Marta Cayere

Philosophy of Education
Education is one of the most undervalued and under-appreciated jobs out there. (Not by
everyone obviously, but a good portion of the country feel they can just waltz on into a
classroom and teach very easily). Not many people realize how important and difficult the job is
and can be. Education is not just to educate, it is so much more. The purpose of education is to
help students realize their potential, their abilities, their strengths, weaknesses, everything that
structures a child; while influencing students to broaden their minds and be more informed on
subjects that continue to develop and grow. Education is about making students more prepared
for the future, to use these tools educators instill in them for whatever they choose to pursue in
life. The purpose of education is to inform, prepare, and inspire, all while the students are
learning something new.
Every student learns differently. To some, learning comes more naturally, to others it
comes as a difficulty, but overall for each student it is very different. There are different forms of
learning and different forms of intelligences. Every student is an individual when it comes to
their learning and intelligence. Howard Gardner, the developer of the idea of multiple
intelligences, states seven basic ideas along with the fact that there are more out there waititng to
be discovered. This only emphasizes the point that each child learns differently. The main three
are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Auditory is when the student is better at listening and
understanding, visual is seeing is believing in a sense, meaning that students need to see the
work or information with a visual aid to help understand. Lastly, kinesthetic is when students
also need to work with their hands with something, meaning they need to practice it themselves
before they fully comprehend the topic discussed. A learner can be any mix of any to all of these,

or maybe even just one of them. Students learn through many different ways, through these
intelligences and learning. They learn from seeing, hearing, and action.
Content should be taught to students using the idea that each learner has different needs.
Educators should get to know their students beforehand and learn themselves what each
individual student needs for success. Content needs to be taught in ways that students will
remember the information and have it soak in completely, leading to the information being
learned. I personally believe as well that students learn through having fun, most of all. The
boring lessons are the ones students seem to forget over time, but looking back on my K-12
career, every lesson I have enjoyed personally and remember having a good time doing it are the
ones I strongly remember.
Having fun while learning basically awakens all the types of learners, the learners should
have their attention drawn with an attention-gripping introduction, then have notes they can take,
maybe a short fun video clip, discussion, an activity, and review. Not necessarily in that order,
but the main goal stated is that the activity needs to be something interesting and fun, while still
having the students challenged mentally. Once the student is having fun whilst learning the
content, not only does that give them a higher opinion of school and its importance, it allows the
students to go home every day to their parents, willing and ready to tell them what they did learn
in school that day. (I know when I was growing up Id come home on occasion and not even
want to tell my parents or maybe even not realize what I did learn that day-saying I learned
nothing in school). Content needs to be taught in a way that will keep the students engaged
mentally while they are enjoying themselves in the classroom.
While the students are learning through fun, the teachers are providing the fun for the
students. Educators are leaders in the classroom, they are role models for the students, caring,

intelligent adults that these students look up to. While the educators are leaders in the classroom,
I also believe that students should have a choice in some activities done in class. I know as a
teacher I am going to prepare multiple activities for my students, and let them decide which
activity they want to do. These both are essentialist and progressivist views on teaching, teacher
and student based. The role of the educator is so that the student not only learns from them, but
knows they are in a safe environment and that they are each cared for in their own personal
ways. Students should feel that they are in a classroom of not only higher learning, but one
where they might even feel a bit at home, and it is up to the educator to give that feeling for the
students (all while not crossing that student-teacher relationship line). The educators key role is
to teach, lead, and facilitate the students learning, and the students fun in the classroom.
Students should be taught a core curriculum of math, science, english/literature, and
history. Along with these I feel students should also have the option to take extracurricular
classes, such as art, music, and choir as the basics of these. I also feel that students should have
the option to take other extracurriculars as well, maybe classes they are more interested in
personally, such as wood shop or a technology class, home economics, cooking, etc. I feel that
the students freedom to further express themselves beyond the basic math, science, english, and
history is very important to a students education and time in the school system. The way my
middle and high school worked was you had your basic four, then got to choose 3 more classes,
wether it be another core class, creative writing, art, band, orchestra, choir, journalism, and so
many more. I feel that this way is best because students can further express themselves in other
classes and pursue extra classes they enjoy and truly want to take, because maybe they are not so
great at math, but love english and writing, so they choose to take an extracurricular of creative
writing along with the english class they are already studying in.

I feel that this type of content, where it is the main basic four plus three extracurriculars,
is best for students. I feel it is best because students can take classes they feel are important to
them, they can explore activities and learn about jobs that each class they take can lead into,
taking extracurriculars can lead a student into who they are, what they want to do in life, and
who they want to be. The core classes are extremely important, and I personally feel
extracurriculars are equally as important to a learners education because they also help shape the
individual learner into who they are and who they want to become in the future.
Personally, I know that being able to explore all these different classes I was able to take
throughout my educational career has impacted exactly who I am today, who I want to become,
and most of all why I want to teach. Seeing many different teachers at work, knowing they
wanted to teach and make a difference while stimulating a students love for that class and topic
was something I loved seeing. When I see a teacher that I can tell loves what they are doing, I
cant help but smile and know that they are contributing to why I want to be a teacher. Having
many different core and extracurricular classes have influence which subjects I want to teach,
and I know for those unsure what to do, those extracurriculars can help provide even just the
slightest idea of what a student might want to pursue in life.
Learning is an action that can occasionally be difficult to tell if it is taking place. There
are many ways to determine if students are learning, but some of these ways can be more
effective for determining one students learning while not effective at all for another. Tom
Bourner (a professor at the University of Brighton in the UK) wrote a piece called Teaching
Methods for Learning Outcomes, which is a document with ways to teach and get the
ideas across, ways to develop the students ability to test ideas and evidence, develop ability to
generate ideas and evidence, facilitate the personal development of students, and develop the

capacity of students to plan and manage own learning. While these ideas are more focused
towards older students, college-aged perhaps, some of his ideas of determining how students
learn can be placed into lower level classrooms. Some of these ways stated by Bourner consisted
of: presentations, essays, exams, peer-assessment, self-assessment, projects, and reflective logs
and diaries. There were more, but these are the main ideas that I had agreed with personally.
All of the ways Bourner states are ways the education system now does in fact use them.
Some newer ones to my thoughts were peer-assessment and self-assessment. I have had peers
correct and edit my work before, but for some reason I never thought of this as a way of
checking for learning. Teachers can use not only what the peers mention to see if they
understand, but students can get a peer-perspective which can show them another way to see or
apprehend what they are doing. (And since its coming from a friend maybe it can be another
way they can understand it better). Self-assessment was the other idea that was interesting to me.
Having students self-assess so the teacher is able to see if students understand the material is
interesting, while students may not be completely truthful (maybe because they just want to
move on or are embarrassed) the assessment can be done anonymously, so the teacher can just
get an overview of the class opinion of whether or not they understand the material. Other than
these new methods, all other methods such as activities, essays, review quizzes or review games,
projects, reflections, etc are all other effective ways of determining if students are learning.
My philosophy on education is that education should be fun, yet while it can be fun it can
also be academically challenging and stimulating for the student. Students should get a say in
what type of activities they want to do in class that day, while the teacher is still the leader of the
class. I feel that education is the single most important field out there, because we as educators
are the ones who are influencing students to be who and what they want, we as educators are

helping influence students opinions and ideals, we as educators are influencing the lives of
students in ways just beyond giving them knowledge to live in the real world. Every person
needs education, whether it be an actual classroom set-up, home-schooled, or informal and just
through learning with friends or out in the real world. Knowledge is the most important tool a
student can have.

Works Cited
Bourner, Tom. Teaching Methods for Learning Outcomes. Education + Training. MCB
University press: 1997. http://class.web.nthu.edu.tw/ezfiles/669/1669/img/
1381/5.Teachingmethodsforlearningoutcomes.pdf

David Miller Sadker, Karen R. Zittleman. Teachers, Schools, and Society. McGraw-Hill:
2012.