have any time for labels shaping students in a negative way. I

believe that all students are important and that everybody deserves to play, sing, and learn

about music.

I am happy to pull aspects from different areas of the spectrum of teaching

philosophies. Although I haven’t held a full-time teaching position yet, I feel that it is very

important to know what my philosophy on teaching is and am thankful to have had this

assignment to explore and formulate my very own teaching philosophy, and I am excited to

continue to craft and adapt this as my career advances in the coming years.