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Kayla M. Stone
Dr. Karla Henderson
EDUC 250- Educational Psychology
29 April, 2015
Philosophy of Education

My greatest aspiration in beginning my professional career beyond Ivy Tech is to

graduate from Northern Kentucky University with a Bachelors Degree in English-Secondary
Education. With this degree, I will begin my career teaching English at the high school level
within the Cincinnati Tri-State area. I plan on returning to school to someday complete a
Masters degree in English Literature, and eventually a Doctorate program so that I may work as
an instructor at a university. I plan upon focusing a majority of my professional writing upon the
topics of Southern Gothicism and realism in literature. Someday, I hope to return to Ivy Tech to
work as a summer adjunct to further build professional experience.
Essentially, teaching is important to me because humanity is important to me. The mind
of a child is full of unfathomable potential, and as a teacher, I hope to serve as a tool readily
available to help any child discover their academic passion or talents. I think that when a child is
learning anything, they first look towards their learning environment for referencing in their
development. I want to be a teacher who always fosters a positive, pro-learning environment that
students will feel comfortable in. My ultimate classroom goal is for students to feel motivated
about what they are learning. I want to be the teacher who makes students excited to attend class.
In saying this, the role of the teacher should be to ask themselves daily, How can I make this
lesson relevant or meaningful to a students interest? Generally, when learners feel like they are

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connecting to a lesson or class event, they feel more positively about learning and maintaining
focus on the topic at hand.
In accordance to peaking student interest, teachers also need to be mindful of their
students potential towards emotional sensitivity about any given topic. A teacher must always
consider that what may seem casual for one student to discuss, may be extremely triggering for
another. Teachers should keep students and parents informed about what exact nature of unit
plans so that the students know what to expect when entering class each day. For this reason,
topics such as war, poverty, homelessness, death etc. should be treated with care so as to uphold
the positivity of the classroom climate. The affect that the material has on a student also has the
potential to cause the student to behave in an undesired way. If students are feeling affected
negatively by material, they will feel less motivated to participate in class discussions or
complete assignments out of feelings of inadequacy. It is the job of an effective teacher to be able
to pinpoint the struggling points of students, and provide them with direct attention that they
need to overcome their academic obstacles.
A teacher should always seek to facilitate a classroom environment where students are
\provided with one-on-one opportunities to teach them what they need to learn, but allow enough
room for them to regulate for themselves how they learn material. Humanistic psychology in the
classroom makes sense to me because I do not believe that the teacher should be the central
focus of the classroom. I believe that students and their academic needs should be the central
focus of the classroom, with a knowledgeable instructor acting as a facilitator to aid in leading
them to accomplish their learning goals. With humanistic principles in my classroom, I plan upon
encouraging students to participate in group projects to help foster socialization in the classroom,
as well as perspective-taking, where students are encouraged to listen and learn from one another

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respectfully. I believe that differentiating learning practices work for different students, and in
light of this, I refuse to present material consistently in only one format or fashion. With
implementations of technology in the classroom I hope to create a learning environment which
stimulates multiple senses of each student by taking time to appeal to elements of touch, visual
responsiveness, and auditory stimulation by conducting first-hand learning experiences with
objects to hold, watching relevant online videos, or playing podcasts or lecture samples for inclass referencing.
Within my future classroom I do not plan on focusing too heavily upon formal
assessments, as I feel that they are often poor measures of student retention of knowledge. I think
in most instances, students worry too much about memorization of material at hand, and not
enough time spent actually learning the material. Instead, I plan to implement informal
assignments in the forms of frequent group projects to build peer relationships, presentations,
and a running portfolio to chart progress. I think that in the instance of comprehension and
literary analysis based classes, reading checks and take-home review sheets would also be
appropriate measures of informal assessments to utilize as well. To minimize distractions in the
assessment environment, I think an effective teacher needs to know when to intervene, and when
to let students work out problems for themselves. Teachers need to be firm about their
assessment protocol, so that students who struggle with assessments always know what to
expect. An effective strategy to counteract daily distraction before assessments could be to instill
a no-talking policy while the teacher is taking attendance while the students enter the classroom.
This way, students who may need a few minutes of quiet time to debrief before an examination
could feel more relaxed.

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Collaboration among communities, parents, and other faculty members will also serve as
a focal point within my classroom. I want the parents of my students to feel like that they are
empowered to be an active part of their childs education, as well as free to ask questions or raise
concerns about the content taught within my class. I believe that children develop best when they
feel connected with their community in some regard, and for this reason I want to be a teacher
who works with community officials to ensure that at least twice a semester students are able to
participate in a community event or showcase their talents and abilities in local libraries, garden
centers, art conventions and so on. I feel that by developing a greater sense of community, high
school students will feel more comfortable with social networking as they navigate themselves
into their prospective career.
With these strategies in mind, my ultimate goal is to enable students to learn from the
differences that they observe in each others learning styles, cultures, and personalities. I feel that
as a teacher in a continually growing multicultural society, it is imperative that I am wellinformed and sensitive to the cultures, beliefs, and learning styles which shape my classroom.
For these reasons, I feel most compelled to ensure that multicultural studies is a key topic
addressed within my yearly lesson plan, because in this way a childs mind will grow closer to
his/her community, family, and greater world around them.