I believe that the purpose of education is to expand our knowledge and understanding of the self and the world.  It is the job of the teacher to promote students to explore different avenues of interest while also ensuring that their overall knowledge will be applicable to future pursuits. A teacher must also encourage the growth of the individual to make connections and create understanding through meaningful applications.

    The best teacher is a teacher that is motivated, engaged, understanding, consistent, impartial, and always learning.  Being motivated by progressing the student’s knowledge and building useful experiences is important.  Teachers should always be looking for the next step in the learning process and challenging past existent understanding.  Teachers need to engage the students with an active environment where learning is not a chore, but keeps alive their curiosity about new knowledge.  All students are different and bring unique experiences to the classroom and community, so having enough understanding to be open to and aware of these differences is essential for the teacher.  By understanding the differences in each student, the teacher can focus on the needs of the individual and then move on to accommodate the entire class accordingly.

One of the most important aspects of being a good teacher is consistency.  Consistency is essential in keeping the respect of the students.  A consistent teacher allows the students to have an idea of what to expect in the classroom.  The main areas in which students need consistency are assessment, attitude, and behavior.  A teacher showing consistency in these areas allows students to feel more comfortable and stable in the learning environment.  The students know what to expect when they break a rule or turn in an assignment because the guidelines and consequences are clear and always enforced.

Teachers need to be impartial to each student.  A teacher showing favoritism can bring one student up while not acknowledging the efforts and successes of another.  Each and every student should feel they bring value to the classroom.  It is important that praises are structured so as to not place students at unreachable heights to other students.  If a teacher were to say that a student is the best at math it could lead another student to not try in math because they could never be as good as the other student.  For these reasons, structuring encouragement and praise is extremely important, especially for younger children.

Last, but certainly not least, the best teacher must be an active learner.  Given the different learning styles and range of experiences students bring to their classroom, a teacher must try to find out the best way to get the information through to the student.  Learning the students’ goals, learning styles, and interests help create lessons with the students’ interests in mind.  The most important attribute to be the best teacher is to know your students.  It is essential to know what interests the students because relating content to personal interest creates a deeper meaning.  Incorporating a student’s favorite animal into a reading assignment helps to perk their interest in the subject and makes it easier to relay the content because that interest is there. A teacher needs to be a constant learner of both course content and the students so they can provide the best possible learning environment.

    The role of a teacher is to encourage growth in each student by creating an environment and community that is supportive and engaging: conducive to learning.  A teacher needs to understand the past experiences and knowledge of their students and build on that knowledge.  Teaching is not tilting back the student’s head and pouring in knowledge.  Teaching is constructing an environment that will actively expand knowledge through interactive and engaging lessons that cater towards individual learning styles.  Learning is an active process in which students construct meaning through building on prior knowledge of a subject.  Ideas are created not absorbed.

    I believe in child-centered education with a focus on experiences.  I want to prepare students for the future through meaningful knowledge and experiences that enable them to adapt to a changing society.  I also want encourage each student to create meaning for themselves and recognize how the content applies to their own lives and what is important to them.

    Every child learns differently and every style of learning should be embraced and built upon.  Learning is a process that is both external and internal.  By external I mean the environment in which learning is taking place.  Providing an open, active, and supportive environment is essential in the learning process.  Having the elements of a great teacher, mentioned above, help to shape this type of environment.  One also needs a community that is supportive and open to everyone’s ideas.  Each student should feel comfortable in asking and answering questions posed in class.  Also students need to have avenues to express their feelings and frustrations.  The physical environment is very important as well.  Decorating the walls with work done by students makes each student feel invested in the class and community.  The students help shape the physical environment with what interests them.  A teacher must also have an understanding of the course content and recognize how it applies to their lives.  Being able to answer the question of “why are we doing this?” for each lesson is vital so that the students can make the connection to the real world.   It is the teachers’ job to make these connections to past experiences and build on them for future ones.

    Experience is key in learning.  Assimilating new experiences and information with past knowledge and memory will provide avenues for students to emotionally connect and apply material.  I use the word experiences to describe more than just content or the curriculum, it is also a description of the way in which they are presented.  Making an emotional connection in each student to the content can promote deeper meaning and understanding.  This goes right back to knowing the students in order to be the best possible teacher I can be.  I am a teacher who will have an understanding of what will connect the students to the content, and am able to create experiences that will build on those connections in a safe and supportive environment.