Teaching Philosophy :: Education Learning School Essays

Me as a Teacher All through high school when I was debating my career I never considered becoming a teacher, especially since the majority of my teachers told my classes not to become teachers. My father is a civil engineer, and everyone expected me to become an engineer. Also, they had me convince that becoming an engineer was really what I wanted to do. I started my freshman year at Bluefield State College in the mechanical engineering field. I finished my first semester with good grades, but I learned that engineering wasn’t the career for me. My favorite thing in the world is history. It is always on my mind whether I’m reading a book, watching it on television, or talking to someone about it. So, I began to wonder what career I could choose that involved history. At first I thought I wanted to be a historian, but now I want to teach history to teenagers. I want these young adults to learn, appreciate, respect, and understand that history is a very interesting subject. Today in most high schools the teacher lectures in a monotone voice straight from the book about the chapter the class is on. When the lecture for that chapter is over most classes will do a worksheet where they look up the answers in the book. Then they turn it in for an easy 100 and usually don’t retain any of the knowledge. The next day they review for the test where the instructor tells them every answer that will be on the test; the students write the information down and memorize it for the test. The following day they take the test, which is filled with lower-order questions. Most of the students receive an A, and the rest a B. Monday they start the next chapter not being able to recall a single thing learned in the pervious chapter. I plan to incorporate a variety of philosophies in my classroom. Essentialism brings the classroom â€Å"back to the basics.† It is a conservative philosophy that accepts the traditional social, political, and economic structure of U.S. society. Essentialists believe that not only should the classroom material be taught, but the teacher should teach his students moral values and intellectual knowledge that the students need to become good citizens.