As a Hispanic individual planning to teach high school students in life science areas, much of my teaching philosophy derives from personal identity and experiences while I was in the public K-12 Education system. From being a first-generation college student to majoring in a STEM field that has steadily increased to include more under-represented minority groups (URM), I will ensure I help encourage those seeking higher education or desired pathways in any way I can.
As a teacher, I will create a culture of learning within my classroom that heavily focuses on establishing relationships with my students to diminish teachers’ already dominating power over the class. Engaging with the students will then create a relationship where they want to be in my classroom and do their work. I will proactively help them in any way they need, where late work can become acceptable as students have many things going on at home. Icebreakers will be used at the beginning of class, and occasionally, changing my formality towards students will create more prosperous relationships with the students. So, whenever students have a bad day or something may be affecting their learning, they can feel comfortable telling me they cannot do the work or speak to me.
My lessons will have extra time incorporated towards the end of lessons so that students can take a mental break before their next period. This allows us to accommodate the students, let them finish anything else they may need to do, and give permission for students to showcase their engagement in whatever manner is most reasonable. This is all part of the trauma-based instruction techniques that help all students, not just students with special accommodations.
If we make the activities student-led, where students are their own learning guides for the lesson, they can explore more. This might prove to be difficult for the students, yet this will prove beneficial as the struggle and trial to succeed in my class will teach the students how to learn effectively. I will use open-ended questions to start most lessons and then close-ended questions to wrap up the topic covered to ensure that all students can achieve the same result. As students learn how to study and engage with the lesson, tasks may be edited to allow flexibility for my students. Additionally, editing the lesson as I go along will help tackle issues of getting stuck in certain topics when learning new topics.
All in all, by creating group or peer-to-peer learning activities, students will build their relationships with each other and unknowingly get perspective-shifted lessons from others that broaden their scope of learning. These different perspectives of learning come from each student’s identity and culture that they bring into the class. One student may have a different way of thinking about math work, diagrams showing interacting forces, examples in explaining a method or structure, etc. When properly discussed with one another, all these little things that are aimed at my students’ learning can lead to great outcomes.