Statement of Teaching Philosophy
My passion for teaching derives from a single idea: impactful. There are an irresistible excitement and fulfillment every time my teaching makes a ripple effect on other lives. I believe that my success as an impactful teacher was possible because of the engaging, meaningful, and authentic learning environment I create in my classroom. My teaching philosophy is based on the belief that a teacher is an agent of change who plans and builds a classroom community to enable knowledge (re)construction. The core of my teaching philosophy lies in the belief that an engaging , meaningful, and authentic class fosters learners' growth and transformative learning.
Teaching should pursue building an engaging learning environment where students can participate in interactive and stimulating discussions. I believe that each individual’s learning is a result of interactions with their environment and others. In other words, learning does not occur simply from a process of receiving knowledge but rather through interactions. I design lessons with a procedure starting from individual work to pair work or small group work and concludes with a whole class discussion. Through this process, students can think individually, provide help to each other in a small group, and develop collective ideas guided by the teacher and peers. By sharing and collaborating with others, learners also get an opportunity to motivate and inspire themselves as much as each other. A teacher is responsible for designing an engaging classroom and ultimately building a collaborative and supportive learning community. The class will build its own culture to freely express and share ideas, actively interact, and learn from each other’s strengths.
A meaningful classroom encourages students to critically reflect on their values, beliefs, assumptions, and positioning of themselves. Each student has his or her own preferable medium of communication to effectively deliver their ideas. A teacher should provide various opportunities for students to communicate and negotiate meanings. I utilize reflection and communication activities to explore students’ own thoughts and beliefs while finding an effective way to express them. Each of my lessons has prompts for students to reflect on their own experiences and thoughts that are communicated through multimodal mediums in class. I also believe that “wondering” can be a powerful tool for learners to grow and think critically. I design an assignment or project for students to pursue the “why” and “how” questions that can transform their values, beliefs, or assumptions, such as an inquiry project, a reflection or blog post assignment, or a case study activity. Wondering and exploring one’s surroundings can provoke students’ critical thinking and allow them to take one step further from their current understanding of the world. Through this communication and critical reflection process, students will negotiate their experience and beliefs in relation to their current learning, which could lead to their next step of transformative learning.
A teacher must respect each student's unique background and identity to create authentic learning opportunities relevant to each learner. Every learner engages in a unique and dynamic meaning-making process to construct identities dependent on the surrounding contexts. Each learner’s personal histories, interpretations of the world, and ways of enacting their perceived role within different settings need to be valued. I incorporate language and visuals as a means to gain insights into learners’ idiosyncratic identities and histories. My class spends time creating visual representations such as a language map, a learner’s badge, and an ideal self through which they can communicate their unique backgrounds, needs, and identities. It is my priority to schedule at least one or more individual conference time with each student to learn about them and to build a meaningful relationship. Knowing the significance of implementing knowledge through hands-on activities, I also design lessons that provide students with abundant opportunities to learn and practice in possible authentic settings such as role-plays, analyzing case studies, or solving real-world problems. By understanding each student’s goals, needs, and backgrounds, I set up an authentic learning environment tailored to each learner; and the learning is cultivated through mutual respect and meaningful relationships.
A key element of fostering an engaging, meaningful, and authentic classroom lies in the teacher's openness, collaboration, and self-reflexivity. A precursor of positive change begins by setting up “uncertainty” as a goal. I open up possibilities to generate questions and to welcome diverse perspectives. I believe in a classroom where everyone is a learner and a teacher; everyone in the classroom community learns from one another. Everyone in the classroom has the knowledge to teach one another. After each lesson, I implement exit slips to receive students’ feedback on each lesson. I also commit to writing a teaching journal to reflect on my teaching practices. Important issues and opportunities for professional growth are openly discussed with the students in the following class. By modeling openness, collaboration, and self-reflexivity, I encourage students to practice rigorous and critical reflection of their learning processes.
I strive to build a classroom community that promotes interactive engagement, meaningful reflections, and a holistic understanding of each learner. I believe a teacher’s role is like a park ranger. A teacher needs to know about the entire park as an environment for learning, and the teacher should manage and take care of every single being in the entire park. The teacher is responsible for setting up and providing various methods to engage students in meaningful interactions. Still, in the end, the ultimate goal is for students to learn and grow through meaningful dialogues with selves and others. Providing the best park for students to actively interact and develop their identities makes my teaching an impactful park that can facilitate numerous individuals' growth and transformation in their knowledge and identity construction.