I hope to create a safe and nurturing environment in which differentiation is an important component in the learning environment, in order to reach each student. Collaboration with colleagues as well as working cooperatively with parents is also an important component of my philosophy. A philosopher that comes to mind as I write this statement is John Dewey who I find to be a child centered educator and one who relates education to a child’s experience. Dewey believes that education is more than reading, writing and math. It is an extension of the child’s social and community life. I believe that the school must represent present life - life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the play-ground (Dewey, 1897 ). Communities are diverse and as an educator I have always believed in celebrating diversity within the classroom. My philosophy concerning cultural awareness has been extended through John Dewey’s theory in which he believes school is a representation of the child’s life and community. I intend to integrate cultural awareness into my lessons and extend it across content …show more content…
According to Noddings, clearly, in professions where encounter is frequent and where the ethical ideal of the other is necessarily involved, I am first and foremost one-caring and, second, enactor of specialized functions. As a teacher, I am, first, one-caring (Cahn, 1997). As an educator I am a role model for my students. It is my belief that the classroom environment is a community in which all should be respected. I place virtue as the first and most necessary of those endowments that belong to a man or gentleman; as absolutely requisite to make him valued and beloved by others, acceptable or tolerable to himself (Locke, 1692). In the creation of a nurturing and caring environment, I’ve come to realize that in treating a child respectfully that child will in turn treat others in the same manner. The students model my behavior as their teacher and role