PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Suzanne Dups
My developing philosophy of education hinges on a great little story called The Animal School
(below). The philosophy behind the story is that students each need to be treated as individuals and have
their strengths emphasized. We cannot expect to churn out identical replicas but rather need to celebrate
the differences. In order to do that effectively, we need to recognize the different learning styles or
multiple intelligences of the students in our classroom.
I strongly believe students are individuals who should celebrate learning, apply that learning to the
world around them, and be rewarded for work well done. Cooperative learning environments celebrate the
joy of acquiring knowledge with ones peers. In S. Jeroskis book Speak for Yourself, she states:

In classrooms where purposeful talk is encouraged, tentative thinking aloud is valued, respect is
shown to individual customs and concerns, knowledge is not the possession of the teacher but is a
continual student/student and student/teacher journey of exploration, and students have some
measure of control over and responsibility for their own learning, students will learn to speak and
to listen with poise and perception (13).
This statement is the ideal summation of my own philosophy of teaching. It highlights the type of students
I hope will emerge from my classroom and the type of teacher I hope will emerge out of meall of us on a
continual learning journey together.
My classroom will be an inviting, homey atmosphere where the children feel comfortable and accepted
and safe. Children will feel central and included and I will listen carefully to each childs needs.
My classroom will offer learning experiences for all the multiple intelligences. Understanding that
there are diverse learners who will not match my own personal learning preferences, I will seek to provide
opportunities for everyone to succeed. Music, live plants/animals, large assortments of games,
manipulatives, art materials, journals, a wide range of reading materials, exploration centers with pieces
and parts, group work, individual work, peer tutors, and on the list goes.
My classroom will be noisy. To maximize learning, children who are verbal/linguistic learners need to be
able to talk to themselves (audible private speech), while the interpersonal intelligences need to interact
regularly with others. The musical learners need to hum while they work and the kinesthetic learners may
sometimes need to get up and move around or play with something to enhance their learning. I need to
accept this reality and embrace it.
My classroom will be a reading classroom. I will provide a vast assortment of reading materials from
all genres and will give opportunities for reading in various ways, to various people, and at various times
throughout the day.
Most importantly, my classroom will be a changing one. As I develop in my career, as each year passes
and new students come and go, as I learn from colleagues and professional reading, I will change the way I
do things. I will always be seeking to learn from experience.

The Animal School

Once upon a time, the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the
problems of a new world. So, they organized a school.
They adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming, and flying.
To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.
The duck was excellent in swimming, in fact better than his instructor, but he made only
passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had
to stay after school and drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until
his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was
acceptable in school, so nobody worried about that except the duck.
The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but had a nervous breakdown because
of so much make-up work in swimming.
The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class
where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down.
He also developed a charlie horse from overexertion and then got a C in climbing and a D
in running.
The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class, he beat
all the others to the top of the tree, but insisted on using his own way to get there.
At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceedingly well, and also run,
climb, and fly a little, had the highest average and was valedictorian.
The prairie dogs stayed out of school and fought the tax levy because the administration
would not add digging and burrowing to the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to
a badger and later joined the groundhogs and gophers to start a successful private school.
Does this fable have a moral?
George H. Reavis
Chicken Soup for the Soul (Canfield & Hansen, compiled by)
1993
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