Educational Philosophy

"Yes, I'm going to throw you into the deep end, but do you think that I'll let you drown?"

- One of my Project Lead the Way (PLTW) teachers during an interview about their experience in teaching engineering.

How this Quote Frames My Educational Philosophy

Students learn from mistakes, and they learn from overcoming challenges.

You hear "you learn best from your mistakes" frequently, but you rarely hear why, and it is put into practice even less. What it means is that a student is unlikely to have learned anything new if they were correct on their first attempt - either they knew the topic already, and a challenge was not presented, or they know how to go through the system of answering the question, but often fail to learn why that system works, and thus how to use it in unfamiliar situations. By contrast, a person who corrects a mistake not only learns how to answer the problem, but also how not to answer the problem, understanding more about how the topic works because they took time to understand why one way was right, and another wrong.

It is my job not to simply challenge my students, but to make students be comfortable being challenged.

There will always come a point where a student can no longer snap their fingers and have an answer. If they are never challenged in public school, never forced to confront their mistakes, then they will never be prepared for when it happens in the future. But for a student to make a mistake, a teacher must balance the thin line between giving them a difficult, engaging challenge, and not overwhelming them as they lose confidence in their ability to answer.

With the high expectations and competitive drive creating a desperate need for perfection, if a student is faced with deciding between a challenging class that they will learn a lot in at the risk of their GPA, and a class that they will naturally ace, many will choose the second choice to be safe. Because of this, it becomes my job as a teacher to create an environment where taking on a challenge is synonymous with taking on a risk. A teacher's job is to teach, and here I must teach how to make mistakes and recover, take challenges and succeed, push yourself not to meet expectations but because you want to do better, and this requires time and learning on my end to know how to create this environment.

Teach the Content?
Teach How to Learn the Content

My philosophy is not just that I am supposed to teach students the content, but that I am supposed to teach them how to learn the content.

Students tend to remember the time listening to lectures and talking to friends in class, but rarely realize how much work and learning we actually do under the teacher's management. I want my students to understand not only the topic and why the topic works a certain way, but also how they came to that conclusion to begin with. If the method of finding that conclusion is one that works for them, then being able to identify that method can let them consciously interact with it again in the learning process.

We benefit when we learn to identify and name things like this in our life, as it makes us aware of its existence, and naming it makes it something that can be looked up and learn about. In teaching my students to identify and name the learning processes that work for them, not only do they learn my class' content, but they leave my class being better equipped to learn skills and content in the future.