Teaching Philosophy Paper

Ever since I was little, I have always wanted to be a teacher. When I came home from school, I couldn’t wait to teach my little sister what I had learned that day. Now that I am in college, I know that I need to focus on my career goal, and why I ultimately want to be a teacher. The five reasons I want to teach are to help students feel as passionate about the subject as I do, to help students be successful, to be a role model, to have summer vacations and job security, and to make a difference in students’ lives. I will go through these five major points about why I want to teach more in detail throughout this paper, and I will also mention how my philosophy will tie into why and how I want to teach.

The first reason I want to teach is because I want to help students to feel as passionate about the subject as I do. My major is business education, so I will teach business classes in a high school. I love everything about personal finance, accounting, and statistics. I want students to gain a broader perspective on business, so that they can decide whether or not they want to go into business on a college level. With my degree, I could go directly into business, but I plan on teaching it. By teaching, I can get students excited about business, and allow them to thrive and give them tools to even open their own business someday. “Many people choose to teach because they are interested in a certain content area and want to share their interest and excitement with others (Liston, 2004) (Kauchack & Eggen, p. 7). I cannot wait to influence my students to pursue a degree in business after they graduate high school.

Business classes are very relevant to students’ lives. The second reason I want to teach is because I want to help students have a bright future, and give students the opportunity to be successful. Not all students will attend college, or have a high paying salary. Some students will take my classes to learn how to balance their check book, or file a tax form. The teacher I observed was the special education director at a high school, and she said many of the student’s with special needs will be placed in my class – because money and business terms make sense to them. Nothing will give be greater joy then to know I gave students the tools to be successful, even if it is just managing their own money when they are in the real world.

The third reason I want to teach is because I want to be a role model, and I want to receive very rewarding intrinsic experiences. I want to be a person that my students will look up to. In high school, many students learn through role models, or people they look up to. Sometimes they are friends, teachers, or coaches. As I will explain in my social learning theory section, people learn the best through one another. I want my students to take after my attitude, work ethic, motivation, and think of me as their role model.

My fourth reason I want to teach is for job security and summer vacations. I plan on getting married, having children, and continuing my education. Teachers also have job security and benefits that are an advantage in today’s world. “Job security and summer vacations ranked sixth and seventh, respectively, in the survey”(Kauchack & Eggen, 2008, p. 8). These extrinsic awards sound very satisfying, but I like to look at them as an added bonus that teachers receive. I can also use summers to grow professionally, attend seminars, and continue my education.

My final and most important reason I want to teach is because I want to make a difference in my students’ lives. I am positive that every person who has attended school has had a teacher who has made a positive difference in their life. Students everywhere need encouragement and someone to believe in them. I feel that schools are in dire need for teachers who can motivate and influence students. I want to be the teacher that encourages students to succeed by strengthening the talents that the students already have - and making them feel good about themselves. I love to learn about people, and find out what motivates them – and use it to my advantage. I believe that younger generations have so much potential, and they just need the extra encouragement and challenges to strive through their whole educational career.

Students all have a different style of learning, and I will do my best to reach each student as an individual while teaching my daily lessons. When I teach, I will follow the social learning theory, because I feel that high school students need a strong “role model” to look up to. Students learn the best by utilizing the social learning theory. Albert Bandura is a prominent theorist of the social learning theory. The social learning theory (or the social/cognitive learning theory) can be defined simply as students learning by observing others. Bandura describes social learning as humans learning to satisfy their needs, wishes, and desires by observing the outcomes of behaviors and events – the observations lead to expectations about what will happen in the future, and also to the expressing of emotions (“Bandura & apos: STheory” 2006). Social learning is accomplished in many ways. Social learning includes vicarious learning, modeling, and eventually self-regulation.

One of the best ways to explain social learning theory is to review the bobo doll experiment, conducted by Albert Bandura himself. What Bandura noticed was the children exposed to the violent and mean behavior towards the bobo dolls imitated the actions of their observations. The children did not know they were being watched, they simply were playing by themselves - in the manors that were modeled to them. In the opposite group, the children exposed to the non-aggressive behavior towards the bobo dolls, the preschoolers imitated their observations, and continued playing nicely and non-aggressively. Bandura and his partners in the bobo doll experiment revealed that modeling is not just a response to imitation, but by observing others, individuals can generate new behavioral patterns that can go far beyond what the individual has observed (Artino, 2007, p. 9).

The bobo doll experiment is an example of vicarious learning. Vicarious learning takes place in schools all the time. Modeling is a related aspect of vicarious learning. There are two types of models: live and symbolic. Family members, teachers, and coaches are all examples of live models that observers may look up to. Michael Jordan is a popular symbolic model, because of his basketball success. Whether the model is live or symbolic, they will have at least one of the following characteristics: competence, prestige and power, “gender-appropriate” behavior, or behavior relevant to one’s own situation (Ormrod, 2006, p. 64). Another key element to modeling is response facilitation and inhibition. The consequences of observational learning will all have different response effects. The four different consequences include: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, presentation punishment, and removal punishment. For example, if a student is ridiculed by classmates for asking a “stupid” question during a lecture, that student is more likely to stop asking questions in class. This is an example of presentation punishment, because the learner found that asking a question was an undesirable experience, so the response decreased with the stimulus. I will utilize positive reinforcement as much as I can in my classroom.

Both vicarious learning and modeled learning have common elements. These four elements are: attention, memory (or retention), imitation (or motor reproduction), and motivation. A person needs to pay attention in order to learn. The person then needs to remember what they have observed. That person then needs to be physically and/or mentally capable of imitating the observed action or behavior. Lastly, the person needs to be motivated to imitate the observation. Guess what motivates high school students (or any students for that matter)? Technology. I will use technology to help with attention, memory, or retention of material that we cover in class. Technology is a great asset in our society’s growing passion for learning through the Internet or from technological devices. I will not replace teaching and classroom discussion with technology, I will simply enhance it. The use of technology will also motivate students to learn. If students get to use a computer to keep notes during a lecture, they just might pay closer attention to the material if it is an assignment to submit the notes. I will use technology to simply help students learn content better, and I will use it to enhance my teaching methods.

My goal in my classroom is to have each student leave with a sense of motivation. Motivation will come from oneself. Motivation eventually transitions into the final stage of the social learning theory, self-regulation. Self-regulation is defined as the “process of taking control of one’s own learning and behavior” (Ormrod, 2006, p. G-4). As a person matures, they become less dependent on vicarious learning and modeling, and they become more self-regulated. After a person is to the self-regulation stage of motivation, self-efficacy is the “belief that one is capable of executing certain behaviors or reaching certain goals” (Ormrod, 2006, p. 194). Once a person gets to this stage, they will have a high confidence level and will be at a more comfortable level within themselves to start and finish new tasks. Some use self-efficacy to describe others on whether or not they have a high self-efficacy or a low self-efficacy. The same person can have both forms of self-efficacy. For example, I may have low self-efficacy for something I am skeptical about, like I wouldn’t want to ice skate on thin ice. Usually, self-efficacy is situational specific.

To close, I believe that all of the other learning theories offer many great perspectives on learning, but I think that social learning teaches the best. Learning through others can really benefit learners. From the day we are born to the day we die, social learning is always relevant to our learning. Vicarious learning, modeling, and self-regulation are all important factors of being a teacher. When I am a teacher, I will focus on being the best role model I can be. One of my greatest responsibilities that I will have as a teacher is to be a positive and influencing model to my students, while aiding them to attain self-regulation.

In conclusion, I have five main reasons why I want to teach. The five reasons are as followed: to help students feel as passionate about the subject as I do, to help students be successful, to be a role model, to have summer vacations and job security, and to make a difference in students’ lives. All of these reasons are very important to me, and I feel very strongly about each of my reasons to teach. I will utilize the social learning theory every day in my classroom, and I will use technology as an aid, not a replacement for my teaching. My mother once told me that the greatest teachers are the children who played school, and were continuously the teacher. I have wanted to be a teacher ever since kindergarten and I cannot wait to see how teaching will benefit me and each student that I get the opportunity to teach.

References

Artino, A. (2007). Bandura, Ross, and Ross: Observational Learning and the Bobo Doll. ERIC database. http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED499095.pdf (15 Nov. 2010).

Bandura & apos:STheory (2006). Elsevier's Dictionary of Psychological Theories. http://www.credoreference.com/entry/estpsyctheory/bandura_s_theory (15 Nov. 2010).

Ormrod, J.E. (2006). Essentials of Educational Psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Kauchak, D., & Eggen, P. (2008). Introduction to Teaching: Becoming a Professional (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.

Liston, D. (2004). The lure of learning in teaching. Teachers College Record, 106(3), 459 – 486.