My Philosophy

In college one of the things that they hammered in is that we need to know our personal teaching philosophy. And I completely agree. We need to be mindful of how we treat our students and how we want our classes to run. It's all part of that reflection process that we're supposed to undergo as teachers. It makes us better at what we do.

So basically there are 3 different control levels that you can have over your class room: High, Low and None.

• High control is where the teacher is in control of everything. S/he passes out supplies and papers, collects it all back and the children are responsible for their own personal things.
• Low control is where the teacher shares control with the students. The students help in passing out and collecting papers and supplies.

Nothing wrong with either one of those two. You figure out what works best for you and do your thing. Of course control is a spectrum, you can be any combination of those two. 

• No control is the stereotypical substitute on any TV show with children or teenagers. Paper balls and airplanes flying around, no one is paying attention, the teacher is either pulling their hair out or sitting at their desk reading a newspaper.

This is where there are issues. If No control sounds like you, then you have a problem. Something needs to change.

Now I know me. I'm kind of lazy, so students helping out sounded awesome. I figured I would for sure be a Low control teacher. I was wrong.

My first year teaching I learned that I was a control freak with little classroom management. I was dangling on the edge of No Control and I was close to falling in. I started talking with the teachers around me, and eventually I found my balance. So here it is: My Philosophy

I believe that students need to take part in the classroom. Now that doesn't have to mean they do everything, and it doesn't mean that it has to happen from day one. How I like to run my class is I handle everything at the beginning. I do this so that I can model my procedures and set the expectations for how they should do it.

As the year progresses I have the kids do more, and I do less. I have them pass out and collect papers, I have them make sure the calculators are all accounted for, I have someone who's in charge of picking up scissors and glue, stuff like that.  When students take part in the educational process it creates ownership. They have a stake in whats going on and they invest their time and energy into the classroom.

I guess that makes me somewhat of a moderate control.