What is your philosophy of education? This was the question that the professor asked us in my second year of my teacher education undergraduate program. Philosophy of education? I had no idea. In fact it wasn’t until very recently that my philosophy was anything but an inchoate slush of ideas, inclinations, and questions. Though I know that my philosophy will grow and change, almost 20 years after that question was asked, I think I have an answer. Okay, I know. I’m a little on the slow side.

I have taught grades 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and remedial classes in high school. I have worked as a mentor, a cooperating teacher, a professional development coordinator, a reading specialist, and a librarian. I have loved students in tiny Eskimo villages on the Bering Sea Coast, in inner-city Las Vegas, and in rural Wisconsin. I have sat on every possible type of committee and attended more meetings than anyone should ever have to attend. I earned National Board Certification, published in journals, and presented at conferences. Most importantly each year I have loved my profession more deeply and each year has been seminal in my growth as an educator and as an educational philosopher.

Today my philosophy boils down to a list of five things I know to be true about teaching and learning. In my experience these are among the most important truths for successful educators. If I had to distill them into a few sentences it would read something like this:  Students will learn if they work, they will only learn if they work, and they want to work.  A teacher’s job is to lend students their expertise and allow them to get busy.

Without further delay, I am happy to share my list of the 5 things I finally understand about teaching and learning. For each I will give a brief overview and link to resources when possible. All of the resources are quick and easy-to-read. Teachers are busy. I respect this.

1. The brain can be exercised and grown! EVERY single student can grow, learn, and achieve at high levels.

All children want to learn and all crave challenge. This comes from the research of the brilliant psychologist Carol Dweck. Dweck teaches us that our brains are malleable and that humans can actually get smarter. She also reminds us that failure is a part of learning and should be celebrated as part of the process.

• Carol Dweck’s Mindset site
• Carol Dweck Video on Mindset (MUST watch!)
• In Praise of Failure
• You Can Grow Your Brain
• The Perils and Promise of Praise

2. Motivation is key, but the way we think of motivation must change.

Motivation comes from success. Motivation comes from feeling good about your work. Motivation comes from “seeing” growth with hard data. Motivation is not something we give to students is something we teach to students. Daniel Pink and John Hattie have done outstanding work in this area.

• Daniel Pink’s Site
• RSA Animate Video on Drive by Daniel Pink (MUST watch video!!!)
• Profession John Hattie’s Site
• Slide Share Presentation on Visible Learning

3. Classroom management is absolutely foundational to teaching and learning.

Excellent teachers know how to run a classroom, how to manage children, how to differentiate instructional experiences, and how to proactively ward off poor choices. Differentiated instruction is a big part of classroom management.

• Cooperative Discipline by Linda Albert, the best book ever about classroom management.
• Carol Tomlinson’s Site Tomlinson is a professional leader in differentiated instruction:

4. The answers are out there.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Years and years of research by our professional leaders have given us some solid answers about what works. We must let go of our egos and allow ourselves to be open to the possibility that someone else might have better answers. Teachers are trained in colleges that mostly subscribe to a problem-solving approach. The thing is, you’re not in college anymore, you’re in a profession and professions are defined by shared knowledge and resources. Thinking as a professional means using the body of knowledge that is out there. Of course, each of us has something to add to the body of knowledge but we don’t have to and shouldn’t treat all of education as a do-it-yourself endeavor.

• Common Core Standards
• What Works Clearinghouse
• Florida Center for Reading Research
• Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analysis Relating to Achievement by John Hattie
• Robert Marzano’s Site (Marzano has been synthesizing research about what works in education for over a decade.)

5. The best teachers are coaches not facilitators or bosses.

Okay, despite what I said in number 4, this comes mostly from my own head but also seems to be emerging and converging from a variety of sources as we move from the teacher as facilitator model. But, if you’ve ever watched a coach work with her/his team. You know I’m right. Coaching can be defined as the art and science of helping someone achieve their goals through explicit teaching, modeling, hand-on guided practice, and lots of independent practice. That just oozes good teaching.

• Effective Coaching Site: 
• Student as Worker, Teacher as Coach, Coalition of Essential Schools: 

That’s it. A full 20 years after I was asked about my philosophy of education I finally know the answer. Too bad the brilliant old professor who asked this of my cohort of novice educators isn’t around to hear it. His only possible response would have been, “Duh. What took you so long?”

Before I close this essay I’ve got to talk about Finland. Finland public education has gotten a lot of press recently for the amazing international test scores they’ve been posting. Last week the Finns shared what they consider the reasons for their great success. In a nutshell they cited the following as foundational: universal social services (health care, extended maternity/paternity leave, free quality education), allowing students to grow in developmentally appropriate ways (kids learn when they’re ready not when a grade or age says they should be ready), and treating teachers as professionals (paying them well, respecting them, and offering them generous planning time.)

These are not things America is yet prepared to consider, much less do. While the philosophy I’ve outlined above still holds true, I believe that no systemic change can happen for our public schools until we start taking lessons from Finland.

That may sound negative, but it’s not! Think about understanding number 1 and 5. Idea number 1: Americans can grow their brains!  We will come to realize that fair is fair and equal is equal and we must do right by our most precious American resource, our students. Idea number 5: The answers are out there all we have to do is implement them! Finland found some answers and they’re willing to share.

Now, the question is, what is your philosophy of education?

For more information about the Finnish school system, link to the articles below.

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/finland-schools-success-equality-collaboration_n_1219780.html
• http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html

Rita Platt is a Nationally Board Certified teacher. Her experience includes teaching learners of all levels from kindergarten to graduate students. She currently is a Library Media Specialist for the St. Croix Falls SD in Wisconsin, teaches graduate courses for the Professional Development Institute, and consults with local school districts. 

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1. Motivation and learning: practical teaching tips for block schedules, brain-based learning, multiple intelligences, improved student motivation, increased achievement.
2. Best practice: new standards for teaching and learning in America’s schools.
3. Inspiring active learning: a handbook for teachers. Harmin, M.

What can I possibly say to make this class understand?  What can I show them?  What can we do so that they “get it?”

We spend a lot of time asking these kinds of questions–searching for that breakthrough moment, the key that will open (for the class) the door to understanding.

Of course, it almost never works that way.

Lessons, guided practice, presentations, project based learning activities– all these succeed (or not) one student at a time.  We plant the the seeds, and slowly, they take root and grow–one at a time.

Students demonstrate growth one at a time.  One at a time, seals are broken and understanding seeps in. Doors open and light bulbs turn on, sure, but rarely all at once–usually (often painfully) one. . . . at . . . a . . . time.

True, we are moving mountains.  But if you’re showing up each day expecting the earth to shift under your feet–it’s going to be a long year.  Yes, there are times to focus on the mountain, but the real progress is being made with the stones at your feet–one at a time.

One student at a time doesn’t grab the headlines.  But it’s the way this works.  Success and failure.  Excellence and mediocrite.  We are winning or we are losing.  And it’s all happening one student at a time.

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3. Listen up! Boys and girls hear, read, learn differently

The chapter is a fabulously detailed and thoughtful discussion of six methods to create a student-centered classroom:

• integrative units,
• small-group activities,
• representing-to-learn,
• classroom workshop,
• authentic experiences and
• reflective assessment.

Each approach is thoroughly discussed, and there are suggested further readings for each.  Unlike many of the other authors, Zemelman does acknowledge that we still need whole-class instruction at times.  He offers methods for improving teacher-directed lessons: reading aloud,  mini-lessons, and demonstrations.

Zemelman, S., et.al. (1998).  Classroom structures for best practice.  Best practice: new standards for teaching and learning in America’s schools. Retrieved June 16, 2008 from ProQuest database.

Related posts:

1. Perspective-taking as transformative practice in teaching multicultural literature to white students. Haertling Thein, A., Beach, R., & Parks, D.
2. Motivation and learning: practical teaching tips for block schedules, brain-based learning, multiple intelligences, improved student motivation, increased achievement.
3. Inspiring active learning: a handbook for teachers. Harmin, M.

The author has compiled and named a myriad of techniques used by K-12 teachers and college professors.  One recurring theme throughout the book is the importance of pacing.

According to this author, the teacher must keep the classroom pace highly involved and fast-paced because of the shrinking attention span of students.  The book is divided into five sections (instructing, raising student motivation, organizing the classroom, handling homework, testing and grading, and producing meaningful learning), and the guiding principle the author says is found in every fully inspirational classroom is DESCA (dignity, energy, self-management, community and awareness).  Filled with practical methods and specific examples, this book is a solid resource for teachers.

Harmin, M.  (1994).  Inspiring active learning: a handbook for teachers.  Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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2. Motivation and learning: practical teaching tips for block schedules, brain-based learning, multiple intelligences, improved student motivation, increased achievement.
3. Classroom strategies for interactive learning. Buehl, D.

Divided into seven main chapters:

• student motivation,
• enhancing motivation and commitment to quality,
• making teaching easier,
• building knowledge and understanding,
• collaborative groups,
• self-reflection and assessment prompts, and
• exciting projects, products, and performance ideas,

this book is extremely practical.

The authors base their beliefs on two principles for educators:

1. operate from understanding and
2. manage context – not students.

They believe that students must feel the learning is

• valuable,
• safe,
• involving,
• caring,
• successful and
• enabling

in order to maximize student motivation.

Chapters 2 through 7 contain a myriad of quick tips, activities, checklists, and forms for teachers to use with students.  Each activity includes a purpose, description, use, and procedure section.  It also includes the grade level, time, special materials, motivational standards and pluses list.

Rogers, S., Ludington, J. & Graham, S.  (1998).  Motivation and learning: practical teaching tips for block schedules, brain-based learning, multiple intelligences, improved student motivation, increased achievement.  Evergreen, Colorado: Peak Learning Systems, Inc.

Related posts:

1. Ball, W. H. & Brewer, P. F. Socratic seminars. In Teaching in the block: strategies for engaging active learners
2. Motivating students using brain-based teaching strategies.
3. Teaching with the brain in mind.

An Annotation by Jeffery Ayer

Glasser makes a case for choice theory to combat the common reinforcement of a stimulus/response (SR) psychology in today’s classrooms.  He asserts that “SR is completely wrongheaded and totally destructive to the warm, supportive human relationships students need to succeed in school” (16).  With choice theory, students take ownership and responsibility for their actions.  “Accepting that you can control only your own behavior is the most difficult lesson choice theory has to teach,” states Glasser (17).

Glasser goes on to share four psychological needs that all learners have genetically, including “the need to belong, the need for power, the need for freedom, and the need for fun” (17).  Students are more likely to stick with and thrive in school under these conditions, whereas the pain of failure is something eventually that leads to a student leaving school altogether.  “Teachers need to learn and use the most important of all choice theory concepts, the quality world.  This small, very specific, personal world is the core of our lives because in it are the people, things, and beliefs we have discovered most satisfy our needs” (17).

Glasser also focuses on how the SR approach does not really allow teachers to connect with students.  According to Glasser, “This way of teaching is called ‘bossing’” (18).  The bossing, he states, must turn into leading.  “Leaders never coerce.  We follow them because we believe they have our best interests at heart.  In school, if [a student] senses that particular teachers are now caring, listening, encouraging, and laughing, he will begin to consider putting them into his quality world” (18).  Punishing students, on the other hand, leads to a student keeping the teacher, and potentially the school, out of his/her quality world.

In closing, Glasser focuses on special programs that were actually utilized in one school.  Over the duration of that program being implemented, students observed the changes.  “Asked why they were no longer disruptive and were beginning to work in school, [students] said, ‘You care about us.’  Sometimes they added, ‘And now you give us choices and work we like to do’” (19).  The clear, opposing force is the “get tough” mentality, which fights against students rather than working with them.  And in such an environment, eventually those students fighting that very system, give up.  “Life is hard enough without the continuing harangues of the doomsayers.  In a world that uses choice theory, people would be more optimistic,” concludes Glasser (21).

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1. The quality school teacher. Glasser, W., M.D.
2. Literature circles: voice and choice in the student-centered classroom. Daniels, H.
3. Activating the desire to learn.

An Annotation by Jeffery Ayer

Funds are difficult to acquire in districts these days, with budget cutting, economic downturn, and political strife all part of the equation. In this article, Fontaine argues that using new technologies like wikis and blogs can significantly save school districts money, if and when they begin to take advantage of what they have to offer. “Training teachers in differentiated learning – also called differentiated instruction – has helped alleviate some of the issues, but the educational community then found another major obstacle to instruction. The lessons in schools had changed, but the textbooks they used had not,” claims Fontaine. For one, Web 2.0 can become a new resource (and free at that), and it can easily fit into the confines of any district’s differentiated instruction initiatives. Fontaine later writes, “By embedding audio, video, interactive tutorials, simulations, and edu-games, the students will have almost limitless depth on curriculum topics. If you add screencasts, podcasts, and text-to-speech widgets, you’ll have the potential to differentiate instruction to reach every student across the entire intellectual spectrum.”

Fontaine later cites Will Richardson, who wrote Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, who said, “Teaching is a collective effort, not an individual accomplishment.” There are budgetary arguments to be made, but as Fontaine says, “If we are to prepare young minds for the creative thinking of their futures will certainly require, then it is our obligation to use every tool in our toolbox to effectively impart that knowledge.”

He also points out that Web 2.0 shows that the role of teachers is no longer just to share information; rather, teachers need to “given [students] the skills to evaluate, organize, and apply” the information they gather from the internet and various online resources, including collaborative sites like Wikipedia. Most importantly, perhaps, Fontaine says that by nature, this process is student-centered and information literacy!

And as if his arguments weren’t thorough enough, he also points out the strength of constructivist/inquiry-based learning, where questions students pose drive the curriculum. By using wikis in particular, this is exactly what is happening in and outside of the classroom.

The big caveat, however, is the digital divide (access for all students). “As long as the digital divide separates students from accessing the internet at home, a wikitext will probably remain a supplement rather than the primary text.” Still, Fontaine recognizes the power (and weightlessness) of a potential online textbook, and a significant way, if districts truly invest, in saving a lot of money (the investment comes in the form of staff development using the aforementioned technologies).

In closing, Fontaine lists four online samples of what he calls wikitexts, and he outlines the three educational areas a collaboratively built wikitext would address, including “multiple means of representation (by giving learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge); multiple means of expression (by providing learners with alternatives for demonstrating what they know); and multiple means of engagement (by tapping into learners’ interests, offering appropriate challenges, and increasing motivation).”

Related posts:

1. Brown, N.E. and K. Bussert. Information literacy 2.0: empowering students through personal engagement.
2. Wiki, blog, or moodle? Fryer, W.
3. Wikis and literacy development.

An Annotation by Laurie Walsh

This book is loaded with practicality!  The author explains reading as a constructive process.  Meaning is determined by the reader’s experiences, the text itself, the learning context, and the strategies applied by the reader to obtain meaning.  The first three, short chapters explain the process, consider text frames, and explain fact pyramids.  The rest of the book, pages 24 through 139 provide “classroom strategies for teaching and learning.”  Each strategy has a few introductory paragraphs, the strategy explanation in steps, the applicable graphic organizer, an explanation of advantages to the strategy, and a further resources section.  I have used several of the strategies in this book, and they have been consistently effective.

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An Annotation by Laurie Walsh

Brown reviews the beliefs of Harvey Daniels, author of Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in the Student-Centered Classroom, Katherine L. Schlick Noe, Ph.D., an associate professor at the School of Education at Seattle University, and Pam Chandler, a sixth-grade English teacher in California.  All three agree that literature circles are a fantastic discussion strategy.  The article discusses the discussion roles for lit. circles.  Noe states that “roles have the potential of undermining students’ natural conversations,” so the roles should be discontinued once the class is comfortable with the discussion format.  Chandler feels the teacher should eventually drop out of the lit. circle, but Noe believes that observing the groups is a valuable assessment tool.  Daniels and Noe believe groups should not be based on reading ability; Chandler disagrees because of student comfort level.  Brown finishes the article with all experts agreeing that lit. circles are effective for at-risk students, and lit. circles must provide students with choices.

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1. Literature circles: voice and choice in the student-centered classroom. Daniels, H.
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An Annotation By Laurie Walsh

The article states that traditional lecture methods – profs talk, students listen – dominate college and university classrooms.  (The same can be said, we know, for high school classrooms.)  The authors reiterate the importance of students engaging in higher-order thinking skills, which is not common in a lecture setting.  Active learning is defined as learning where “students must read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solving problems” (1).  Active learning can be incorporated in the classroom in many ways, one of which is discussion.  There are, however, barriers to this type of educational reform.

Related posts:

1. Inspiring active learning: a handbook for teachers. Harmin, M.
2. Ball, W. H. & Brewer, P. F. Socratic seminars. In Teaching in the block: strategies for engaging active learners
3. Literature circles build excitement for books! Brown, M.