A Teaching Philosophy to Live By
"My ultimate goal is to become not only a teacher in subject area, but also a specialist, supporter, and advocate of literacy, communication and multimedia expression." |
I strongly believe in the importance of education, especially global education and awareness. As the nation becomes more internationally dependent, collaboration is increasingly essential to future success and survival. And as such, many have been looking for new ways to collaborate using technology. Expertise in journalism and English, I believe, continues to have significant importance currently in the United States. It forms knowledge of human relations, ultimately developing skills to communicate and express ideas on multiple levels and in multiple formats. In my opinion such knowledge leads to overall understanding of human communication, one that overlaps, extends, and is very important to all fields of endeavor.
In my classroom, I hold utmost regard for both English and Journalism standards. Although designed very differently, and ever changing, they have many similar goals at hand of which I have come to relate to and focus on. Two stand out to me as exemplary and my personal standards resemble a sort of combination of the two. One of which is the Standards for the English Language Arts from the NCTE and IRA.(1) Highlighting both cultural context and critical pedagogy, the introduction says: ...literacy growth begins before children enter school as they experience and experiment with literacy activities--reading, writing, and associating spoken words with their graphic representations. Recognizing this fact, these standards encourage the development of curriculum and instruction that make productive use of the emerging literacy abilities that children bring to school. Recognizing multiple forms of literacy and culture can be used as an advantage in reaching learning goals in the classroom. One of the best ways to execute this, I believe, is through technology. Their second standard states, “Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g. philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.” To me, English and Journalism are means to a broader idea of communication and expression, and essentially their modern multimodal craft helps to connect and bring people closer to one another, relating to human experience. The Standards for Journalism Educators from the Journalism Education Association (JEA) and the Scholastic Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (2) agree in their introduction: Educators who teach secondary school journalism must have a broad range of knowledge and performance skills. Although their courses are frequently placed in a school’s English Department, their teaching responsibilities go beyond what most English or language arts curriculum requires...the need to be skilled in teaching writing, listening, speaking, leadership skills, cooperative processes, press law and ethics, fiscal responsibility, and multimedia design and production. The combination of these helps them prepare their students as knowledgeable media producers and consumers who are essential to our democracy. In essence this explains some of how I have developed to think about the different ideas of literacy and education as a whole. Focusing on a wide skill set, I have come to expect students to go beyond simple skill mastery to several levels of hierarchical thinking and interacting with themselves and with others. Students should be lifelong learners. Personally, I believe in the importance of role modeling this and look forward to continuing my own studies. Currently I aspire to continue my own learning in the realm of technology and aim to improve the multimedia experience for all my learners as it will help prepare them to become successful in this digital age. My ultimate goal is to become not only a teacher in subject area, but also a specialist, supporter, and advocate of literacy, communication and multimedia expression. |
1 http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Books/Sample/StandardsDoc.pdf 1
2 http://jea.org/home/for-educators/standards/
2 http://jea.org/home/for-educators/standards/