Building a Foundation

As a teacher, my philosophy for teaching is that students’ needs are paramount and should drive the decisions made at every level, especially in the classroom. While this seems obvious, at least to me, I have found that students and their needs tend to get lost in the slew of policies created, meetings had, and more, especially now in this virtual, online teaching sphere, where we aren’t interacting with students in the same way as in the past. It isn’t hard to lose sight of the real reason we are in the classroom. So, I try to keep my philosophy for teaching pretty simple so as not to lose sight of why I am here and what my purpose is. 

One important concept I have already learned about in my master’s program is culturally responsive teaching. It is important to not only bring your own culture into the classroom, as I have done as a foreign teacher in China, but to also appreciate and celebrate the cultures of all your students. In this way, a safe and respectful classroom environment can be created that fosters a strong sense and appreciation of multiculturalism. I feel, in China, a lot of the multicultural aspects of learning were coming from the teachers who were from a slew of different cultures. The students were coming from a homogeneous culture and were not used to being exposed to or experiencing high levels of diversity. I made sure in my lessons to include aspects of American and British culture, as I have lived and studied in both places, in order to expose my students to aspects of cultures that they would come in contact with down the road in their academic careers, as they all had the same goal of eventually studying in either America or Britain. Equally though, I found that it was important to include aspects of Chinese culture to make the lessons relevant to the students’ current lives and culture. The students appreciated my efforts to include their culture in my English lessons, and I found that it usually increased their confidence during the lessons. They felt that while their English skills may not be very strong, they knew the content well because it came from China, and therefore they were able to confidently bridge the gap between working on their skills and mastering the content. In the course of my work in my master’s program, I realized that what I had been doing was inline with culturally responsive teaching and learning. It was a really pleasant experience to put a name to the strategies I had been employing. 

The influence of this program is wide reaching in my personal career goals and teaching practice. I am currently working towards completing my Praxis exams so that I will be a fully credentialed teacher in Washington, D.C. My hope is to then become an ESOL teacher, pulling on a lot of the theories and principles I learn through this program to inform my teaching. I think this program, coupled with my experience from teaching and working in schools in China, is exactly the right foundation of knowledge needed as I transition from working as a school librarian to an ESOL teacher. I want to make that transition because I am passionate about language, literacy, and information literacy, and while I can work with students well as a librarian, I find it more satisfying to work more directly with the students in the classroom. I find that while it is more challenging and definitely much more work to be in the classroom, I appreciate the challenge and enjoy the work as I am able to be much more creative in how I can teach these topics to the students. I am also able to take on supporting student effort in a greater and different way to what I was able to accomplish as the school librarian. I have worked in libraries for the past ten years and appreciate the knowledge and skill sets I have built in library work. Now, I look forward to transitioning into becoming a classroom teacher and entering a new phase of my career.