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Teaching Philosophy

During Middle School, the changes a student makes are more visible than in other grade

levels. A student is going through puberty and is lost in not knowing if they are a child or a

grown-up. With that said, I believe that "the middle school curriculum must touch on those

issues that concern young adolescents and help them construct meaning about themselves, their

world, and their future" (Brown & Knowles, 132). Before we start working with adolescents, we

have to understand that they care a lot about the changes they are going through and the concerns

that they mostly have. "Middle-level education is about helping young adolescents balance their

social, emotional, and identity-development—on a daily basis” (Brown,93).

“Effective curriculum design also integrates issues of diversity and democracy; the

multiple perspectives of all students are valued, validated, and explored” (Brown & Knowles,

133). Adolescents are concerned about what goes on around the world. They want to help solve

issues that are happening. A student shouldn't have to ask why we are doing this, or how is it

used in the world. Instead, our lessons should show them why they need to do this or that. In

order to show democracy in our curriculum, we should have an integrated curriculum. When

students design the curriculum, it helps with “student participation and classroom management”

(Brown & Knowles, 165), helps them “build skills needed for a democratic society while

maintaining high academic standards” (Brown & Knowles, 168), and “become effective

researchers" (Brown & Knowles, 177). These are important because the student is making

meaningful connections from school to the "real world." In school, most of the time, we see

students listen and memorize the information the teacher gives them. This is not learning.

What is learning? "The ultimate bottom-line goal of learning 'content' is the successful

meaning and transfer of prior learning to new situations" (Wiggins & McTighe, 21). Learning
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isn't memorizing further information and adding it to older information; it is understanding and

transferring the old and new knowledge and seeing how it is helpful in society. I believe that

students are the future of the world and that the ones who give them the tools to hold certain

ideals and foster individualized thinking are teachers. Giedd said, "social factors can

substantially override the biology" (36). Since the student spends most of their first 20 years in

school, teachers are the ones who help them survive. We, as teachers, show them how to act and

what is out in the world. We, teachers, are the ones who show them how to respect one another;

even pre-school students are taught to care for one another and not be aggressive by their

teachers.

We, as teachers, are "facilitators, not givers of knowledge" (Brown & Knowles, 173).

Students should not be forced to learn something that will not benefit them in the future. “It’s

those longer-term and complex ideas and accomplishments requiring content knowledge and

skill that are the bottom-line aims of teaching” (Wiggins & McTighe, 46). If we force students to

do something they do not want to learn, they will find education uninteresting, may rebel against

the school, and eventually want to drop out. It is essential to give students options. Some

students may like writing papers; others may like doing speeches. When creating the curriculum,

we should have opportunity A and option B. That way, students can choose what they want to

do, and we don’t force them and push them farther from us.

When a student understands a concept, they should be able to “analyze, synthesize, and

evaluate information and situations independently, not just recall prior teaching and plug it in”

(Wiggins & McTighe, 59). When teaching, we should give students deep thought-provoking

questions, and we, as teachers, should not repeatedly give our students the answer or hints.

Instead, we should let them think of the solution. The purpose of having meaningful questions is
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to have a way of showing students there are many answers to those questions, not only one

answer to the problem.

I think that it is also vital to have effective communication with parents and the

communities the students live in. We can use the parents' funds of knowledge to combine what

they learn in class and what they learn at home. For instance, if a parent knows how to make

bags out of recycled bottle caps, we can use her knowledge and make a unit on recycling. By

understanding the communities' funds of expertise, we can make school full events for the

students to learn from and engage with different people from the area. However, they can also

make connections between school and their community. Not only do we need to have effective

communication with parents but with students as well. There are sometimes issues that they have

either at home, with other teachers, or even in your class. In underfunded schools, there are often

issues of students who lack critical thinking skills. According to Ayers et al. (2008), “It is often

the case that for children who are from poor communities, critical-thinking skills are basic…

They are accustomed to being more independent. Often they are familiar with real-life problems

and how to solve them.” With students from poor communities, we have to be more open to

helping in any issue they may have.

A way to assess students is by having them create their rubrics and doing their final

project. "When teachers design the curriculum collaboratively with students, students become

responsible for helping to design not only how they want to learn information but also how they

want to demonstrate their learning" (Brown & Knowles, 222). When teachers give students

quizzes or tests, they are making students compare their scores with one another, making it a

competitive environment. Also, having a test or quiz is not a form of assessment. “Instead of

improving the curriculum and instruction, high-stakes standardized tests tend to narrow the
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curriculum, increase dropout rates, and decrease graduation rates- especially for ethnically

diverse students” (Brown & Knowles, 219). In the end, we need our curriculum to be at a level

of efficiency where our students genuinely make deep connections to other material learned.
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Works Cited

Ayers, William. City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row. New Press, 2008.

Brown, D., and Knowles, T. (2013). What every middle school teacher should know. (3rd Ed.).

Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann

Giedd, Jay N. "The amazing teen brain." Scientific American 312.6 (2015): 32-37.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2011). The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality

units.