Hello, World!
My name is Jess, but my students call me Ms. Lambert. Teaching has been a fairly recent, but very much welcomed, career change for me. I have finally found what I should have been doing all along.
Teaching is important to me because I believe that all students deserve a high-quality education in a safe and supportive environment. I may not be able to provide that for all the students in the world, but I will do my best to provide it for every student I can. Every child deserves someone who believes in them and sees them for the amazing person they are. My goal is to see the best in every student and to help them become the best they can be.
I have extensive experience working with people, both adults and children, with physical and developmental disabilities. I have a deep passion for equity for all people and believe strongly that a safe and positive learning environment is essential for students to be able to learn. Throughout my professional experience, I have had the opportunity to work with people from very diverse backgrounds and have had the pleasure of building cooperative and respectful relationships with colleagues and customers alike. Having worked with vulnerable populations for most of my career, I am very familiar with confidentiality and the flexibility necessary to meet the diverse needs of individuals.
Until recently, I had never imagined myself as a teacher. After graduating with my Master of Education in Instructional Design, I wasn’t sure what to do next. My plan was to put my degree in software development to use and write training programs for how to use software. After some serious reflection on my passions and life goals, I realized that a career in education, special education specifically, would better suit my lifelong passion of supporting people with exceptionalities.
B2. Beliefs
Teachers have a daunting and vital job to do: ensure the next generation has the skills and resources to survive and thrive. This is a big job and one that must be approached with care. As they enter adulthood, students need to know how to take care of and provide for themselves and how to work with other people to accomplish goals. The classroom should be a place to build the knowledge and practice the skills that they will need.
Different students learn in different ways and there is no one right way to teach all students. The whole child, feelings, knowledge, and all, must be taken into account when determining how to best support that student. The humanistic learning theory really resonates with me because of its student-centered approach. Students need to feel safe in order to learn and both their feelings and their knowledge are vital to the learning process. The whole child is important and should be considered when planning all learning activities. Additionally, student choice and self-evaluation are important aspects of humanistic learning theory and can be a great way to help students start taking some responsibility in their own learning (Western Governors University, 2020).
B3. Learning Outcomes
One learning outcome that I want to foster in my students is a sense of curiosity and imagination. Many quotes about imagination being more important than knowledge have been attributed to Albert Einstein, but they all boil down to this: without imagination, people can’t come up with new things to know. New drugs to cure old ailments, new ways to produce high quality products, or better ways to teach wouldn’t be possible if those who have thought them up weren’t curious and didn’t have imaginations.
B3a. Instructional Strategies
To foster this outcome in my students, I plan to create an environment where students feel safe not knowing all the answers but have a willingness to explore and try new things. Students need to feel comfortable asking questions and be encouraged to find the answers. Studies show that cultivating curiosity leads to more curious students. Curiosity – and satisfying that curiosity – can cause dopamine spikes in our brains. Thus, curious students learn to become more curious. Students who are not curious tend to become less curious and get bored. Boredom has been found to be the cause of many drug addictions. So, people who are curious find their dopamine spikes in satisfying their curiosity while people who are bored find theirs in drug addictions (Goodwin, 2020).
One teaching strategy that cultivates curiosity and imagination in the classroom is motivating students by building mystery into lessons. Not cheap, gimmicky mystery, but deep exploration, thought-provoking mystery. This gets students excited to find out the answer to the mysteries. Curiosity is what fueled so much of what we know today. Helping students dig in and figure out for themselves why things happen or how to measure the area of a shape not only cements that knowledge in their brains but helps them to become better problem solvers. (Goodwin, 2020).
Another teaching strategy I plan to use is to make learning personal by not only giving students choices, but also connecting what they are learning to their own personal lives. When students can make connections between what they already know and what they are learning, they are more likely to understand it. The better they understand what they are learning, the more likely they are to remember it (Heick, 2023).
B3b. Assessment of Learning Outcome
Curiosity is hard to assess, and there isn’t a very concrete way to measure for curiosity. However, there are some somewhat unconventional ways that it can be measured, and they tend to be more informal. One method is observation. I plan to use this method frequently in my classroom. When I give students a project to do, I will look for students’ eagerness to get started researching and investigating for their projects. How long they spend searching out answers to questions in their projects will be a great indicator of how curious they are (Goodwin, 2020).
Another way to assess how curious my students are is to pay attention to the types of questions and how many of the right kind of questions students ask. The right kind of questions are those that provoke deep thinking and encourage students to find answers. The more of these types of questions, the more curious the student (Goodwin, 2020).
B4. Beliefs
The most vital first step in making all of these plans a reality is building relationships with all stakeholders. Students need to feel safe and secure in the classroom before they will open up and share their interests and what they know. This principle also applies to all stakeholders in the students’ lives. For them to feel safe sharing their thoughts and their hopes, they need to feel safe and respected. This can only happen through building relationships. Stakeholder relationships are the foundation that everything else can be built on. By building positive and respectful relationships with all stakeholders, we can ensure that students are receiving the best education possible. These relationships make it possible to understand where students come from and what they need so that we can adjust our teaching strategies to meet the students where they are.
One strategy I plan to use to build relationships with stakeholders is to treat everyone with respect. This means listening to what they have to say and responding positively. It means respecting boundaries and asking questions to clarify what they are saying (Meador, 2019).
Another strategy is to be real. This means being honest when I don’t know something but letting them know that I am willing to learn or to find out. It means owning when I make a mistake, not making excuses about why the mistake was made or blaming other people for the mistake. Being real means letting people see me for who I am so that they will feel more comfortable being who they really are (9 Ways to Build Strong Teacher Relationships with Colleagues, n.d.).
Teaching is an important job, and a lot of factors go into becoming the best teacher a person can be. I hope to use all of the tools at my disposal to keep learning and improving. This is just the beginning.
References
9 ways to build strong teacher relationships with colleagues. (n.d.). Hey Teach! https://www.wgu.edu/heyteach/article/9-ways-to-build-strong-teaecher-relationships-with-colleagues1909.html
Goodwin, B. (2020). Building a curious school : Restoring the joy that brought you to school. McREL International.
Heick, T. (2023, March 3). 10 strategies to promote curiosity in learning. TeachThought. https://www.teachthought.com/learning/curiosity-in-learning/
Meador, D. (2019, July 5). Strategies for teachers to develop positive relationships with students. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/develop-positive-relationships-with-students-3194339
Western Governors University. (2020, July 30). What is humanistic learning theory in education? Western Governors University. https://www.wgu.edu/blog/what-humanistic-learning-theory-education2007.html#close