Classroom Standards

Classroom Standards:

1. Obey school standards and adhere to its policies.

2. Be kind to and respectful towards others.

3. Be responsible for your own actions and decisions.

4. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Mission Statement

I hope to create a caring, encouraging, and creative classroom that is conducive to social, emotional, and intellectual development of students. 

Educational Philosophy

My philosophical orientation is progressivism. This philosophy is based on the following assumptions: 1. The content of the curriculum ought to be derived from student’s’ interests rather than from the academic disciplines; 2. Effective teaching takes into account the whole child and his or her interests and needs in relation to cognitive affective, and psychomotor areas; 3. Learning is essentially active rather than passive. Effective teachers provide students with experiences that enable them to learn by doing; 4. The aim of education is to teach students to think rationally so that they may become intelligent, contributing members of society; 5. At school, students learn personal, as well as social values; 6. Humankind is in a constant state of change, and education makes possible a future that is better than the past.

I believe that this educational philosophy, on the whole, accurately represents my beliefs about teaching and learning. I affirm assumptions two to five, but disagree with one and suspend judgment on six is because the proposition is too ambiguous.

An example that conveys my progressivist philosophy was when I taught a lesson simplifying expressions containing exponents. Before starting the lesson, I tried to gauge how individuals are doing emotionally by talking them at the door and where they are with respect to the content by doing warm-ups and checking their understanding. Further, instead of being the transmitter of knowledge, I took on the role of a guide by arranging the questions such that they have the appropriate content to discover the rules of simplifying expressions containing exponents.

The purpose of education is to, in Dewey’s words, “select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in [the student’s] subsequent experiences.”

The school’s role in society is to empower each student to assume an increasing level of personal, social, and global responsibility.

Learning is a continuous process of culminating, creating, and reconstructing experiences “that live fruitfully and creatively in [the student’s] subsequent experiences.”

Learning is best achieved when the learning experience is in close relation to the actual life of individuals. Therefore, the best teaching method in mathematics is to give students problems that they will face in their actual lives.  

The teacher’s primary role is not to be the transmitter or source of knowledge; but rather, to serve as a guide or resource person whose primary responsibility is to facilitate learning experiences.

The student’s role is to be an active participant of the culmination, creation, and reconstruction of learning experiences.

The relationship between the teacher and the student is one that is based on mutual respect, understanding and trust.

The curriculum’s purpose is to be a framework in which the learning experiences will designed. For example, if the curriculum requires that the students must demonstrate their learning of x, I will create a lesson that facilitates learning experiences such that the students, after it, will be able to demonstrate their understanding of x. 

The educational philosophy described above is a good foundation upon which my subsequent learning experiences will continue to improve and transform. It also summarized my beliefs regarding teaching and learning.

College Education