Teaching Philosophy

Fiona Walsh
As a teacher, I believe I should be a positive force in students’ lives. I should create a
learning environment with open communication, where students feel free to ask questions and
answer questions without fear of being incorrect. Students’ learning is dependent on the
interactions that they have in the classroom, not just with their teacher, but with their peers. A
teacher should facilitate student-to-student conversation that fosters learning about the topic at
hand. Students should be engaged in my classroom and in order for that to happen, they should
be able to persist through distractions and interruptions and should see the purpose of what they
are learning. With mathematics, this can be difficult, as many topics are abstract and difficult to
apply to concrete, real-life situations. However, as I learn more about teaching, I will develop
ways to incorporate the applications of topics into lessons, because I believe that students are
more likely to stay engaged when they are not asking the question “what’s the point?” Finally, I
believe teachers should work to make their lessons accessible to all students. This includes being
aware and fully understanding the unique needs of their students. Especially when teaching in
high-need and underserved schools, teachers should work to understand the community and
culture that their students come from.
In the classroom, I want to promote the idea that failure and incorrect answers are
opportunities for learning. When students raise their hand and answer a question in class, they
will learn more if they are incorrect than if they are correct. I believe students should not fear the
consequences for wrong answers. Learning occurs in social settings, so the social interactions
between students and teachers, and students and their peers, should be consistent with the ideas
that are important to conducive learning. Reinforcing this idea through verbal affirmations when
questions are answered is essential to creating an environment of open and honest
communication of ideas. Another strategy to keeping communication open is using exit tickets to
not only assess students’ understanding of the content, but assess how they feel about what they
are learning and what misconceptions or misunderstandings they have. Students bring a variety
of perspectives and background knowledge to the classroom. Teachers can capitalize on this
diversity by helping students learn from each other. Group work should be a key part of learning
in each lesson.
Through field experience, I have learned firsthand the challenges of getting through a
lesson in one class period. Interruptions can come from outside sources, such as students’ home
lives or school activities, or from inside the classroom, such as students’ personal conversations
with friends and technology. However, depending on the student, these interruptions can have a
different effect on their learning process. For some students, interruptions and distractions will
totally take their attention away from the lesson at hand. For other students, interruptions and
distractions may bother them for a second or two, and they will get back to the lesson. And for
another group of students, their focus may have never been on the lesson, and the distraction
provides a more engaging thing to focus on. So, one of my main goals as a teacher is making
sure each student is engaged and providing them, to the best of my ability, the tools they need to
stay engaged during class. For example, when a student is hungry, they may not be able to focus
on a lesson that a teacher is teaching, so providing snacks can help students get that basic need.
This is part of addressing the diversity that students bring to the classroom and making lessons
accessible for all students.
I want students to be able to see the long-term benefits of what they are learning in my
classroom. Students often ask “why am I learning this?” or “what’s the point?” especially in
math classes because topics can be abstract and seemingly have few applications. However, I
believe students should know, as they are learning, what the benefits to the topic at hand are.
This can be incorporated into the lesson, and having student-centered lessons will allow for
students to experience the topics they are learning about on their own and build their knowledge
in terms of the real world. Project-based learning is one tool teachers can use to mitigate this
challenge. Through this teaching method, used in the right way, students will learn the content in
an applied context, rather than doing a project after being introduced to the content in traditional
project-oriented lessons. Project-based learning orients learning around a problem that is to be
solved. This answers the question “why am I learning this?” before students even have the
chance to ask it.
As a math teacher, I believe my most important job is to give students the tools to
critically think and solve problems. I believe that mathematics, when taught well, is mostly a
way of thinking and a process of solving problems. It is deliberate and thorough, but also
flexible. I think that if I am teaching well, the students in my class will be able to approach new
problems with a set of tools and strategies that will lead them to a solution. These tools include,
but are not limited to, evaluating the usefulness of information included in a problem, distilling
word problems to “math sentences”, identifying operations necessary to come to solutions, and
explaining the reasoning behind the steps they used to come to a solution. These skills are not
grade-specific. At each level of a students’ math education, they should be able to use these tools
to some extent. As a teacher, I should be able to evaluate my students’ performance of these
schools and ask them questions that will refine their skills and prepare them for more
complicated math topics.
When students walk into my classroom, I want them to be excited to learn something
new, ready to stay focused on the task at hand, and to know what is in it for them when they are
engaged in the lesson. My goal in teaching is to give students the skills to succeed in whatever
they choose to do, and for math classes, that is often preparing them for the next math class that
they take, and teaching them skills to apply what they learn in my class to other areas. To create
this environment, I believe there should open communication between myself, students, and their
peers. The social aspect of learning is extremely important in the classroom, and I believe that
teachers’ responses to all questions and answers are not forgotten by students, so the interactions
during discussion should always be positive so students do not fear answering incorrectly.
Addressing the inherent distractions that come into a classroom is also essential for a productive
learning environment. I believe a teacher should keep in mind that each student will react
differently to different scenarios, often in ways that are out of their control. Knowing how to
handle these distractions is essential. When students know why they are learning and see the
benefit of it, they are more likely to stay engaged and productive in class. Incorporating all of
these ideas into the classroom and lessons is how I believe I can create a productive learning
environment wherein students value the time they spend.