Educational Philosophy Statement

I believe students should be taught skills that will continue to be useful throughout their lives. The fundamental purpose of an education is to help an individual grow, and to create members of a society and a community that are capable of being productive and successful. If you’re not teaching children to be independent critical thinkers then you are churning out factory pieces to be exploited by corporations, politicians, and anyone else who’s best interest involves pushing for an uninformed population.

There are several expectations for basic adulthood that are not part of the school curriculum, and aren’t being taught consistently by parents, and I believe that is leaving our society with a ‘knowledge deficiency.’ Some of these things include skills like managing money, how interest on loans work, moderate nutritional education, writing cover letters and resumes, etc. Adjusting current curriculum's slightly away from topics like abstract math, classic literature and the periodic table to make room for more practical and universally used topics would be very beneficial. Children need to continue learning how to interact and communicate with the world around them. Abstract processes taught for the sake of tradition aren’t helping when it’s hard for many people to even justify the time they spent in high school learning things that never applied to their adult lives.. Exposing children to ideas such as geology, astronomy, algebra and calculus are great - but mandating that students dedicate time to those skills is wasteful. Education should be teacher guided but tailored to each individual.

I believe that courses should be interactive and collaborative. Exercises should encourage communication and broadening of social horizons within the classroom. Life is not full of solo projects, and only solo tasks. Any homework assignment should be a contribution to the class as a whole, not an isolated individual responsibility. Work should be done to benefit something greater than themselves, where the final goal is a sense of team accomplishment. Leading everyone to be proud of each other, where everyone keeps each other accountable and helps each other through struggles, and not just focuses on themselves.  

I believe that exercises should be structured so educational goals are met and the students add their own context. Childhood brains develop through their interaction with the world. Curiosity is rewarded with knowledge, and we must encourage and facilitate curiosity and experimentation. Students should be able to express themselves and play with the ideas and assignments given - so long as a true effort is being made and the student has striven to accomplish something, and the student was engaged, then there is no failure no matter the outcome. If a classroom exercise is to draw a duck, then drawing a blue 50 foot duck should not necessarily be judged on the accuracy in which it depicts a real life duck. Although there are cases where this may miss the educational goal, there are many instances where an effort outside of the specific instructions still exercise the intended skillset.

I believe that play should be structured into learning. I don’t think there should be a separation from play and learning. I think there’s a way to do both. I think it’s important for students to gain experiences and for students to learn by doing. This mantra can be applied creatively to come up with lessons that teach students useful lifelong skills, through interactive and collaborative projects where students can work on specific tasks that speak to their interest and strengths. This would not only lead to more students being engaged, but also the students being engaged on a deeper level.