My Classroom: My Educational Goals And Philosophy Statement

In my philosophy of teaching, the major goals for my classroom are effective classroom management, considering and incorporating diversity, and creating a motivating environment. I am in early childhood education, and one day hope to teach second grade.
Approaching classroom management is extremely important to me because I am generally a quiet, non-confrontational person, and this is an area of teaching with which I could potentially have the most trouble if I am not appropriately prepared. My plans to achieve this goal are to provide a supportive environment, differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, allow my students to contribute to the decision-making, and be consistent and equitable when enforcing classroom policies. …show more content…
I will be successful if my students show a general eagerness to learn and work well with most, if not all, of their classmates. To achieve a motivating classroom, I plan to be a model for appropriate classroom behaviors because people often can learn just by observing, and having a weekly writing time where my students write down one goal for that week, why they want to achieve it, and how they can (I would start with simply writing a goal at the beginning of the year and gradually introduce more complex steps). This goal writing will promote cognitive processes that affect motivation and learning, and I hope it will place an emphasis on intrinsic motivation to learn. It is important to maintain regular communication with my students through informal conversations during small-group or individual work, or more formal meetings, so that I can better understand how they think about learning and how they learn. This will guide me in creating differentiated materials to provide my learners with motivating, individualized tasks. Another approach to make my classroom a motivating environment is to use classroom tasks that have value, such as the weekly goal writing, and give my students some autonomy by allowing their input in the creation of the class policies and by having weekly jobs (calendar, line leader). I can also recognize my students’ progress, not just their achievements, to encourage the process of learning, and I will avoid grouping by ability because students can tell which group they are in and take on lower expectations. When I give evaluations, I want to stress self-improvement over competition, “try to answer one more question correctly than you did last time.” My evaluations shouldn’t just be standardized, but criterion-based, especially theme work done throughout the year