As a teacher I am responsible for being a positive and influential role model for my students.
My personal philosophy of teaching is based around forming strong and effective relationships and interactions with my students. This will enable me to be an effective teacher as I develop a knowledge of how my students learn and can cater for their diverse needs. In order to build good relationships with students and foster their development, it is important that I create and maintain a supportive and safe learning environment.
Professional Knowledge
I believe education is an incredibly complex interaction between a range of factors, all having a direct influence on individual student learning outcomes. I am a passionate and enthusiastic Mathematics and Physical Education teacher. This passion and enthusiasm allows me to effectively engage students in my subject areas. The curriculum is of great importance when teaching, but so is developing students morally, socially and emotionally. There is evidence that by developing students in these areas it has a positive effect on their school experience. In order to create more meaningful learning, I will focus on developing strong and effective relationships and interactions with students to improve their overall well-being.
The ACARA website (2013) states that all students are entitled to rigorous, relevant and engaging learning programs drawn from a challenging curriculum that addresses their individual learning needs. I believe this statement best explains how I will deal with diversity in my classroom. As a teacher I need to consider the uniqueness of my students and that they will have diverse learning needs. This means I will need to differentiate the approaches and pedagogies I use when teaching the curriculum to cater for a wide range of abilities, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Through my university studies and practicum experiences, teaching in Indonesia and my work as a SSO in a special needs school I have learnt about teaching strategies that are responsive to the learning strengths and needs of students from diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.In these multiple contexts I feel that I have had the opportunity to learn about teaching diverse range of students. This has enabled me to build my knowledge about skills, pedagogies and strategies when catering for these students.
Through my professional experience I have been able to effectively integrate whole unit plans with a range of year levels. This has included the integration of pre-assessment, formative assessment and summative assessment. Upon reflection of tasks, lessons and assessments I have learnt how I can possibly modify tasks to enable effective learning for all students.
As a teacher in the 21st century, I see the importance of allowing students the opportunities to gain skills in using ICT. The inclusion of ICT within my teaching allows learning to become of a higher quality and effectiveness, while equipping students with tools and strategies to enhance their learning.As a teacher I believe it is essential to be a confident and independent user of technology, skilled in designing and delivering flexible and innovative learning experiences for students within the curriculum structures.
Professional Practice
According to the TfEL standards (South Australian Teaching for Effective Learning) (2014), for a teacher to unleash learner potential and create learning opportunities with students, they must create safe conditions for rigorous learning, develop expert learners and personalise and connect learning.
As a teacher I want to create life-long, self-directed and critical thinking learners. I believe this can be achieved through multiple teaching strategies. A couple of strategies that I feel passionately about are the Inquiry based model, game sense model, questioning, the use of exit and starter cards within my lessons the SEPEP approach and promoting problem solving. By incorporating many different teaching strategies into my teaching I can provide an opportunity for all my students by catering for different learning styles, interests and readiness levels. This can also be achieved by creating a range of tasks of varying complexities, creating tasks aimed at different interests, incorporating multiple modes of presentation and incorporating many different learning strategies and approaches within the tasks.These strategies all allow my students to gain an in-depth understanding of the content and enable them to put their learning into practice.
I also place an emphasise within my teaching on creating a community of learners. This promotes students to use the recourses around them such as their peers through group work and peer assessment, as well as other resources including technology.
As a early career teacher I believe it will be essential for me to be always looking for new teaching strategies that I can use to engage and motivate my student's learning. I would like to continue to expand and develop the range of teaching strategies that work for me and for my students. I would also like to keep up to date with the latest pedagogies, methodologies and strategies to help my students reach their full potential.
I believe forming strong student-teacher relationships is the foundation for promoting participation and engagement for all. It will also enable me to personalise learning for students and create and maintain a supportive and safe learning environment. Identifying strategies to support inclusive student participation and engagement in classroom activities ensures all students are able to participate meaningfully and continue their development in an inclusive environment for all.
Professional Engagement
As an early career teacher it is important to recognise that each lesson is learning experience and a chance to refine your teaching.As a life long learner, I will continually seek professional development in my teaching areas to find alternative and new methodologies, approaches and pedagogies that will develop my teaching practices. This will allow me to find my identity as a teacher, allowing me to grow my passion as teacher.
I strongly believe that every child has a right to an education and should be given the opportunity to reach their full potential. As a teacher I want to be a positive role model in my student’s life.