Running Head: PERSONAL PHILOSPHY OF EDUCATION 1

Personal Philosophy of Education

Itzi I. Garcia Contreras

College of Southern Nevada

EDU 202 – 1001

Professor Christensen

April 18, 2021

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Personal Philosophy of Education

Profession

I want to be a teacher because I love helping people learn. I enjoy seeing the face people

make when they learn something new or when they find something enjoyable they can attribute

to school. I have been in situations where I could not find anything enjoyable about school

besides the amazing and caring teachers; I also want to be that for students who have,

unfortunately, been in the same position. Being the eldest of 6 siblings, I’ve had to grow up

quickly and become a second mom to them, and with my parents not speaking English, I was the

one tasked with helping them do homework; teaching is a process I’ve come to enjoy. However,

the people who have influenced me the most have been my past teachers. My 7th and 8th grade

orchestra teacher left the biggest impact on me, she was the one who made me realize I wanted

to share my love of my passions with other people. When it came time to choose what high

school to attend, I decided to apply to Clark High School for their Teacher Education At Clark

Highschool (T.E.A.C.H) program. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience wonderful

opportunities thanks to the T.E.A.C.H. program: learning the fundamentals to public speaking,

storytelling and doing arts-and-crafts with elementary schoolers, community service events,

leaning teaching methods and classroom management, mentoring younger T.E.A.C.H. members,

mentoring/tutoring ELL students, creating lesson plans, classroom observations, out-of-school

co-teaching/mentee internships, an introduction to special education, and the list goes on.

Throughout high school, I also had fabulous teachers who made me feel appreciated and loved

even though I was struggling academically and felt like I was failing at life. It was thanks to

those two teachers that I clung onto my hopes and dreams of becoming an educator. These types

of experiences helped me home in on an area of education that I wanted to pursue and helped
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shape my philosophy of education. My high school experience also opened my eyes to both the

positives and negatives to teaching.

This year, due to COVID-19, many of the Education students at CSN were not able to do

their classroom observations in person, myself included. The thing about online observations is

that it’s very easy to overlook what is actually going on in a classroom and assess what students

are doing in their at-home-setting because they often have their cameras off or are doing

something off-screen. My mentor teacher, Mrs. Perkins, has been amazing with letting me see

what she is doing by sharing her screen with me during virtual classes, but it is very restrictive

and the view I get of the classroom isn’t the best; however, I can understand that the whole

purpose of that camera angle is so students can read the board and follow along with the

teacher’s lesson. While online observations are not as beneficial as in-person observations, it

isn’t too hard to pick up on what non-verbal and or non-instructional activities the teacher is

doing. With a little bit of careful observation, I do see that while Mrs. Perkins may not say “I am

taking attendance now,” her screen shows that she is taking account of the students entering or

leaving the online meeting and the class knows what they have to do in order for her to take

attendance. She also does not have to say, “While students do their assignments I will prep for

the next part of the lesson,” because I can see her walk past the camera with her supplies in hand.

Teaching

The educational philosophy that currently aligns with my beliefs is progressivism. I think

that students should be given options when it comes to doing classwork and assignments and

they should also be allowed to choose an appropriate topic that suites their interests, this can help

them gain motivation to complete their work. The textbook, “Teachers, Schools, and Society: A

Brief Introduction to Education”, explains, “Passively listening to the teacher, according to the
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progressive movement, is not the most effective learning strategy. Students’ interests should

serve as a springboard to understanding and mastering contemporary issues,” (Sadker and

Zittleman, 2018, pg. 126). Students should be given these types of freedoms to creative liberty

while still being held together by the rules and requirements that are necessary for the

completion of their assignments. Everyone learns and processes information differently and I

think progressivism reflects that wonderfully while still managing to follow a fixed schedule

(i.e., the schoolyear). While I lean more towards progressivism, two psychological orientations

that I somewhat agree with are behavior modification and behaviorism. I do think that positive

reinforcement through rewards can build excitement in students but I feel like an overuse of it

can establish hierarchies within the classroom; the students who struggle more might lose

motivation because they know they have to compete against the higher achieving students and

the higher achieving students may lose interest in the rewards. I think behaviorism is more in line

with my beliefs than behavior modification because I do think that the best learning opportunities

happen through experience, whether it is first-hand or through sharing experiences with

classmates. With the knowledge of what has happened in the past throughout education, I will

educate myself on school rules and laws, and I will advocate for students when I see that they are

being wronged by either fellow students, the school, school district, or higher officials. Every

child is unique and will have different needs depending on their situation, they cannot be

expected to fit a singular mold. Seeing how far education has come and how it went from a

private institution only open to rich white boys, to something that is now required for all

children, adolescents, and young adults, is an amazing achievement. While the United States’

schools still have a long way to go before they can be considered anything like Finland’s, I’m
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glad that the schools are slowly changing for the better and hopefully new teachers will continue

to pave the way for the new generations of students.

Instruction

Since I want to be a life science teacher, I think that working hands on would be the best

mode of instruction. Kinesthetic learning can be a lot of fun and in a science class, it can be a

very effective way to retain information just because the experiences are more memorable than a

lesson packed with notes and video instruction. However, I would like to learn what type of

learners my students would be so I think doing a couple “What Type of Learner Am I?” tests and

quizzes would be beneficial; this can help me get an understanding of what my students need

from me and what I need to do in order to get as many students as possible to understand my

lessons. I think that it is very important that students see themselves as equal and treat each other

with the same respect they would like to be treated with. I think that in order to appreciate

diversity, lessons based on different regions of the world and having students pick out a topic or

location would be fun. Including the community would be beneficial as well, once in a while

students could have the assignment of going home with a letter to parents asking them to share a

piece of knowledge (fact) from their homeland, a place they find interesting (such as a

landmark), a species, favorite plant, etc. and those suggestions would then be randomly selected

to be included in a lesson or project. This way, the community can feel like they’re being

included and represented in classroom decisions. The textbook shares the “additive approach” to

multicultural education which I think would work wonderfully in a science class (Sadker and

Zittleman, 2018, pg. 70). I think that being open to talking about diversity, differences, and the

importance of appreciating and respecting different cultures other than one’s own is very

important as well. Different methods of assessment are essential too. While multiple choice fill-
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in-the-bubble sheets may seem like the easiest way to assess students in a science class, it’s not

effective because not everyone will start the class with the same amount of knowledge. It is easy

to forget information and sometimes other teachers will not cover certain materials that are

needed in order to pass the class. I think that benchmark assessments should be taken at the

beginning, middle, and end of the year to properly assess what students know at the beginning of

the school year and how much they have grown by the end of it. These assessments should be

written responses so they have the opportunity to explain their thinking rather than be confined

to picking an answer randomly from a given list. I do think the multiple-choice format could be

used for small quizzes used as a refresher every couple of weeks but it should not be overused or

relied on. Hands-on projects such as building a 3-D version of an atom or creating a walking

gallery with tri-folds that showcase artwork and research would be a great form of assessments.

Giving students the liberty to choose how they want to present their project (through a live

presentation, video, animation, comic book, a report etc.) would help bring out student creativity

and help students retain the information they’ve gathered for a longer amount of time. It is

important to do this in a way that does not feel repetitive or stale. I had a music history teacher

who gave his classes four assessments for the year which were constrained to a presentation of a

bubble map poster comparing and differentiating three different musical groups. The first time

was fun but after that it became boring and the quality of work for all students clearly reduced

with every time he assigned each student a new poster. This is why variety is important,

especially when it comes to assessments.

Future

Some qualities I need to work on are problem-solving, quick-thinking, and

prioritize/multitasking. I remember once during my high school internship I grew overwhelmed

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after being incessantly called on and asked for help by the 1st graders in class. I understood that

many of them did not get what the teacher was trying to explain but I knew it wasn’t my place to

go up to the front of the class and explain the lesson in another way. Looking back on it, I

should’ve taken a short 1-2 minute break to think about a different way of dealing with the

situation (such as creating a small group, going over the topic again, and using teamwork to help

the students build on each other’s knowledge) rather than trying to work with each student

individually. I need to practice stepping back in order to clear my head which in turn can help me

think of a solution quickly rather than crashing and burning. I usually like working on one thing

at a time because I like taking my time to make sure everything is as perfect as it can be but I

know that as a teacher, time will run short and sometimes there is no other choice but to grade

assignments while the students are doing independent work or take attendance while passing out

paperwork. As preparation for becoming a teacher, if I am allowed to in the future, I would like

to work as a tutor for CSN until I can be a part-time substitute teacher. I would also like to

experience doing community service at a day care or the Boys and Girls club. I would be open to

any opportunity to hone my teaching skills and help me be better prepared for life in the

classroom.
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References

Sadker, D.M., Zittleman, K.R. (2018). Teachers, schools, and society: a brief introduction to

education. [5th edition]. E-Book. Retrieved from McGraw-Hill.