Classroom Philosophy Reflection Paper

As a student of education, I have been able to gather many ideas and opinions about practices and ideals I want to implement in my future classroom. My philosophies about education are still being formed and continually change with every class I visit and with every educator I encounter. My ideas, admittedly, come from random experiences and intangible texts, but as I gain more experience in the field through my courses, my philosophies about teaching will become more clearly defined. These few ideas I have now will undoubtedly be added upon as I enter student teaching and my professional career, nevertheless, they are concepts of which I hope to never lose sight.

There are many different types of attachments that I have observed in the Magnolia classroom. Some are attachments to the children’s personal belongings and others are attachments to people, such as the teachers. Growing out of these attachments is good for the children’s social-emotional development.

Throughout the time that I was in high-school I have taken many English classes leading up to this Ivy Tech class. During my freshman year I was required to participate in English 9 which required students to do more reading than writing. During my sophomore year I took English 10 that involved more reading. Then last year I took AP Language and Composition for college credits. Reading and writing were split 50/50. We were required to read a new book every nine weeks and be quizzed. We also wrote a total of six MLA formatted essays to prepare for the AP exam at the end of the year. I think my classmates and I were taught well which resulted in a good score on my exam.

In the classroom I observe, there are 32 students equally broken up into sixteen boys and sixteen girls. Each one of these students has their own personal chrome book. A chrome book is like a mini laptop that the teacher can assign the students assignments and assessments. A chrome book can be used for any subject. Some example programs on the chrome book are type club, math, writing, educational YouTube, and dictionaries. I see the use of chrome books as a great technology used in the classroom. Back when I was an elementary school student, I did not have chrome books in my classroom. The first lesson I observed on a chrome book was a math lesson. The teacher assigned through her computer a particular practice assessment to the students. The students then clicked to open the assignment and began. I found this technology helpful because if a student was stuck on a question, there was a video tutorial for them to view specific to the question. In fact, there was a specific video tutorial for each one of the questions. At the end, students were able to see how they did immediately. They are able to see their progress toward the actual test coming up. The teacher was also able to see the class statistics overall, and statistics to each question. This let the teacher know what the class struggled with and what should be taught again. Chrome books definitely caught my attention. Technology grows everyday and schools have to keep up with the change. It is interesting to me, to see

When I arrived to Mrs. Beach’s classroom, she began debriefing what had occurred in the classroom since the last time I was there. Two of the boys in her class had almost gotten into a fight, so the seating chart had to be changed so that these students were as far away from each other as possible. She also informed me that when they had a sub the previous day that they were behaving so poorly that the principal had to come in and have a talk with the students. Because of this, Mrs. Beach warned me that she would be much sterner today, because she was going to have to be out two more days this week, and she needed to reinforce what appropriate behavior looks like in her class.

I chose to teach in a first grade class room for my self-observation because I have previously taught in first grade and thought that I would be familiar with the age group. Originally, I anticipated being able to use the curriculum with which I was also familiar. However, I ended up writing my own lesson plan outside of the given curriculum. This action would not be allowed on a normal basis at my school, but was allowed for a special occasion. I plan to organize this paper in a manner following the Emergent Literacy chapter in our text (Tompkins, 57-84) in order to provide structure. Under each heading, I will examine the successes and the failures.

I have been part of the education system since the age of four. From Preschool to twelfth grade, a lot has changed throughout my education. I can assert that education has altered my of way of thinking, especially from elementary to now. Because of education my life has improved in all aspects.

The instructional setting I work within is set in a rural community, northeast of Indianapolis, IN. This community is made up of mostly farmers and factory workers, so the majority of the students are in the “free and reduced” system for tuition and lunches.

For the past six weeks, I learned how philosophy has influenced the world globally. Learning that when human beings voice their thoughts with others, they receive a chance to change the world, especially if one person speaks one on one, one personage can change the world of one body. My belief in the power of language is strengthened by philosophy. This philosophy course has encouraged me to share my opinions that are not influenced by other peers or older adults, but to deeply reflect and research my beliefs and opinions. Looking at how philosophy has shaped the United States, I grant my thankfulness towards the Constitution, and the democracy and freedom we now have, compared to other countries.

The lessons were taught in a classroom in a New York City public school. The school is in a low-income neighborhood in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The school’s demographics consist of a majority of Chinese students followed by Hispanic students. A majority of the parents of the students in this class do not speak English. The students were engaged throughout the lessons and it helped that they experience a positive learning environment in this class.

1. Since I was in a middle school setting, I was given the opportunity to observe multiple classrooms which a variety of different students. In my first class, I noticed that most, if not all students were African American. The ratio was 22:1, where about 18 of them were boys. The second class I went to, had a ratio of 19:1. The ethnicity in this class was again, mostly African American, with a few Hispanics and Caucasian. The third class represented a ratio of 20:1. The ethnicity was made up of mostly Hispanics, Caucasian, with 1 African American child. My final class ratio was 18:1, where most students were Hispanic and African American.

As kids, most of us get up every morning dreading going to school. We beg our parents to let us stay home, and on occasion, fake sick just to get out of school for a day. There are many factors that attribute to making us want to stay home from school but as a teacher, I want to provide an atmosphere where students enjoy coming to my classroom. Kids should feel like they matter and are respected when they are learning in a classroom, and from the learning experiences that I have had and will gain in ECCO, I intend to provide an atmosphere where not only can they can flourish and thrive, but they are able to influence the world around them.

Since taking this class, my mind has been opened to so many new ideas and perspectives about the society we live in, and teaching in general. I have always considered myself to be an open-minded person, and have always striven to be socially aware. I would make sure to be on date with current social events that were happening and especially during the election, I made sure to know all sides of a topic before trying to talk about it. When I had to sign up for this class last semester, I thought that it would be easy, and that we would not talk about anything I did not already know. I thought I was socially aware about everything at the time, and that I did not need to be educated anymore on the topic of multiculturalism. Well, having been in this class for half a semester I can honestly say that I have learned more in the last eight weeks than I have taught myself. I feel like I have been able to broaden my multicultural lens extensively since starting that class, and I know that it will continue to widen as the semester goes on.

Students in classrooms complain of having to sit in classrooms all day. A story from ideas demco about changing the seating in classrooms is, “With 7 different types of seating available, it took about 2 ½ weeks for students to try all of them. After that time, I allowed students to “free choose” each day. It became obvious after the first several months that students could handle working with their friends, and we eliminated the signs. I had a few issues with students not being able to focus, but when I did, I simply asked the student to move to a new spot with his or her comfy seating. It wasn’t a problem because they couldn’t argue with my philosophy that students should be able to be comfortable and learn at the same time. I was able to get more teaching done, and the students were able to get more learning in, as they quickly got ready each day so as not to lose their choice spots. After the first month, the students were ready to eliminate even more desks. I asked if any students wanted to “desk/locker share” with a partner. This brought on a HUGE response. Pairs quickly formed, and students moved desk items into one space instead of two. We eliminated another 6–8 desks. Collaboration and neatness came into play for those sharing storage space. Desks were becoming a place to work instead of “homes” for individual students. We finally had only 6 desks out of the original 30 by mid to late September. I placed a tablecloth over these after we emptied them and gave the remaining students cubby bins. Now that all students had a bin on one of the bookshelves against the wall they no longer wanted the desks.”

Educational philosophy varies person to person. I have the opportunity in my practicum to not only see one, but two educators with philosophies much different from my own. Now, understanding that one of these educators is in her final stages of her educator program, I will still refer to her as an educator in this instance. I feel she is making a big impact on these kids, weather good or bad is out of my hands, but she definitely makes the dynamics of the class room unique. Mr. Sam (teacher) and Miss. Jane (student teacher) are definitely essentialists with a little bit of perennials thrown into the mix. Now, the thing I find most interesting about them is how similar they are, so when I refer to them as not individuals, this is why. I myself, am more of a progressivist, and I find in my observations I don’t plan on running my room the same way.