Philosophy of Education – Kacey Rexhausen

o I believe that the educator’s role is to create an environment with opportunities for children to learn and grow
that are developmentally appropriate for their needs and tailored to their interests. This includes a variety of
factors, ranging from the layout and design of the physical space and the materials within it, to the mixture of
child-guided and teacher-guided activities that are presented each week, and to the teacher’s intentional
planning to support children as they advance in their learning.

o I believe that observations play a crucial role in helping teachers understand each child's needs, goals, and skill
levels, as well as how best to address them. When teachers use informal assessments, such as recorded
observations, I believe they are more accurately able to gauge the progress, capabilities, and strengths of the
children they serve and can plan lessons that allow children to grow and progress.

o I believe that children are intrinsically motivated to learn and explore, and they are best supported by teachers
who learn their interests and skill levels by observing them over time. This allows teachers to craft open-ended
activities that give children the opportunity to learn about things that excite them at their own pace.

o I believe that play is the most important vehicle for development in all areas in early childhood education.
Children learn through hands-on experiences and through trial and error. I believe that children become more
engaged learners when activities are tailored to their interests and they can make some of their own choices, and
that they are most successful when parents and teachers work together as a team.

o I believe that children learn best when they feel safe and secure in their environment and can trust the adults
they spend time with, and when their environment and the activities carried out in it are developmentally
appropriate and tailored to their needs and interests.

o The early childhood theorists that I most identify with are Abraham Maslow and Erik Erikson. As Maslow's
hierarchy describes, humans have needs that must be met in a certain order before they can focus on needs that
are more abstract. These begin with physiological and safety needs (children must first be fed, sheltered, well-
slept, and feel safe and stable in their environment), then move up to love and belonging needs (children give and
receive love from family and friends and feel that they are part of a community) before reaching a point where
they can feel positive self-esteem and begin to learn and master concepts. One of the easiest ways to witness this
in the classroom is to see what happens when a child is hungry or tired. Any teacher with experience knows that
this child will be unlikely to learn before these needs are met.

Similar to Maslow's ideas, Erikson's proposed stages of psychosocial development in young children deal with
feeling safe, confident, and capable. To achieve mastery of these stages, the teacher's job is to meet children's
physical and emotional needs by being a responsive caregiver, teaching them self-help skills (such as dressing
themselves and using the toilet alone), giving them opportunities to pursue their interests and use new and
increasingly more advanced toys and tools, and providing them with a safe space to explore and make mistakes
without fear of judgment or serious repercussions.

o I believe that the most important things for children in early childhood education programs to learn are social
skills (such as following rules and expectations, playing nicely alongside or together with other children, and
managing their own emotions), language skills (such as communicating their own thoughts and needs effectively,
following appropriate rules of conversation, and being able to follow directions), and problem-solving skills (such
 as asking or observing someone else for advice and then using that advice, persisting in an activity until their goal
is accomplished, and trying new methods or strategies). These elements are important to me because they form a
solid foundation on which children can build to achieve success in their personal, scholastic, and (eventually)
professional lives, not only in the present, but for years to come.

o Due to my beliefs about how children learn best, I will strive to make my classroom and the materials and
attitudes within it warm and welcoming, I will observe children over time to determine their interests and skill
levels as well as assessing their prior knowledge on subjects we study, I will provide children with a variety of
child-guided activities that they are able to use hands-on at their own pace, and I will supply the classroom with
plenty of materials, experiences, and opportunities for open-ended discovery, as well as directing open-ended
questions and statements at children so they can come up with solutions and answers on their own.

 In my time as a student and as a professional, I have worked hard to make children feel safe and welcome in
their environment, whether that means allowing children access to comfort items, telling them that I care for
and love them, letting them know that “there aren’t good and bad kids, just good and bad choices,” providing
them with soft spaces in the classroom to rest comfortably, or supplying the classroom with pictures and
items representative of themselves, their culture, and the people in their lives.

 Additionally, I have used careful observation over a period of time as well as guided questions to determine
what children are interested in and what their skill levels are in various areas of development to tailor
activities to their needs. In one instance, I modified an existing activity to better suit the children in the
classroom by adding flies to a blank spiderweb counting card to assist children who were not yet able to
identify all numerals one through ten, allowing them to use their prior knowledge of one-to-one
correspondence to figure out how many spiders to put on their web. This way, they can then start to connect
the quantity with the number’s shape, which they then traced using a marker.

 I have also made an effort to provide children with activities geared to a variety of skill levels that are
available for them to use in the classroom at their leisure. During a week where the class was studying
Spiders and Bats, I provided children with the modified spiderweb counting mat activity described in the
previous paragraph, as well as with a variety of tabletop activities that focused on developing fine motor
skills. These items were available to children during freeplay time throughout the week so they could work at
their own pace.

 Finally, I aim to provide children with a variety of open-ended activities, materials, and feedback. In the
classroom, this may mean that during a week spent studying Pumpkins, I may put out real pumpkins for
children to experience in a variety of ways, including by using various tools to and all of their senses to
investigate it. I may also put out materials to create art featuring or involving pumpkins, including paper,
markers, crayons, collage materials, tempera paint, water colors, and finger paints. A third opportunity I may
provide is a sink or float activity in the water table involving small, hollowed-out pumpkins. Throughout all of
these activities (and, in fact, through all of my time in the classroom), I would ask children open-ended
questions to further their thought-processes, including things like, “What does it look like?” “Why do you
think that is?” and “What do you think that means?”

o As an educator, my next steps are to further my education, which is in line with my belief that learning is a life-
long pursuit, build my portfolio of activities and ideas, and work to make sure I am doing everything I can to
support the children that I encounter in the classroom, in my daily life, and around the world.