Teaching to Create an Impact by Courtney

Teaching to Create an Impact by Courtney - April 2015 Scholarship Essay

Courtney Early

Teaching to Create an Impact

The art of teaching centers on a teacher’s passion for kids, love of the subject, and ability to encourage lifelong learners. As a middle school student, I came to understand teachers’ passions for teaching when they made students laugh and got students engaged in the topic. I noticed teachers’ peripheral vision for every student in the class, to calling on the student by name, to wanting to learn more about the students’ interests and future goals. I had teachers who stood outside their classroom doors giving high fives to students during passing period and all my teachers had different goals for each specific student to accomplish. To encourage lifelong learners, I want to become a teacher that creates specific classroom management skills and strategies to help students with several different learning styles, work with the educational community of teachers and administrators, as well as families to establish a curriculum that connects both teachers and students’ learning strategies, which reflects a pragmatic philosophy designed toward success for every student where every student can reach a specific outcome.

The teachers who create personal connections with students portray the purpose of education by creating a love of the subject that influences the students to continue learning, establishing specific goals for each student academically and personally, and creating an attitude that every student can succeed in life. As a teacher I would constantly connect with my students from the moment I walk in the door on the first day of school. I would create ice breaker games to relate to my students’ different interests no matter what grade I teach. Understanding that my love for Language Arts might be different than the students I teach will force me to establish a curriculum that mixes every students’ interests into my love of the subject. Allowing students to free read a book of their choice and share their interests with others can help every student relate their love of sports, manga, video games, etc. to Language Arts. In establishing positive relationships with my students and allowing students to follow their interests freely in my classroom, I hope to convey my love of teaching to influence students to continue being lifelong learners.

Basing my classroom on a student centered environment I will focus primarily on how to help students achieve the best academically. Understanding students’ variety of intelligences along with learning disabilities can help teachers understand how to teach the content better. Whether a student is linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, or naturalistic, they all have different ways they learn best. For example, linguistic students use languages to express what’s on their mind and are often writing poetry or stories because that comes naturally to them. When linguistic students are in a lecture-based class they can easily understand what’s on the presentation slide because of their strengths in writing, while students who are bodily kinesthetic need movement like activities, circles, or labs to understand the content best. As a teacher I will try to understand all the different ways students can learn best and integrate that into the content I teach.

Teachers communicate widely outside the classroom of students, and need communication skills to relate to parents, teacher faculty, the community, and the school district. Sending weekly emails to parents can help parents understand my classroom better. This role is very important and can sometimes get confused when parents meet the teachers at conferences for the first time without receiving any prior communication from the teacher I would join professional organizations such as the National Education Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. Through these organizations teachers communicate with others around the country and develop new teaching methods, student strategies, and assessments which will help me improve my craft. As a teacher I will communicate with parents by sending weekly emails, educators, school faculty, students, and professional organization groups all with the goal of creating an educational environment and curriculum that benefits the student.

Creating a philosophy for my classroom creates a basis for how I want students to succeed. I agree with a pragmatic philosophy that focuses on the usefulness of ideas that create a process of reaching a specific outcome. John Dewey was the prominent figure who created pragmatism in American schools in the early 1900’s. Pragmatism focuses on obtaining information and then testing the hypothesis to create an outcome. Dewey stated that, “children do best by doing, by acting on the world.” Through problem-solving everyday obstacles, establishing solutions to roadblocks in our community, and creating a variety of outcomes, students gain skills to help them solve these problems later on in the workforce. By following Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism in my classroom, I hope to implement the problem-solving skills so students will understand the importance of creating solutions that can help our society.

The purpose of education is to create an environment where every student feels like he or she can succeed. Teachers are the encouraging parents some students never had, but teachers know when a student is not putting in all their effort. A student centered environment creates an open learning environment where students have wider variety of topics to choose from. Teachers are the heart of education creates talented students and encouraging all to continue their education.