Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

This quote attributed to poet William Butler Yeats, sums up the belief I hold about the purpose of education. The filling of a pail is similar to giving students a list of facts to memorize and duplicate onto tests and quizzes. The information is quickly forgotten and never used in a truly significant way. The lighting of a fire however gives a much different picture. While facts and information are not abandoned, they are given application. There is a point to the learning; one that inspires passion in the student. One possible outcome of this passion is to prepare the student for a vocation. Another outcome is being able to benefit society. But a more important result is the ability to think and solve problems to apply the facts to real life situations. This is the aim of education: to use learning to bring purpose and fulfillment to the lives of the students both in the present and in the future. This lighting of a fire involves the three main needs of students: knowledge, values, and passion. First, we must give students a base of knowledge from which they can build success. Second, we must give them a moral guide, or values, to aim their knowledge in the right way. And third, we must give them a passion for learning, for solving problems and for reaching their dreams. In order to do this, I will show students the possibilities and beauty of what they can achieve through education. I will encourage them to set goals and fulfill them but I will also teach them to think through the values behind each decision and help them to strive for higher morals, such as those of Kohlbergs post-conventional stage. As a teacher I believe it is my job to guide students through each of these three pieces of education: a knowledge base, a moral compass, and a passion or goal to drive them, so that students will be able to truly benefit from their education and be able to live a fulfilled life. Students come to the classroom as individuals with unique abilities but also unique needs. It is crucial that students have their needs met through their unique traits. As Gardner believed, students have multiple areas of intelligence. Each one is different with various needs and styles of learning. Because of this, I believe that it is important to teach each student as an individual. In order to make each student successful I will use their unique experiences, intelligences and backgrounds to enrich and contextualize their learning and make it relevant. In order to accomplish this, I will use as many of the learning styles as possible in my classroom. I will incorporate visual, kinesthetic, and auditory techniques as well as promote interests such as musical and physical abilities. I will commit as a teacher to individualizing instruction for each student and helping them to love the learning process. I believe that it is important to design curriculum and assessment so that every student can be successful. It must meet the individual needs of each student. In so doing, I will provide a variety of methods and strategies in the curriculum. For memorization, I will use strategies such as mnemonic devices, chunking, and procedural learning. For abstract concepts, I will use manipulatives and concrete examples. In problem solving and analyzing, I will employ strategies such as K-W-L and other graphic organizers. I believe that a good way to tie many of these strategies together is through discovery based learning. With the guidance of the teacher, students are able to take the tools of knowledge that they already know and apply them to new circumstances. By utilizing this method whenever possible, students are able to solve problems and discover learning on their own. Thus they are the ones taking ownership of their learning. With this model of instruction, each student can bring their own unique abilities to the learning process and be successful. Because students learn in such different ways, a

variety of assessments are also necessary in order to truly quantify what they have learned. I believe it is important to use a combination of formal and informal assessment. While traditional tests are necessary in order to determine what facts have been learned, authentic assessment can give a much better picture of the students ability to apply the knowledge. It is crucial, in our diverse world, that every student have a global perspective. Because I have been living in another country for over a year, I have acquired a broader perspective of people and how they live. I have been able to experience firsthand how another culture operates and how a person can fit into a culture other than their own. I now have the opportunity to share what I have learned about cultural sensitivity and global awareness with my students. Through my experiences and the tools available through technology, I will be able to give my students a perspective of the world that will be useful to them in their future lives. This is one example of how I will equip my students to live fulfilled lives with a passion for learning and discovering. Above all, I believe that education is about the student. It is about giving the students the tools that they need to live and thrive and the passion to apply those tools. I will devote myself to this goal as a teacher and will continually grow and change in order to bring success to each student. By my efforts, I hope to equip each one of them with the knowledge and skills that they need to achieve their goals and engage meaningfully with the world around them.

Philosophy of Learning to Read Many factors are involved in the stages of a person learning to read. Each is important in its own way and is a vital part of the whole idea. Throughout the time of learning, it is important to expose children to the world of literacy. They must understand how the written word works in the world around us. They must be allowed to pretend to read the things around them: books, menus, cookbooks, signs, posters, etc. The first stage in the reading process is to systematically teach the child the foundational tools of reading. Firstly, students must develop phonemic awareness. They learn the letters and the sounds that the letters and letter combinations make. At the same time they learn whole short words such as the, at, and, cat or all. Through this word recognition and the ability to sound out letter combinations, the student is able to begin to read. The next stage involves building fluency and comprehension. Students read as much as they can both silently and out loud. They answer questions about what they read and they continue to learn vocabulary to bolster both fluency and comprehension.