Philosophy Of Teaching

The kind of teacher I will be in the future is a person who is involved with children academically and a friendly person who can be counted on for support when needed. I will role model to the student punctuality, active participation with children and youth in and out of school activities. I will be understanding with the children and help teach children to start using an agenda for at home school work and passing on notices about our everyday activities. I will set limits at the beginning of the school year. For example: why it is important to sit quietly when the teacher is speaking to the classroom; why the children do not all speak at once and everyone will have a turn to ask questions; the importance of taking off their hats and jackets in the classroom; and I will not forget to mention how much fun it will be to work together through out the whole year! These little steps to remember in the classroom will be a routine for the children and they will show respect by following the rules.

I will be able to enter a school with respectful attitudes from the children, parents and co-workers because I will build lesson plans that will have children learning and having fun at school every day. I will incorporate some of my Aboriginal teachings, such as having a talking circle once a week where we will have discussions to see how the children are feeling about school and what they liked best about past school activities. I was involved in one school observation where teachers work together with children. This is such a great way to be involved with students every day. I would like to take a few minutes a day to go over vocal exercises because that would benefit children in facial muscles and speech sounds.

My classroom environment will include a word wall, punctuations symbols and numbers and letters to help improvement with journal writing. When children work in groups I feel the children who work together on assignments may have a better experience learning the lesson by hearing the teacher and through group involvement. I observed the PWIM(Picture Word Inductive Model) poster being used in the classroom to gain sight word development with primary children. I would like to include the PWIM in my classroom before guided reading because that will enhance reading skills. The children who work ahead more often will need to keep moving on in the school work which will leave me with two groups of assignments to work on for the children. Those who finish early could also play educational games to increase reading or math skills.

The lessons I have learned throughout the year are very important ideas shared with the teacher candidates and need to be passed on into the school district. The lessons I found important to carry on are the First Nation Pedagogy that we researched for one of the NITEP courses which were a variety of lessons that work on sound and spelling. On one of our field trips to meet other NITEP students was benificial because we shared teaching tequniques for elementary and secondary levels. There was one game that stood out for me at the gathering that can be incorporated into the classroom. We had to all stand in one circle and each person had to share his or her feelings about the past weekend with thumbs up, thumbs down or thumb sideways. The way you show your feelings are thumbs up for good feelings, thumbs down for bad feelings and thumb in the middle for half good and half bad feelings. I feel that the game is very good to do with children at the beginning of the week and the last day of the week to let out some feelings about home or school out on the floor and maybe lighten the children to have a better working effort with school work. I also liked the Simon says game where the children all walk or jog around in the classroom to loosen up and let all the body parts move around after sitting in the desk all morning or afternoon. Having a fitness day included once a week is benificial for a healthy child! The students can do a cross country run or, do eight different arobic games in the gym or, a walk or jog around a track for 30 minutes.