My philosophy of education statement

As a 21st century teacher, I am writing this statement with a deep passion to reflect my personal philosophical beliefs about teaching. I spent my last teaching practice in Mohammed bin Khaled School with a 4th grade English teacher. My teaching philosophy contains several parts, which are about the students, learning and teaching, assessment and personal development.

I believe that students are the start to any successful teaching experience. Therefore, I focus on activities such as group work, working in pairs, and discussions. The students should work together as a family, in a comfortable atmosphere. For example, in my TP, I used activities which depended mostly on group work, which also helps the students of different levels come together and help each other learn cooperatively. In the math lesson about measurement, one of the activities was that students measured each other heights. These activities not only helped the students learn but also engage together, and feel comfortable around each other.

Secondly, “Learning by doing” is an essential process as well as integrating authentic materials, both strategies will help with the students’ understand deeper”, as (Kolb, (2014) mentioned. So, I try to always engage students by practical experiments to explain new concepts. For example, in my TP lesson about heat transfer, I made the students do an experiment where they have different ice cups and they covered by different material, and compared the degrees of heat transfer by observing the melting on the ice.

Thirdly, I make sure that strong relationships happen between me and my students. For example, if a student looks unusually unhappy I approach them individually and try to know what is wrong. Also, the first class I attended in my teaching practice, I spent about 15 minutes just speaking with the girls, they told me about their hobbies and what they want to become when they grow up, so they were happy and cooperative during the semester.

I would like to shed lights on my learning and teaching processes. As a cycle one English teacher, I consider this age group is so sensitive, as they need more care and more efforts inside and outside the school, and parents must cooperate with the teacher for the students to gain the best outcomes. Therefore, I provide suitable feedback to the students so their parents cooperate with them and understand their development. Additionally, when I want to answer questions, I first make sure to understand the student’s point of view before I can provide my answer. For example, in my TP when I was teaching about the water cycle, I made a practical experiment where I wanted to present the process of evaporation by heating water in a kettle. One student asked me with confusion that this process will take too long, I answered her, that it does not take long in nature, it happens without feeling, but first I asked her what do you mean? When she explained it , she thought evaporation is not a natural process and the humans do it just like how I boiled the water. It was necessary to know exactly what she doubted before answering.

Regarding assessment, which is a very important aspect in the learning process, I use both summative and formative evaluation (Ormrod, 2011). Cycle onestudents’ will need to be assisted before, during and after giving them instructions. My style of assessment is not to make it heavy, boring or discouraging, but my target is to draw conclusions about where my students’ levels are and their ability to achieve different skills by using questioning from ‘Bloom Taxonomy’.

Indeed, professional development is a very important part in the domain of education. It applies to everyone, starting from the students, teachers and to the administration staff. It is important because everyone has to keep up with the latest trends in the domain and stay professionally qualified. For instance, I have attended and will continue attending workshops about improving myself as a teacher, and implement new teaching strategies for my students so, my class will be fun.

Finally, it is noteworthy to mention that my philosophy inspired by Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktum, as he said the teacher must be a leader and a role model for the students, hence because I am an Emarati woman I hope to bring our Shaikh’s vision to real grounds. As a teacher, I will always be ready to discover, improve, search and implement new strategies, technologies and concepts.

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