Teaching Philosophy
Public schooling should aim to prepare students with a baseline of knowledge and experience they can build on in later stages of life in higher education or the workforce. The outcomes of a public education should be focused on creative and critical thought in a range of areas. Accordingly, my teaching is based around creating opportunities for success, building an inclusive classroom, and teaching creative problem solving through critical thinking.
Creating opportunities for success with my students begins with classroom management and classroom culture: I use appropriate assertiveness, do not dole out arbitrary punishments, and focus on equity and restorative justice inside the classroom. As Bucalos and Lingo say in their 2005 article, What Kind of “Managers” Do Adolescents Really Need? Helping Middle and Secondary Teachers Manage Classrooms Effectively: “By itself, punishment does little to teach students self-control and responsibility, and it often leads to a cycle of misbehavior and reaction, resulting in continual power struggles.” I also create opportunities for success by incorporating daily low-stakes assignments and by focusing on process work.
To create opportunities for success for my students would be irresponsible if I did not create opportunities for success for all of my students, and building an inclusive classroom is a main tenet of my practice. I use many disability-inclusive instructional strategies that increase learning outcomes for all students, as described in Reaching and Teaching Students with Special Needs Through Art, Gerber and Guay (2006), such as asking open-ended questions throughout a lesson, task analysis, and slowly moving from experience towards abstraction. I teach about a diverse range of living artists to engage students with art relevant to their lives: showing artists from the same community as the students communicates that art is by and for everyone.
In Awakening the Creative Problem Solver, Kulinski (2018) describes how students felt that becoming a creative problem solver “gave them the knowledge and confidence that they are creative and that they can be successful when they put their minds to it… [and] to be a creative problem solver is to be… acquiring awareness in the quest for meaning in all aspects of life.” This article focuses on students working around specified constraints to teach expertise which encourages critical thinking in all aspects of life. As a result, I aim to help students become creative problem solvers through critical thinking. Teaching conceptual thinking through big ideas alongside skill building projects will develop a wide array of experience and knowledge in students, which can be universalized and applied throughout students’ lives.
I will foster a safe, comfortable, and playful classroom community through equity, student voice, and collaboration outside of set social structures within the classroom. I will create caring and trusting relationships with my students, hold high, equitable standards, and act as a guide in the artmaking process rather than the sole holder and dispenser of relevant information in the classroom. I intend to address my own responsibility in the school setting and this role’s inherent place in the larger community by working hand-in-hand to advance community goals to positively impact both the lives of my students and others in their community.
References:
Bucalos, A. B., & Lingo, A. S. (2005). What Kind of “Managers” Do Adolescents Really Need? Helping Middle and Secondary Teachers Manage Classrooms Effectively. Beyond Behavior, Vol. 14 (2), 9-14.
Guay, D. P., & Gerber, B. L. (2006). Reaching and Teaching: Students with Special Needs Through Art. National Art Education Association
Kulinski, A. R. (2018). Awakening the Creative Problem Solver. Art Education, Vol. 71 (5), 42-47. DOI: 10.1080/00043125.2018.1482165