Alicia George
Teaching Philosophy Statement
When I envision my methods, beliefs and processes of education, I see an adventure. Together students and I embark on an exploratory hike, with our backpacks filled with prior knowledge, beliefs, values, and life essentials. Our goal is to travel to the top of our mountain of knowledge.
Any good adventure has a beginning; our foundation. We must circumnavigate this foundation, reviewing acquired basic skills and obtaining new ones in order to travel onward and upward. Traveling through the regions of our mountain may be challenging as we scale new knowledge, exposing and questioning our previous ideas and beliefs. At times we may need to stop and unload our backpacks, reload them, or reaffirm what’s already in them. Other times when the road becomes seemingly impassable, we will need to hack our way through that overgrown path or find a different way when the path is blocked by an unscalable wall. But we will get there. We will definitely fall on occasion, but we will pick ourselves up and carry on. Sometimes we may need to travel back down to our foundation in order to travel back up again. But we will get there. Sometimes the adventure will be so easy, as we pass through open wide spaces with limitless possibilities. We may find ourselves running, jumping, or shouting with the joy of learning. And we will get there. Through teamwork, respect, resilience and excitement we will get to the top.
Through literature and history we will develop critical thinking skills that allow us to evaluate ideas and events; such as how a decision or action made by one person (or group of people) can affect those surrounding them or change the course of history. We will engage in activities that allow us to explore regions outside our realm, activities that make us read, write, and THINK.
When we reach our destination we will pause to take pride in our sense of accomplishment, look back at where we had been and dwell in the moments of awe and wonderment of what lays before us. We will learn valuable life skills, such as teamwork, responsibility, caring, and acceptance of ourselves and others; as well as knowledge about our world. Our new knowledge
combined with our prior will be another step in becoming who we are destined to be; another step in discovering ourselves, our beliefs, our self-worth, and our world.
As Dr. Seuss so eloquently puts it in the book Oh, the Places You’ll Go; “So… be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!”
References:
Seuss, Dr. (1990). Oh, the places you’ll go! New York, NY: Random House