Which philosophical and curricular orientations describe your own teaching?
My own teaching is related to personal relevance. When teaching, I want my students to be aware of what is going to be taught, the reason behind teaching the skills, and have a voice in the classroom. I had students this last school year that asked a lot of questions. A common question they asked especially during math was, “when are we going to use this skill?” They asked the question in a respectful way because they were curious. I would always give them a scenario where this skill could be used in the real world and when they entered their adulthood. They seemed more willing to learn the skill once the question was answered. There are some skills that may not be used often throughout their life, and I was honest with them. Students want to see a connection between the skills and the use of them in the real world. I gave my students choices on how they wanted the lesson presented to them. Did they want to play a game using the skill? Or did they want all the facts first before the game was played? Believe it or not, they did not always choose the game first. When teaching math lessons, if it was possible I would show them different strategies used to solve the problem. Therefore, they could choose the strategy they felt more comfortable using. If they had homework for the evening, then their parents might have shown them a different strategy to use. Students like having choices and feeling they have a say in the classroom. My goal is to provide structure in the classroom for their comfort. It allows them to learn successfully and me to teach successfully. When they are comfortable in the classroom and respected, they are going to be productive. Now, this wasn’t every student in my classroom, but I tried to focus on the majority.
Which ones describe the dominant approaches in your school?
My school uses the academic rationalism approach. In our school, we do a lot of ability grouping in math and reading. The district wants us to focus on the most important subject areas: reading and math. The other subjects aren’t push as much as the other two in my school. We give each student a reading test called DIBELS to test their fluency and comprehension. We mainly group the students based on their fluency scores. There are 4 different reading classes: intensive, strategic, low benchmark, and high benchmark. In each class, all the students are being exposed to similar reading material, but it is being presented in a different way and pace according to the students’ ability level.
Which orientations apply to the problems you’re facing?
One orientation that applies to the problem is academic rationalism. I don’t agree with the idea a subject is more important than another. It encourages children to care and do better in one subject than another. When I am teaching science, I have thirty minutes to teach a concept, so I can’t really explain the concept in detail. I also can’t incorporate a lot of hands-on activities because of the time frame. Also, I have to divide the lesson into two days, and then I get behind on the district calendar. I usually have to shorten lessons in order play catch up. The students are not getting a thoroughly taught science lesson.
Another orientation that creates a problem is development of cognitive processes. I don’t like how the orientation focuses on process over content. The content is important for the child to retain. The children are not going to take their education seriously if all they have to learn is how to learn. Also, the students would be bored with this process and could eventually stop attending school or trying their best. The focus on teaching students how to learn defeats the purpose of my job. Yes, I want the child to know how to learn, but it doesn’t make sense to know to do something, but never use that skill towards a subject.
