Statement of Teaching Philosophy

So, I've been kicking around what to write for a statement of teaching philosophy. My my first draft is below. Any comments? Suggestions? Questions?

I have always wanted to teach, although my entrance into the field of education would come relatively late in life. After over a decade of working in various positions related to sales and marketing, I could no longer resist the urge, the call, to teach. My wife and children were very supportive of the idea, but the other members of my family struggled with my decision. One family member said, “Kevin, why would you do that? Don’t you know the saying ‘those who can do, and those who can’t teach’?” I’ve thought about this statement frequently during my career as a teacher, and in fact, it often provides me with new sources of motivation and inspiration.

As a teacher, I can “do” many things, but more important, I can enable and assist others to “do” as well. I engage in teaching as an interactive process of inspiration, empowerment, and creativity. It is difficult for me to consider myself as a teacher, when much of what I try to accomplish involves students understanding their capacity to both consume and produce knowledge. As a result, like Freire (2006), I understand the teaching/learning experience to be a process of purposeful, meaningful interactions between teachers/students and students/teachers. In each of my classroom experiences, from middle school to higher education, I strive to present opportunities for students to challenge what they currently know or assume to be true, and to seek to understand how certain boundaries, representations, and other aspects of social life are either personally or socially constructed. This is a key component to my philosophy of teaching in that it helps students to develop a critical consciousness, or what Freire (1985) describes as conscientization, or the recognition of the social, political, and cultural contradictions in our lives. I do this through incorporating the perspectives and background experiences of my students through engaging in discussions that promote a self/other dialectic (Freire, 2006). These discussions help to promote an understanding of social and political forces that shape various knowledges and their uses. In understanding the forces that shape our social experiences, students may then gain the ability to see such aspects of social life as mutable and subject to transformation.

This type of learning, of developing a critical consciousness, is most likely to occur when students realize their own ability to employ reason and critique in thoughtful consideration of matters that are relevant to their lives. Understanding the multiplicity of learning styles and student experiences is an important component of this experience, but more important is the recognition of diversity as a necessary component of the educational process. Diversity is a crucial element in the development of critical consciousness in that it causes us to confront issues of difference — not in obstructive, oppositional terms, but it meaningful, thought-provoking ways that support a dialectic consideration of self and other. From this practice comes a better understanding of how one’s orientation to concepts of gender, race, sexuality, and class contribute to — or detract from — a fully inclusive social environment. While my teaching objectives vary depending upon the course being taught, my philosophy continues to inform my practice. In designing curricula, I strive to optimize student engagement through incorporating a variety of media including audio, video, and even social media. For example, in teaching EDL 204: Sociological Foundations of Education at Miami University, I would frequently ask students to locate video clips from the World Wide Web that related to the topic we were currently discussing. These clips would serve as primers for discussion on these topics, and provided many students with a meaningful example of social critique. Students are also encouraged to produce their own media, such as audio and video podcasts, through various projects that highlight students’ voices and perspectives. These opportunities allowed students to become immersed in the topics they studied, and provided them with rich, meaningful theoretical events that complemented their written responses to articles and other reading assignments.

In any educational environment, I encourage personal responsibility on the part of everyone involved by engaging students in conversations about what they can, and will, contribute to class. I begin this conversation by telling them my orientation to learning and teaching, as well as how I will strive to contribute to an environment of respect that leads to stimulating discussions of education and its role in society. In addition to giving students access to express themselves in class, I also strive to support them through open office hours and lunchtime reading/discussion groups. In the course evaluations I have received, many of the students found these “informal” sessions to be quite liberating in that it provided them with a different venue for expression, exploration, and discussion. Course evaluations are an important part of my attempts to reflect upon, and improve, my teaching practices. In addition to course evaluations, my research and writing activities are important components of my growth and development as a student/teacher/scholar.

Life as a teacher has never been quite what I thought it would be. My naïve assumptions as a child of teaching were quickly dissolved by the realization of the political nature of teaching, the power of teaching as a device in ideological reproduction, and the constant demand for humility and respect for the learning process and all those involved. However, what has remained from my desire to become a teacher is the recognition of the joy of learning, of the satisfaction in the enabling of others (and me) in developing a broader, more complex and critical reading of the world. Central to all of this is the concept of hope, and this remains as my primary reason for teaching. My experience in the classroom, my philosophy of teaching, my interaction with my students/teachers, is my expression of hope for the future. It is the answer to “why I do what I do.”


References

Freire, P. (1985). The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (D. Macedo, Trans.). South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey

Freire, P. (2006). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: The Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc