My Teaching Philosophy

For the first two years of my college career, I was in denial about wanting to be a teacher.
I loved History and English and the idea that acquiring knowledge could only go as far as one
would want it to. However, I despised the structure of the education system, the vast amount of
teachers that took some sort of satisfaction in telling students they would amount to nothing be-
cause I myself had heard it several times before graduating high school. My parents are educa-
tors and seeing the hours they put in to perfect their classrooms and bring out the potential in
their students left me a slight sliver of hope that for every bad teacher, there must be a good one.
Nonetheless, I went through my freshman and sophomore year switching majors and looking for
something that fit my persona. Still I found myself coming back to history, English and political
science courses in my block electives because of the passion I carried for those subjects.
Even more compelling was that what I enjoyed most was leading our study groups and
helping my peers understand whatever it was they were having trouble with. It started going be-
yond class too, making sure they went with the right advisors, making sure their degree plan was
on track before mine was, showing them resources I had to discover myself. Then I got hired as
an Avid tutor at a middle school. Here is where I found true joy in my job quite possibly for the
first time in my life. Greeting kids and getting them started, staying on top of them to do their
work and being there to answer any and every question they had for me felt great. Watching them
react to their accomplishments that I had helped with was the most gratifying thing that I had ex-
perienced. On top of guiding my peers and students, knowing I had a keen ability to help them
was what drove me back to where I started; becoming a teacher, for the right reasons.
And so rather than looking back at the “bad” teachers and what it was that made them so,
I focused on the ones I remember having a profound impact on me as a student and as a person. I
came back to two names: Mrs. Estrada-Kieth and Mrs. Olivas, my second and fourth grade
teachers respectfully. I looked at what made them have such a lasting memory on me and it was
simple, they cared not only about the basics of the classroom, or meeting standards, or a pay-
check. They cared about the individual student and what kind of productive citizens we’d grow
up to be, they cared about what we learned and what lasting effect it would have on us and they
cared enough to make adjustments accordingly so that we weren’t susceptible to falling through
the cracks.
Therefore, my mission as a history teacher is to teach students to think critically and be-
yond dates and events in history and tie it back into their lives in a way that is as engaging as it is
rewarding. By doing so they go into the world with an expertise in using disciplinary skills such
as contextualizing, reasoning and argumentation, judging significance and sociological imagina-
tion which is literally just critical assessment of common sense. These disciplinary skills go be-
yond the classroom and tend to lack expertise in the workforce. Therefore, if they can master
these disciplinary skills, whether they plan to go into the history field or something else entirely,
they leave the classroom ready to be outstanding citizens with the tools necessary to excel in an
facet of life.
Now the approach to this is to stray away from traditional lectures and classwork such as
dittos and handouts and make it a student-led classroom with the teacher, me in this instance, as
the master facilitator. Having students analyzing a variety a primary resources for discrepancies
in textbooks or historical accounts and build their own educated, researched interpretation opens
the door for a different level of engagement, one where they begin to understand the “why’s” of
history, not just the when and where and who which can also lead to profound group discussions.
By using pictures and video and even audio such as music and podcasts you give the students a
variety of experiences that are multi-sensory and therefore give them lasting learning of the con-
tent that sticks with them beyond the classroom. That also includes the use of technology and its
ever-growing stock of websites and programs useful to teachers such as Nearpod, Google class-
room, Quizziz and so much more.
To not take advantage of the endless amount of resources and to not try and incorporate
all these different methods of learning that have been shown to work is to stifle yourself even
more as an educator in a system that already tends to do that to you. Finally, in incorporating
these methods and various types of technology and mediums, I hope to be the teacher for stu-
dents that I always wanted, the teacher that hasn’t forgotten that they were once in my shoes, the
teacher that accepts and encourages more than one way of learning, the teacher doesn’t scorn dis-
interest but rather reevaluates ways to reengage the students and one that simply cares.