My Teaching Philosophy As a teacher I strive to engage, challenge, and inspire growth in my students and create a positive relationship with

not only my students families, but the community they live in. I believe that science is best learned by immersion, thus my fondness for the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. It is important to relate the scientific concepts to real life experiences in order to scaffold learning and create a sense of curiosity. I prefer to teach through demonstrations, conducting mini-experiments, analyzing data in the classroom, by participating in small group debates, role-plays, by observing, and chronicling behaviors from the real world. In the classroom I engage students with hands-on-activities that are inquiry based and promote critical thinking. My lessons use a variety of media; music, poetry, you-tube clips, computer simulations, and comics in order to convey scientific concepts and engage student interests. I further believe that the use of literacy strategies; group readings, graphic organizers for vocabulary terms, and quick writes are just a few of the literacy strategies that I use to help round out my lessons and provide students with much needed practice of essential skills. I am sensitive to students backgrounds and using their prior knowledge in my lessons. It is vitally important to create a sense of community in ones classroom, help students honor their culture, and teach tolerance. Students also should be exposed to real world issues in their communities and take an interest in creating solutions for them. I look forward to working hand-in-hand with community leaders and experts in several different scientific fields in order to create a well rounded experience for my students and help show them the importance and relevance of science in not only their lives, but in their communities as well. I strive to challenge students in my classroom, no matter what level they may be at. By the use of differentiation I can help support and guide each student to successful mastery of each topic I present. I further believe that an important part of science involves collaboration with other professionals in the field and look to foster that by encouraging brainstorming sessions, group projects, and group presentations. It is my hope that students will leave my classroom knowing what it means to be a collaborator and having good interpersonal skills. I also expect to be challenged by my students, an expectation I hope to communicate to the class early on. I encourage my students to ask questions, and I am straightforward about not having all of the answers. When I become stuck I shall seek the input of my colleagues, my books, and the endless array of resources that can be found on the Internet. When I next return to the classroom, I will share not only the answer that Ive found, but also the process I went through to discover it. Above all else, I shall challenge my students to understand that I am open to their thoughts, eager to hear their opinions, and thrilled to learn with and through them. Finally, I attempt to inspire growth in my students by giving them tools to take into other disciplines and into other domains of their life. Among these tools are a sense of curiosity, open-mindedness, and a thirst for knowledge. I would like my students to observe and begin to question not only the natural

world we live in, but the actions of society. My students will be able to use the tools they learned in class to ask good questions, creatively design ways of answering these questions, and to share their knowledge with others. One of the greatest goals that I have is to teach students to become motivated, insightful, and enthusiastic thinkers in life.