Educational Philosophy: Study Skills

Classroom rules are essential when a student is ready with necessary materials when the tardy bell rings. This will ensure that the class is ready to begin promptly, and more material can be covered, which means less homework for you. When a student asks permission to speak or leave your seat for any reason. This reduces distractions for other students as well as keeps the teachers on track. Again, the more cohesive a classroom works, means less work that will need to be done outside of the classroom. Students should respect the ideas of others. All students have valid ideas and opinions. We are to work in a manner in which we respect each student and their ideas. Remember, different students learn in different ways, and sometimes new ideas can get us to the solution a lot faster, leading to less homework as well. Furthermore, gum, candy, food, and drinks are restricted in the classroom. In addition to this being a district wide policy, this can be a further distraction to our class. We wouldn’t want someone to distract you from getting a good grade on a quiz, and we certainly want to respect the environment our school has provided us, so let’s keep it our policy to keep it clean.

It comes down to the conclusion a classroom that follows guidelines, sticks to stringent management, and knows the development phase of the age group being taught, lessons can be implemented in a more efficient manner creating less homework, and a less stressful environment. This environment then leads to students desiring to attend school and learn not only the material but the values, because they are not clouded by what else they are required to do when they get home.

There is an art to teaching. Not only do we need to be champions of Christ in our actions, we must have mastered our knowledge in addition to pedagogy (Slavin, 2012). As teachers we are never finished learning. We are teachers who need to have a deep and complete knowledge of what is taught in conjunction with an ability to take this knowledge and have it come across as authentic while honing in the skill of communicating the knowledge in an effective way (Brummelen, 2009). The material taught must not only be understood but we must really know the information, but beyond this we must teach our students in a way that is beyond of knowledge. We must stimulate deeper learning. God created us as a natural inquisitive being. We explore and discover, whether it is for good, or for bad such as Eve discovering the forbidden fruit and taking a bite. When we are children we are constantly discovering, learning that it burns when we touch something hot, or that we can break something if we throw it. Teaching a student to memorize facts and reiterate them on a test is not truly teaching the students. Rather a teacher needs to provide real world situations in which the student can apply these facts and think about the information. As students grow they are able to problem solve better because of what they have learned they can apply. This holds true to the cognitive progression Piaget recommends (Slavin, 2012). Students have many different learning styles, but we should not just teach these styles and play towards these styles, rather we should learn to make students passionate again. We need to ignite a flame in students to make them truly want to learn. English, history, science or math, there is a constant that students need passion.

A bit of a tip: Study skills are great, but a break between studying can do wonders for a person. I found that movies like Daredevil and Ultraviolet kept me from over studying on a subject because they were so different from what I originally started studying.