Post Philosophy Reflection
1) Reflection about the process of writing the Philosophy of Teaching,
While writing my Philosophy of Teaching, I realized how much I disliked the feeling of needing to follow specific guiding questions. I kept finding myself continually needing to restart my draft because I was comparing it to the assignment directions. As I kept rewriting, my frustration and animosity toward the assignment only grew. Similar to how I felt during the fieldwork reflections, I believe I got caught up in wanting my responses to sound like everyone else. When I took my break, I browsed through different examples of teaching philosophies from the classroom resources, key word: different. While there were similar themes across the philosophies, each of them started differently, they all had unique experiences, and related their own education back to those experiences. This made me realize, this was my philosophy, it was my experiences, and it is what I want for my future students. Reframing how I thought about the writing process, the thoughts and ideas seemed to flow more naturally.
2) What did you learn about yourself as an educator while you wrote your philosophy?
As an educator, my philosophy indirectly showed me how I want to treat my students. As a third year college student, I got easily frustrated when I felt my own work did not match the assignment expectations. The more I began to second guess myself, my confidence dropped and I grew resentment toward the assignment itself. Due to the events that transpired, I want to ensure that I create an environment where my students do not feel that same pressure or discouragement as I did. As an educator, I want my students to feel comfortable enough to be open-minded and write endlessly, without limitations. Additionally, I want to provide several opportunities for my students to explore through classroom resources, similar to the course resources I used. While writing my philosophy, I recognized that I truly believe all students are unique learners. I do not want my classroom to be limited to only one form of learning; instead, I will remain flexible and support different learning styles and needs for all my students.