6.16 Instruction - Teaching Philosophy

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the sixteenth day of the month is "Instruction."

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If you've spent any time in front of a classroom, you eventually develop a teaching philosophy just through learning and doing. I have taught a variety of students over the years, from high school students to college students to adult learners returning to school after some time off. My main goal in whatever I'm teaching is to create good citizens. That's it. That's the whole thing. 

It doesn't matter to me what I'm teaching. If I'm teaching a math class or a class on the ever-evolving nature of race and ethnicity in the United States, my students will eventually leave the classroom and become members of some community - their neighborhood, city or town, and country. They will be global citizens. And, as such, my job is to make sure they are prepared to be the best citizens they can be.

My strategies for this are relatively simple. First, I ask students to confront difficult questions with no easy solutions and viewpoints that intelligent people can have legitimate disagreements about. In a math class, that question may be as simple as "why do we even need to study Algebra?" How often does the average person who has left school have to solve a quadratic equation? Why is it important to learn? In a class on racial politics, it might be as simple as "what is the place of affirmative action in hiring in 2023?" These are questions that have complicated histories and complicated responses and by having my students engage with the history of how we got to where we are today and think about the outcomes their responses will have on the future, I'm having students really think about consequences of their beliefs. Because this is hard work, it also teaches them about grit and perseverance in the face of adversity, critical thinking skills, and understanding multiple perspectives.

Second, I have a focus on groupwork. Everyone will live in a community and have to cooperate with other people - people with different backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints. Yes, I've had students work on posters together to demonstrate the vertex form of an equation. I regularly have students do jigsaw assignments in which every member of the team is an "expert" on a topic, event, or person. This groupwork is crucial for developing the interpersonal skills necessary to survive in today's world.

Lastly, my biggest dream for my students is for them be able to take the information they've gathered in my classes and apply it to their lives outside of the classroom. I love when students email me links to news stories that are related to topics we've covered - that makes it see like I have had an impact on how students are thinking and relating to current events. I love when students run for student government and they use the lessons from my classes in developing strategies for their campaigns. I foster this application by asking students to lead discussions. In my classes, I frequently have students vote on what topics we will be covering in a semester so that they can have a voice in what they think is worthy of their study time and that makes them more invested in the content. 

And all of this works together to create good citizens - citizens who know how to work hard, think critically, cooperate with people from different backgrounds, and know how to apply information from a book to their real lives. Isn't that what we should all want? 

You'll note that my teaching philosophy says nothing about training people for careers. My job is not to do that. There are people who leave the classroom who go on to paid work, people who go on to volunteer work, people who go on to be caretakers of the young and old, people who go on to a wide variety of paths, only some of which have to do with paid work. ALL of them will go on to be citizens and that's what they need to learn to be.  

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, mostly because of the disastrous results of the most recent local elections in my jurisdiction. I think we have instrumentalized education too much with a focus on what will make good workers and productive members of an economic system that excludes many. And because of that, everyone is in it for themselves and seem to be unable to be concerned with taking care of our less fortunate community members or members of the community who are different from us in some way - our political views, our neighborhoods, our tax brackets. 

What do you think is the point of education?