I did not think about teaching as a possible career path for myself until after I graduated from college. The summer of 2004 after I graduated from college, I ended up volunteering for six weeks at a family life development camp for inner city families. I have been back every summer since. At this camp I had opportunities to interact with children and adolescents of all ages and their parents or guardians. It was while reflecting on these experiences that I realized I loved spending time with children and felt drawn to the teaching profession.
Although my bachelor’s degree is in English, when I was thinking about what subject it would be best for me to teach I thought back to my college minor, math. While I valued all the experiences I had in my English classes and continue to enjoy exploring literature, when I finished my degree I knew I was no longer interested in being involved with English in an academic setting. I had excellent math teachers in high school and I remember how important those teachers were to my success in the discipline. That became my goal, to help students see how the different pieces of math fit together into a whole.
Through my volunteer experiences, I have come to realize that school-age children will put a surprising amount of effort into completing a task or achieving a goal if they know that the adults working with them want them to succeed and believe they can succeed. I see math as an inherently understandable body of knowledge although from my own experiences I know that mastering that understanding can be difficult. While some students will have to work harder than others, I believe that all my future students are capable of being successful.
I plan to use the experience I gain each day in the classroom to come to a deeper understanding of how different students perceive math and mathematical concepts. As time goes on, I will become more and more adept at using this knowledge to help all of the students that come into my class.
PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING
While a teacher must address her instruction to an entire class, she is also concerned with each individual student’s progress. The teacher must express the knowledge her students are to acquire in different ways that are all understandable yet appeal to different learning styles. It is a teacher’s job to help her students become their own teachers and to herself study her students so that she can continue to improve her craft.
I have also created a PowerPoint file that references the information contained on this site.
