Genius Freak

Every teacher has probably had to do it as a requirement for at least one teacher preparation class in college.  But I think it's a valuable thing for teachers to do  pretty regularly, not just as an academic exercise, but as a way to really think through where you are as a teacher, how you got here, where you are going, and why. The assignment:  Write a brief statement of your teaching philosophy.   Here's my most recent stab at it.

This is a picture of a page in my teaching journal. Scrawled in the corner of the page it says "What I teach or plan with __ in mind I do as a better teacher."  A snapshot of a small epiphany with big consequences.  I am a better teacher when I plan and teach with students in mind.  That seems obvious. What teacher doesn't plan and teach with students in mind, right? Unfortunately, obvious at it is, it hasn't always been the case.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a majority of high school students to be able to read and write and do math at an 11th grade level before they graduate from 12th grade. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect students entering college to be ready to do college-level work when they graduate from 12th grade. But when we [teachers, schools, districts] focus the bulk of our educational efforts on "preparing" students to achieve the minimal passing score on a single test that measures 11th grade proficiency as if that were preparing them for anything other than that single test, it is unreasonable to expect that they will be prepared for much of anything beyond high school, least of all that college-level work we think we are getting them ready for.