My teaching philosophy is centered around three core beliefs: students are people, students should be involved in their own learning, and there should be a focus on equity rather than equality within the classroom environment.
These beliefs are derived from my own experience as a student and as a learner. I received my K-12 education in a small town in rural Manitoba, and while I did receive an amazing education in terms of the quantity of information I managed to memorize, the treatment I received from many of my teachers left much to be desired. Up until my final year of high school, I was not treated like a person by the majority of my teachers. At the best of times I was treated like a task and at the worst I was treated like an inconvenience. Whenever I asked my teachers why I was learning something, the answers never pertained to me or my future, but instead to the teacher or the government. The most common answers were “because you need to” or “because I told you to”. My education was not about my future, it was about meeting provincial outcomes, and my teachers made sure that I knew that. Not only was my future treated like a non-factor during my education, but so were my basic needs and rights as a human. During my final year of high school the school I attended decided to remove the short breaks between each class that were originally intended to allow students time to walk to their next class and use the restroom if necessary. This meant that one class would end at 10:00am, and the next class would start at 10:00am. Despite this change, I was not allowed to use the bathroom during class time, was expected to be seated by the start of class, and was not permitted to leave class early in order to arrive on time for my next class. I was not a person, I was an object on a list and a time on a schedule.
During my high school education, I was also denied access to various forms of help or special considerations under the guise of equality and fairness. In ninth grade I missed a P.E. lesson to attend my grandfather’s funeral, and as a result I received a zero for “refusing to participate”. I contacted the teacher and asked if I could make up the lost marks, but was told no due to the fact that it “would not be fair” to the other students. Later that year I developed school-related anxiety for various reasons and began seeing a counselor through the school every Wednesday during my art class. This did not last long, as I began to lose participation marks in said art class for attending my weekly sessions. When I questioned the teacher about it I once again received the same speech about fairness. Students should not have to skip their grandparents’ funerals and quietly suffer with mental illness in order to receive the same marks as their peers.
It is largely due to these experiences that I believe that students deserve to be treated in a similar manner to how we would treat other people we interact with on a daily basis, with respect and basic human decency. While they are still young, students are all unique individuals who have their own beliefs, values and opinions, and thus need to be treated as unique individuals. I believe that students learn best when they know why they are learning. When that comes to biology, that means teaching them why the natural world is important to them on a fundamental level, and how various biological processes impact their lives each and every day. I also believe that choice plays a massive role in students’ willingness to learn. While there are many core concepts within biology that students need to learn, they should have a say in how they learn these concepts.
People are not hive insects; they are not identical clones created to spend every second of their life working until they ultimately collapse from exhaustion. And since students are people, we cannot expect them to either. It is for this reason that I will not assign homework in any of my classes, and I will listen to the needs of my students when designing assessments. Assessments will be based around what is best for each individual student whenever possible. For example, if a student is not capable of taking a written test they may be able to take an oral test, or complete an assignment of similar difficulty instead. My ultimate goal as a teacher is to allow each student to succeed without feeling the need to mold themself into something they are not.
Comments
Post a Comment