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PHILOSOPHY OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT: While I believe every student deserves an education, I also think that each child is special with different interests and a unique perceive concept of how the world should treat them. That said; I run my classes based upon three main concepts. These are respect, integrity and time management. I expect a student who enters my classroom to be respectful not only to myself, but to the other students and themselves. If a student does not respect themselves, they will not respect others. Integrity basically means that students are honest with themselves and others. To me, this means that students give 100% while they are in class, do not cheat and can be counted upon to be reliable. The third concept is time management. My students are only 9 months to three years from leaving high school and either entering higher education, a job or the military. All of these employers will expect good time management skills. Having spent 20 years in the USMC, I know how responsible young people can be when given the opportunity and encouraged to live up to high expectations.
PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION:My philosophy of education has been forged by 20 years in the USMC and my time spent teaching at Moshannon Valley. My current philosophy is a combination of Discovery Learning and Inquiry Learning. I try to focus the responsibility of learning on my students through class discussion, projects and group exercises. I do not believe in lecturing an entire period because I’ve discovered that students retain more when given a chance to “digest” a new concept or procedure. Not all, but some of my “lecturing” actually occurs via the use of Training DVD’s that I show on the whiteboard. I find this to be a useful tool because students use the same “class file” as the one being shown on the whiteboard. They are actively engaged by essentially doing the lesson along with what they observe on the whiteboard. Another advantage of Training DVD is that a student who is absent from class gets “exactly” the same lesson upon their return. I normally give students “packets” of information to keep the density of new information short. This gives me more time to reinforce new content via discussion or projects. On topics that are more detailed or technical, I have students take notes. Again, this is easy to accomplish with the Training DVD. The DVD can be paused allowing students time to access a word document to type some notes, which I dictate, on methods or procedures.
The inquiry learning process gives my students the opportunity to discuss, reflect, ask, investigate and then create. This also enforces the notion that the computer is only a tool which gives students the ability to apply concepts. I believe that true learning is the ability to apply what you have learned in the classroom. To quantify this concept we do a lot of class activities where students have to produce products by applying what they have learned during class.
Finally, I believe that learning should and can be exciting and fun. I consider myself to be a “lifelong learner” and I hope I have instilled into my students the belief that to succeed they also need to become lifelong learners.