Philosophy of Teaching Sara Elmer Introduction There is not much from a math course taken at a local college that

I can remember doing nor do I understand the process of doing certain problems. The professor stood by the wipe-off board and lectured off of her pages of notes at each and every class. She wrote various problems on the board and worked them out. Sometimes she gave us practice problems to do in class in a short amount of time and then worked it out on the board. We all saw how it should be done, but not necessarily understood how to do it. When I would go home and start to work on the homework assigned, I could not understand what to do. At the next class, the other students tried to ask questions on the homework because they did not understand either; but the teacher never really understood what the students were asking. She seemed too focused on staying on topic following her notes instead of trying to reach the different learners in the classroom. Everyone in the class was getting frustrated because we all needed help and the teacher did not help us. Valuable Teaching The classroom should not be focused on the teacher, but on the student. For the teaching to be valuable to the students learning process there must be an interaction between the teacher and the students. Teaching should not be only to fill the students with information (Freire, 71). According to Dewey, the teacher and the students must be co-partners during the learning process (Simpson, Jackson and Aycock, 60). Both the teacher and the students have to work through each step of the learning process. Besides interaction between the teacher and the students, there should be opportunities for the students to construct meaning on their own (Wink, 30). It is more beneficial to the students to construct meaning from their knowledge and experience (Wink, 30). Students could then apply that information to their lives. Bruner said that, for Vygotsky, mental life first expresses itself in interaction with others. The results of such interactions then become internalized and enter the stream of thought (In Search of Pedagogy Volume I: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner, 191). It is these concepts from which I have developed my philosophy that teaching should consist of interaction and constructive opportunities. I believe that these two aspects are key to the students during the learning process. Students would be able to understand the lessons better, and they would be able to formulate their own ideas and opinions in such an environment. Duty of a Teacher According to Wink, dialogue is a two-way, interactive visiting that can move people to wonderful new levels of knowledge (Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, 41-42). The lesson should not be a one way process where the teacher stands at the front of the classroom and never has any dialogue with the students. But during any dialogue, the teacher should refrain from imposing his or her opinion on the students. It is for the students to take in the information provided to them to then figure out their own opinion concerning the material. When the material of the lesson requires the teacher to lecture, there must be a conversation between the teacher and the students throughout the course of the lesson. Without this the students would not come to the fullest understanding of what is being taught by the teacher. The lesson would then be meaningless to the students since they could not comprehend it. Whatever the material would be about, it would be lifeless and petrified if the teacher taught it in a narrative character (Freire, 71). It has to be connected somehow to reality in order for the students to better understand the information (Freire, 71). When the material is connected to reality, the students can then relate to what is being taught. If the students only memorize information, they will not understand it in its context (Freire, 71-72). To make the learning process more meaningful to the students, the teacher needs to somehow connect the new material to the students lives. Henry Giroux says that, teachers emphasize self-directed learning, link knowledge to the personal experiences of students, and attempt to help students to interact with one another in a positive and harmonious fashion (Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope, 129).

Jerome S. Bruner had a very good point that teaching can never be just the presentation of material, material about some subject. It cannot be that unless you have no respect for nor knowledge about the nature of the human span. For it is the proper function of the teacher to present information in such a way and in terms of such a structure that the learner can get maximum regenerative travel from the material to which he has been exposed (In Search of Pedagogy Volume I: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner, 33). Teachers need to acknowledge that teaching involves not simply what they do in the classroom. Instead, it consists of providing the material and the students learning the material. It will be a more learner friendly environment when a teacher considers the way he or she can provide the material to the students. Teachers should recognize that the students are capable of thinking on their own. In the discussion about seeing children as thinkers, Bruner said that Children like adults, are seen as constructing a model of the world to aid them in construing their experience (In Search of Pedagogy Volume II: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner, 167). He also said Understanding is fostered through discussion and collaboration, with the child encouraged to express her own views better to achieve some meeting of minds with others who may have other views (Bruner, 167). Students do have their own ideas and views when they come to the classroom. Therefore, teachers should take into consideration that the students are bringing something with them into the classroom. The teachers are to help aid the students into expanding their knowledge. They need to be careful to not think that they know all of the information in a certain area and that they allow the students to learn that information. The teachers may know more than the students, but it is a responsibility for the teachers to help the students to grow. It is a misconception of many teachers who believe that the teacher teaches and the students are taughtthe teacher knows everything and the students know nothingthe teacher thinks and the students are thought aboutthe teacher talks and the students listen-meekly (Freire, 73). These are the attitudes and practices of the banking concept (Freire, 73). Under this concept, the students are treated and thought of as merely machines in the sense that they take in information and store it for later use (Freire, 72). According to Rafferty, teaching is an art, the most ancient and incomparably most important art known to man (Max Rafferty on Education, 24). Teaching should be taken seriously and whatever the subject may be, the teacher needs to have a passion or desire for that subject. Otherwise, the students can sense that the teacher does not care for the subject matter that he or she is teaching. Then the students will not want to learn from that teacher let alone learn that subject. Needless to say, teachers never stop learning. They will never reach a point where they will know everything neither will anyone else. Joan Wink wrote that she originally thought that her students were going to learn while she taught (Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, 14). Wink discovered while she was teaching that the teacher also learns from the students (Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, 14-20). Duty to the Individual Learner Teachers need to think of each student as an individual learner and decide how we can wisely guide her in the role of a co-partner or co-learner (Simpson, Jackson and Aycock, 60). The classroom is full of different levels of learners. The teachers have to learn from the students how they can present a better experience or opportunity for the students. This would be the only way to help each student to succeed in the classroom. The emphasis should be on each and every individual learner. Besides the different levels of learners, there are also the different styles of learning. When teachers are creating lessons that would be focused on interacting with the students, they need to understand the concept that each student learns best in a particular style. According to McCarthy regarding the natural cycle, everyone goes through all parts of the cycle (About Teaching: 4MAT in the Classroom, 13). Each student will perceive and process the given information in a different way (McCarthy, 41). There are four different learning types that each student into which he or she would fit (McCarthy, 41). McCarthy explains that each learning style perceives and processes any new material starting at a different area of the natural cycle (About Teaching: 4MAT in the Classroom, 41-45). Teachers who incorporate activities that would include opportunities for each learning style would be more beneficial to each student. Bruner said that, real schooling, of course, is never confined to one model of the learner or one model of teaching (In Search of Pedagogy Volume II: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner, 171).

Conclusion If the math class had an interactive and constructive environment, it would have been more profitable to all of us in the class. We could have done more hands on work in class with the teacher to guide us through the process instead of simply showing us the process. Also there could have been a variety of activities that took into consideration the individual learners in the whole classroom. Then all of us would have been able to understand the process if we had been able to work through it and experience it for ourselves. Doing so would have allowed us to be more independent of the teacher instead of her having shown us and given us the answers when we were to do the problems. According to Bruner, good teaching should have the effect of leading a person to condense and transform what he has encountered into a form that honors the deeper general structure of whatever he has experienced. He, the learner, must have learned the ways of respecting his limited cognitive capacities by rendering the welter of material to which he is exposed into something more manageable and he must first recognize when things have become unmanageable (In the Search of Pedagogy Volume I: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner, 38). The teacher has to guide the students through their learning experiences (Simpson, Jackson and Aycock, 59). Since learning can not be done for the students, the teacher needs to provide ways for the students to learn (Simpson, Jackson and Aycock, 60). Those experiences should be those that are tied to interaction with the teacher and students; the students constructing their own meaning; and accomodating each individual student. Experiences like those are more valuble and memorable to the students. It would enable students to be less dependent on the teacher during the learning process. Instead of the teacher giving the solution to anything, he or she should only aid the students through the process. This will make the students more independent in their learning and help each one to develop more as an individual. It is the teachers responsibility to create these experiences for his or her students in the classroom in order for the teaching to be valuble to the students during their learning process. Moreover, it is the obligation to each student in the classroom to adapt to his or her needs as a learner. The teacher has a critical role in the students learning process (Simpson, Jackson and Aycock, 60). Yet it is the way in which the teacher will teach the lesson which affects the students in their learning process. References: Bruner, Jerome S. In Search of Pedagogy Volume I: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner. New York: Routledge, 2006 Bruner, Jerome S. In Search of Pedagogy Volume II: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner. New York: Routledge, 2006. Freire, Paulo. Critical Pedagogy for the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary edition. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2008. Giroux, Henry A. Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997. McCarthy, Bernice. About Teaching: 4MAT in the Classroom. Wauconda: About Learning, Incorporated, 2000 Rafferty, Max. Max Rafferty on Education. New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1968. Simpson, Douglas J., Michael J. B. Jackson, and Judy C. Aycock. John Dewey and the Art of Teaching: Toward Reflective and Imaginative Practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2005. Wink, Joan. Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World. 3rd edition. Boston: Pearson, 2005.