Philosophy of Teaching & Classroom Management - Essay Example

Introduction This paper entails a review and re-examination of the classroom management plan to develop a teaching philosophy. This is for the preparation of the practicum for the third year. This work plan and personal teaching philosophy helpful in the management of classroom situation in terms of the challenges and the manner to solve or confront them (Charles, 2009). Philosophy of education demands that every teacher must have a personal teaching philosophy which acts as the guideline for his or her work. A personal philosophy entails one’s teaching methods, the use and application of the new instruction materials available in the market, how to experiment and apply interdisciplinary courses that have philosophical contents, critical and keen examination of the pedagogical challenges and problems , the evaluation of assessment and teaching philosophy. Philosophy statement A personal philosophy statement must reflect a number of elements to be effective and efficient. Theories of student development and learning, professionalism and ethics, strategies of management, learning and teaching are what determine the formulation of a personal statement. Issues of one’s values as well as beliefs regarding to teaching and education are taken into considerations. Views from a personal experience are also incorporated in the formulation of a personal teaching philosophy (Montell, 2003). Issues of styles of teaching to be used will also be put into consideration but this will depend on how fast a teacher gets to learn and understand the students. Students are of different personality, cultural background, and gender and also their intelligence level is different meaning that their rate of learning is also different for each of them. It is the responsibilities of the teacher to make each of them feel a sense of responsibility and belonging. Personally, my philosophy statement is as follows. Creating a teaching and learning environment that is suitable for every learner and that will give each of them a sense of responsibility and belonging irrespective of their intelligence level, social background, culture and gender to achieve maximum fulfilment of the objectives efficiently and effectively as well as a means of solving all the problems and challenges arising in the learning environment efficiently. Classroom management plan Teaching profession can not be successful without a classroom management plan. I personally believe that a learning environment must be enjoyable for both the students and the teachers. A class is the place which most of the teaching activities takes place. This means that for the success of teaching a well managed classroom must be in place and there is a need for good institution and planning. This will involve proper arrangement of the room. The purpose for this is to ensure there will be no frustrations in finding teaching or learning material during the teaching session. Management of the classroom will always be gin before the students enter class the very first day. This is whereby, the terms assignment will be ready for them. The purpose for this is to give the students a focus during the lesson (Nelsen et el. 2000). They will get the impression that they are in school for learning purposes and any other activity is prohibited. The directions for seating or the sitting arrangement will be given by the teacher right on the first d ay when they enter class. A well managed classroom entails consistency. Personally I will ensure there is great consistency. This is in respect to issues like established boundaries, rules and consequences or punishment implementation. Every classroom must have guiding rules for the students. There are also set boundaries of the relationship between the students and teacher s, among the students and also the aspect of respecting each other’s properties. Establishment of penalties or punishments for the students who will be breaking the rules will be very important. Each of the rules will have an established punishment which must be enacted to any student who breaks the rule. This will help in establishing order in classroom. Some of the rules will include noise making or disturbing others during the learning process, lack of courtesy to another person, not observing the boundaries and failure of completing assignments (Van Note Chism, 2009). There will be a sense of responsibility sharing. This is whereby all the students as well as I their teacher will have a responsibility which will make us all have a voice in decision making on the matters of classroom without necessarily making the student feel inferior through dictatorship from the teacher. The students for instance will be involved in the setting of rules so that they will have a feeling of ownership hence helping them develop respect for the classroom environment. Engaging my students in issue like feeding any animals in the classroom, calling out the register to mark the absenteeism register and make a follow up , helping check each other’s assignments and ensuring the cleanliness of the class will give the teacher ample time to attend to other important matters hence success (Nelsen et el, 2000). Classroom rules consequences for breaking them RULES CONSEQUENCE IF BROKEN 1) respect your teachers, classmate, class equipments and organisms One Suspension after the first and second warning 2) You must follow all the safety rules Punishment which entails missing classes 3) Follow all the school regulations and rules Two weeks Suspension after the third warning 4) Enter classroom ready to participate in the learning process Cleaning the classroom or any other area of the class for a period of time after class depending on the level of un cooperation 5) Ensure you clean up the class and laboratory after every learning activity if need be Cleaning up the learning areas after learning activities for two consecutive learning activities. Origin of challenges and solutions Challenging in the teaching environment is of diverse origin. some of the anticipated challenges include curriculum demands, teaching and learning pedagogy, issues of students’ behaviour, collaborative relations among the family and colleagues, personal factors. Each of the challenges has an origin and is likely to lead to more complications if not well managed. With the above challenges in mind, there is a need for a strategy to deal with the challenges (Wink, 2000). Issues of curriculum like meeting the deadline will be dealt with by ensuring proper time management. Also the teacher will have to follow all the instructions laid down in the curriculum. The behaviours of the students and any challenges that may arise from that will be dealt with through the punishment according to the rules broken. A classroom is made up of students of different cultural background. This means that one of the challenges is cultural shocks which may bring about conflicts. Conflict refers to the process whereby two parties are at loggerhead with each other. Usually a conflict is caused due to a disagreement. Any conflict starts to grow whenever there are some aspects of disharmony among students. This means that there is a great need for interpersonal skills to bring about the harmony. There are two main option for resolving the existing conflict in the institution namely knowledge sharing and motivation. Through motivation the students will feel a sense of responsibility to do their best while through improving knowledge sharing students will be able to share the most important information they get to learn that is important in their lessons or learning as well as learning materials. Group discussions will be set up where by all students will be incorporated irrespective of their cultural background, age, social background and intelligence (Wink, 2000). The following are the main details the two approaches will help solve the situation. knowledge management entails the different strategies, methods, practices and ways that have been laid by a particular teacher to represent, create, identify and distribute as well as adopt to the experiences and insights observed in the learning process. Knowledge management in any kind of learning environment is very important because it is one of the ways through which any student can attain learning excellence as well as avoid conflicts. There are number of factors that still lead to a slow knowledge sharing and management in the institutions. They include increase in the turbulence level, growth in the globalization, dispersion from the source and finally the localized movement. One of the ways of avoiding the same conflict and challenges in classroom in the future is by having some weekly meeting with the students. The reason for the meeting is to ensure that any issues that have risen will be dealt with during that meeting before they reach to the level of conflict (Nelsen et el, 2000). The teacher will set up a group of five students who will be responsible for ensuring all issues in the class are noted early enough and dealt with before getting to the worst scenario. The group will ensure it receives all complains as well as the suggestions from the students. By doing that, the teacher will be in position to deal with all the needs of the students promptly by ensuring the issues are sorted out in good time. Planned approaches for solving challenges Approaches for solving or management of challenges in a classroom must be in such a way that they provide a clear cohesion of the rationale for one’s planned approach as far as the challenges identified are concerned. This must be captured in the statement of one’s personal philosophy and its application in the real hypothetical situation. Challenges involving conflict in the classroom will be approached according to the situation. One of the main tool for solving all the problems or challenges is emotional intelligence (Wenger, 1998). Emotional intelligence is very important in the learning environment through paving a way to be able to assess all students needs, gives a way to assess the individual abilities and quality for the purposes of studies. It enables the assessment to be delivered in a great care in that the communication approach is well developed and delivered to the students. There is also the aspect of learning choices maximization, participation among the students and teachers involved also encourages since they are able to understand each other and embrace each other’s ideas and opinions (Wink, 2000). Students are able to link their personal goals to be in line with the schools they are learning in; they are also able to make adjustments to their individual expectations. Also it is very important to the management of the institution in that it enables them to make assessment of the motivation and readiness for the students to embrace emotional quotient development. It is also the key for working towards change in the world. This is because it is the key for fostering a good relationship between the leaders in the classroom or school management and the students or students under the leadership; it enables students to be able to do personal and self directed learning as well as change, enables students and institution to split the institutional and personal goals to be achievable (van Lier, 1994). Through teaching students how to manage their personal emotions it has helped them to give the right feedback, build support, improve their self awareness and encourage personal insights. Also there is the aspect of encouraging students to apply their new knowledge in their learning process as well as develop cultures in the institution to support the same acquisition of knowledge. Emotional intelligence is very important in the area of leadership. This is because a leader who is very well versant with his or her emotions and is able to manage and control them appropriately will make a better leader. Leadership is all about influencing other students and not dictating. A good leader (both students and teachers) is meant to help the students in their efforts to develop and improve the performance of the institution. This is because they are the one’s the students look up to for direction and performance (Herbert, 2008). This means that the attitudes as well as the behaviours of the leader are very important an important factor in relation to the humanity. Leadership is all about students and it involves a lot of decision making and as well as so many actions but the most responsibility is the fact that it directly involved the responsibilities towards the students who are directly under the leadership. Good aspects of leadership mean a great deal of emotional strengths as well as characteristics in terms of behaviour which are dependent on the spiritual and mental reserves of the leader. Conclusion Some responsibilities of the leaders are inevitable especially with reference to the needs of the students, meaning the responsibility of leadership is a great profound concept demanding the leader to be very stable as far as the issue of emotional intelligence is concerned. It should be noted that leadership is more than management, directing controlling and instructing students. Students will follow someone in the name of a leader not because of the skills they possess but because of the trust as well as they respect they have for that person (Ferris & Hedgecock, 1998). This explains why leadership is all about attitudinal qualities as far as humanity is concerned. The reason for that is because it involves the relationships they have with their subordinates with reference to some qualities like integrity, humility, honesty, commitment, courage, sincerity, confidence, positivity, passion, sensitivity, determination, compassion and wisdom. All of these characters are largely dependent on one’s emotional intelligence level of development. This means that it is a very important aspect as far leadership is concerned in the solving challenges. Reference Charles, M. (2009). Real education. Amazon: three river pr. Ferris, D. & Hedgecock, J.S. (1998). Teaching ESL Composition: purpose, process and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Herbert, S. (2008). Education: intellectual, moral and physical. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montell, G. 2003. What’s your Philosophy on Teaching, and Does it Matter? The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 27, 2003. http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-Your-Philosophy-on/45132 Nelsen, J., Lott, L., & Glenn, S. (2000). Positive discipline in the classroom. Developing mutual respect, cooperation and responsibility in your classroom. Seneca Falls, NY: Parma Publishing. Van Lier, L. (1994). Some features of a theory of practice. TESOL Journal, Autumn, 6-10.s Van Note Chism, Nancy. 2009 Writing a Philosophy of Teaching Statement. Ohio State University. Retrieved from http://ftad.osu.edu/portfolio/philosophy/Philosophy.html Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Wink, J. (2000). Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the real world. NY: Longman. Read More