PERSONAL TEACHING PHILOSOPHY 1

Personal Teaching Philosophy

Mikenna Reback

Chico State University

EDTE 255: Introduction to Democratic Perspectives in K-12 Education

David L Teja

October 2, 2022
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Teaching changes its shape all the time. Teachers find new ways to teach their students

information so they can retain the information for life. When I think about teaching my students,

I wonder what my classroom would look like, and now I have to think about how I will teach my

students. After researching different teaching styles, I have found that I want to combine two

learning styles in my classroom, progressivism and essentialism. Progressivism is the teaching

style that uses active listening, problem-solving, projects, and hands-on activities. Essentialism is

the idea of teaching essential knowledge to students, like mathematics, literature, science, and

history. Both essentialism and progressivism would be highly beneficial in my lessons since I

can teach the basic core knowledge and get my students involved in problem-solving hands-on

activities.

In middle school, my favorite teachers were the ones who did fun activities while

teaching us critical elements of our education. For example, my third-grade teacher did a big

project with her classes every year to teach them about the life cycle. So she got fertile chicken

eggs, and we would incubate them and wait to see what happened next. Then, every day we

would go over to the eggs and shine a light under them to see the growth. I was so amazed to see

the rapidly growing process. It went from a dot to a chicken, and my classmates and I were

stunned. That experience will always be in my mind because it was memorable. My teacher

didn’t only tell us about the life cycles of different animals; she showed us and let us do it with

her. This is where I can see essentialism and progressivism coming into my curriculum. This

activity my third-grade teacher did teach me a core subject, life science, and let me get hands-on

with the activity, so I learned it by feeling and looking at it.

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Essentialism would be used in my classroom because every student needs to learn the

core subjects like mathematics, literature, history, and science. As an article I read states;

“School is a place where students master basic skills on preparation for working society” (Darrin

& Darrin, 2021). I want to be a multiple-subject teacher and teach my students every subject

they will need to be well-rounded students. Essentialism’s primary definition is “an educational

philosophy holding that the purpose of education is to learn specific knowledge provided by core

academic disciplines such as mathematics, science, literature, and history” (Koch, 175). I want to

teach my students these critical elements so that later in life, they can succeed at whatever path

they choose for themselves. My goal is to set my students up for the future and ensure they retain

the knowledge I give them.

Progressivism allows me to teach my students and them be able to be hands-on with the

lesson and retain the information. I want my students to be able to interact with my lessons, so

they are memorable. Progressivism is “an educational philosophy that stresses active learning

through problem-solving projects and hands-on experiences” (Koch, 197). I resonate with this

teaching style because this is how I like to learn. I feel like it gives kids the room to explore the

lesson more and see and think about it in different ways. I want my students to come in every

day excited to learn and want to be there. I can do that by creating fun lesson plans and engaging

my students as much as I can. I want my students to leave my classroom full of more knowledge

they will have for the rest of their lives. On the founders of education website they stated,

“Provessivists believe that individuality, progress, and change are fundamental to one’s

education. Believing that people learn best from what they consider most relevant to their lives,

progressivists center their curricula on the needs, experiences, interests, and abilities of students”

(Theodore, 2022). I want them to go home and tell their parents how much fun they had in my
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class today and about the lesson. My goal as a teacher is to teach them everything they need to

know and be excited about it because if your students are not excited to learn, they will not learn

anything. With progressivism, my students will learn how to be good problem solvers and

participate in exciting activities they will remember for the rest of their lives.

In my classroom, my main goal is for my students to come in at the beginning of the year

ready to learn and leave with lots of new, fun information that will last them a lifetime. I will

achieve this by doing fun activities like the life cycle of the chicken and so much more. I want

my students to push the limits, be engaged, and participate in the lessons. I will use

progressivism and essentialism in my classroom.

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References

Darrin, D., & Darrin, D. (2021, April 12). Essentialist teacher. educational research techniques.

Retrieved October 9, 2022, from

https://educationalresearchtechniques.com/2019/07/24/essentialist-teacher/

Koch, J. (2020). Teach: Introduction to education. SAGE.

Theodore , P. A. (2022). Progressivism . Progressivism. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from

https://www.siue.edu/~ptheodo/foundations/progressivism.html#:~:text=Progressivists%2

0believe%20that%20individuality%2C%20progress,interests%2C%20and%20abilities%

20of%20students.