Gillin Personal Pedagogy

Personal Pedagogy: Statement of Belief

When asked to think about about a personal philosophy of teaching I believe that it
should be based on the plight towards the academic achievement of each student. One piece of
helping students reach academic achievement is by fostering a safe and inclusive classroom
community. With this in mind, my philosophy of pedagogy is to be a culturally competent
teacher. Through my experience in practicum placements, it is apparent that public schools
within the United States have an increasingly diverse makeup of students. A thought from NEA
president Dennis Van Roekel touched on this eloquently, Educators with the skills, knowledge,
and attitudes to value the diversity among students will contribute to an educational system
designed to serve all students well. Before becoming a culturally competent teacher, one must
become aware of their own identity. By exposing biases and creating different perspectives or
perceptions of the different microcosms of people in the areas of community, culture, and
socioeconomic status, one can start the process of this philosophy.
In terms of checking my privilege before I immerse myself in becoming a culturally
competent teacher, I must realize that my upbringing is not the case for most communities. I am
originally from a suburb outside of Baltimore, Maryland. My neighborhood and community is
homogeneous on the surface; Upper SES, mutual skin-color, and an excellent private school
system. However, this outer-shell projection that people might perceive does not constitute my
culture or beliefs. I am well aware that white privilege puts members of the white demographic
at an advantage on the surface at a fault with no correlation to a persons character. But in many

cases Ethnicities and cultures are not constituted by color or SES. I look forward to developing
this philosophy in student teaching.
Personal Pedagogy: Statement of Practice
The philosophy of being a culturally competent teacher ranges further than fostering a
safe and inclusive classroom community; it asks to implement personal pedagogical practices
within the classroom to reach this goal. The pedagogical practice of focus for this philosophy is
to create equitable opportunities to learn for each student within the classroom. Implementing
this pedagogical practice requires certain strategies in order for each student to have an equitable
opportunity to attain academic success.
The first strategy for my current pedagogy relies on the acceptance and understanding of
the diverse human race. The skill is to be there for each of my future students. There may be
moments in their lives where they are going through incomprehensible circumstances that will
affect their attitude, body language, and performance in class. It is my duty as a culturally
competent teacher to become involved in their lives in an effort to understand what they are
going through and to accommodate them while they are in my classroom. A key aspect of this is
to be involved in their home lives. By creating a partnership with their parents or guardians we
will be able to create a lasting influence on the student for the better. There are often barriers to
creating partnerships with parents and guardians. For some, school was not a positive experience,
so they feel reluctant to step back into a school communities. It is my duty to be able to break
down these illogical yet real barriers. Three ways to incorporate family engagement include:
having various means of communication, being flexible and accepting of cultural differences,
and creating partnership within their community organizations. I believe that this action will
foster a relationship of trust within each student that will lead to a mutual respect between us in

an effort to let me help them reach their goals. In this case, I believe it is a necessity to become
immersed in the different communities of students to gain new perspectives and skills.
Personal Pedagogy- Final Pedagogy
After completing my practicum placement of Fall 2016 at an elementary school in North
Carolina, I realize that the largest aspect of my teaching that I need to improve on is modifying
lessons and assignments and providing accommodations for students with special needs. Within
my practicum placement, modification and accommodation have been aspects of teaching that
my cooperating teacher had to focus on with every lesson that we planned. There were two
students in our classroom that required modified lesson plans and accommodations during daily
classroom activities. The first student was greatly behind on grade level in reading literacy, and
the second student had just moved from Colombia, South America prior to the school year and
had to learn the English language from scratch. In order to make our class curriculum accessible
to these students it required careful modification of lesson plans and accommodation during each
lesson for each student.
For the first student, our reading class period during the day required the most patience
when working with the student. When the student was not working with a reading specialist, my
cooperating teacher typically paired me up with him to read over class assignment handouts and
talk through his answers verbally. This process was a bit repetitive at first but necessary for him
to be able to complete the work that every other student was working on. This process of reading
through documents and receiving his answers verbally might be acceptable at the fourth grade
level, however, I feel that the student will have challenges in middle school with completing
assignments since it is unlikely that he will catch up to grade level for reading literacy.

For the second student, we had to modify lessons to have a spanish translated equivalent.
I would typically work with the student through the use of my knowledge of the Spanish
language and through Google Translate to complete assignments. The student works with a
language coach each day in order to learn more about the English language. This student is
remarkably bright, and I am confident that he will be able to work through learning English as a
second language. The students mother is a teacher within the elementary school and is very
invested in his transition as well.
It was initially difficult to plan my unit plan around both of these students. During
independent practice I would pair each student with a classmate to work through assignments.
The second student would be paired with a classmate who was proficient in both the English and
Spanish languages. During the assessments within my unit, I would work with each of the two
students individually. For the first student, I would read the directions and have him answer the
questions verbally. For the second student I would provide assessments translated in Spanish.
Working with both of these students has given me perspective on what I need to work on in order
to increase my pedagogy in working with students who need modification and accommodation.