Philosophy of Education

When thinking about teaching and methods of how to teach, we are given so much information of the "best ways" to teach and the "worst ways."  Research shows us the positive outcomes to certain methods of teaching.  Why is it not every teacher teaches to their students in the "best ways?"

As teachers, we want to give our students the best chance for success.  This usually means giving them information.  However, we do this at such a rapid pace, we may sometimes forget to help make connects from our lessons to the world our students are currently living in.  When this happens, we've all seen it, the students start to not care about what they are learning.

As students lose or never gain an interest in learning, we have to ask ourselves, "What could I do better?"  Teachers have the ability to make learning a fun and creative thing for students.  We should be finding new ways to teach the same materials that were taught to us.  Think about what would help get our students engaged in the learning rather than "regurgitate" the information we give to them daily.  As teachers, we should not be using what is referred to as the "banking" method of teaching.

Student success first begins with effective ways of teaching.  I know that as a student, I have always enjoyed learning.  I never saw any down-side to it.  However, as I got older, I got bored doing the same routine over and over again.  Show up, sit down, take notes, lunch, take notes, go home, and repeat.  In middle school, I started to lose interest in school.  I began wondering why we were learning what we were learning and if it was even useful to us.  As students, we were told that it would help us in "the real world."  But, it never clicked until junior year of high school when we started applying for colleges.

Now, I thought it was interesting to read that the "banking" system of education is referred to as oppressing students and their creativity.  I had never heard of that before.  I plan to do more reading on this topic to further my knowledge of the subject.