PHIL OF EDU!
Philosophy of Education My education didn’t start until I met a challenge and more than that a teacher whom perhaps I will never meet again but had a profound effect on my outlook of the idea of school. I never really excelled in mathematics and obtained average grades until I met my geometry teacher and he expected nothing short of excellence from his students. I greatly appreciated his no nonsense attitude and the fact that he truly believed that I could succeed. It wasn’t until I reached college life that understood that I had been given a gift of a good high school education and what’s more that I enjoyed learning and watching others learn. At the time I turned eighteen I signed up to volunteer with the Y.M.C.A to be a camp consoler and I learned the art of teaching. The new active environment was filled with learning and the kids yearned to learn. This was very new for me to see the attitudes of students’ actively craving knowledge and having fun doing it rather than having tired and disinterested faces. I learned as I moved up in the branch, going from volunteering to getting paid and eventually having my own staff, that there are different types of learners and personalities. Knowledge, I learned, is for everyone and working with the deaf to the autistic I learned to be patient and watch knowledge blossom perhaps in the some of the same ways that my instructors watched that same knowledge grow in me.
Watching knowledge grow in another had me awestruck and the fact that there are different types of learning and types of teaching suddenly had me on the path to teaching. The path I sought after was knowledge but I was interested in so many things it made me sad to have to choose one discipline over another and that is when I came across the Liberal Studies department was introduced to the idea of ‘Interdisciplinarity’ a field where traditional lines between academic schools of thought are crossed and new insights are gained. Interdisciplinarity involves students, teachers, and researchers connecting schools of thought and pursuing common goals for progress and the common good. It is the interdisciplinary way of thinking and way of teaching that I think is an invaluable way working, to see all sides of learning. When students start to see the bigger picture of education and when they realize their goals whether it be in Math, Science, English, Music, or Art each discipline has something to give and something to bring. The no nonsense style that my geometry professor employed in my education and the freedom of thought and variation of learning is what I wish to bring to students. I expect to do my best and have them do their best not because it is what is expected because it is what they want.
The attitude of collaboration in the Liberal Studies department is shared by the Charter College of Education’s core values of enhancing the educational experience and finding new ways of thinking for the common good. When we have meaningful and lasting conversations about education and ways of improving on knowledge we evolve humanity and continue building the bridge of equality. When my core values where so closely matched with the CCOE it felt natural to apply and to view the possibilities of tomorrow’s student: a bright students who build bridges over disciplines, breaks barriers, and succeeds.
I suppose it comes of as idealistic but then why not?