Reflections on Teaching Philosophy

We are living in a globalized world where technologies develop rapidly. In such a context, education is no longer a mere passing down of knowledge to students. Instead of teaching hard skills, teachers should instill soft skills in the students. Social and emotional competencies and 21st century competencies are the two dominant soft skills that are necessary for every global citizen.

I believe the element of love is important in cultivating personalities with the competencies. With love, students will eventually internalize the six core values, i.e., respect, responsibility, resilience, integrity, care and harmony in them. As I take precedence in creating a safe classroom environment for my students, I believe the element of love is important. Therefore, these core values in mind, I can ultimately create a classroom environment where my students can feel secure and will not be afraid to face any challenges.

My teaching philosophy is to nurture young learners with love so that they can feel safe in classroom and eventually develop the personalities of love, care and supportiveness. I will equip my students with social and emotional competencies and 21st century competencies to prepare them to be a loving person and concerned global citizen.

Establishing an Inclusive Classroom Community

The element of love is crucial in establishing an inclusive classroom community where student feel emotionally, intellectually and physically safe so that they can engage in learning (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). I believe that an inclusive classroom community not only able to engage students in learning, but also is a prerequisite for developing students’ social and emotional competencies. This way, I can focus on building positive teacher-student relationship in my classroom.

In order to let students feeling safe to learn in classroom, positive teacher-student relationship has to last. Showing love and care to my students does not mean that all unreasonable behaviors and requirements of the students will be accepted unconditionally. An authoritative approach has to be developed (Weinstein & Romano, 2015) to keep pace with my teaching philosophy and make my teaching effective. At the beginning of my lessons, firm and consistent expectations will be established and I will provide proper support to reinforce these expectations (Seng, 2020).

Setting clear expectations provide a more predictable environment for students and avoid confusion that might lead students to ‘misbehave’ (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). I believe that a predictive classroom environment will form a safe classroom environment for students to learn. According to Dreikurs, humans have an innate to develop social interest. However, we must nurture and develop the ability in our students since young and school is an important place for the development of social interest (‘Teaching’, 2015). This belief aligns with my teaching philosophy, which emphasize on the social and emotional competencies and 21st century competencies to nurture global citizens who have social awareness and thus master the communication, collaboration and information skills.

Therefore, democratic classroom approach which suggested by Dreikurs will then be applied when I am setting expectation and rules in class (‘Teaching’, 2015). I will let my students take ownership in making important class decisions (‘Teaching’, 2015) by guiding them in discussing classroom rules. This way, I can promote autonomy by providing students opportunity to share responsibility in decision making (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). A respectful classroom environment will be cultivated during the discussion and extended to every lesson. However, I will follow the four guidelines in planning classroom rules, they are: reasonable, clear, consistent with instructional goal and consistency with school rules; this way I can ensure that students’ discussions will not deviate too far from what is expected (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). Moreover, I will be firm and consistent in implementing classroom rules that developed by my students. This way, I will be able to treat my students with dignity, friendliness, and kindness at the same time (‘Teaching’, 2015).

When student misbehave, I will identify and address the mistaken goals proposed by Dreikurs, these include: attention getting, power seeking, revenge and feelings of inadequacy (‘Teaching’, 2015). Dreikurs suggested to avoid the use of rewards and punishments when students misbehave; instead, logical consequences should be implemented (‘Teaching’, 2015). Before giving students logical consequences, I will ask students to reflect on their misbehavior so that they can understand the idea of logical consequences. At the same time, I will also talk with students to understand the cause of their misbehavior. This way, I can understand my students better by linking the cause of misbehavior with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and check which level of deficiency needs is not satisfied (Tan et al., 2017). I will try my best to provide assistance to the students if their physiological and safety needs are not satisfied. For those who lack of belongingness or self-esteem needs, I will acknowledge their efforts and hard work by giving words of encouragement instead of blatantly praising them (‘Teaching’, 2015). I want my students to be individuals who can maintain positive social interactions with others and hope that they can achieve self-actualization ultimately.

In order to build loving and caring teacher student relationship, I will search for students’ strengths so that my students can give full play to their strengths (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). However, when I am acknowledging my students’ strengths, I will be mindful of the words I used. I will use encouragement than praise as suggested by Dreikurs (‘Teaching’, 2015).

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The purpose of Dreikurs using encouragement is to build confidence and self-esteem in students and avoid students’ dependence on praise (‘Teaching’, 2015). However, I think that using encouragement can also help to reduce using extrinsic control on students (Weinstein & Romano, 2015) and develop intrinsic motivation in them. Encouragement focuses on the effort that students made instead of placing a value judgment on students (Tan et al., 2017). Time-on-task is one of the reasons that influence students to judge their successes or failures and effort plays an important role at here (Tan et al., 2017). Teachers should value efforts that made by students by using encouragement as effort is controllable and changeable. When using encouragement, teachers can explain students’ success through their own effort and ability, this will definitely develop high achievement motivation in learning. Therefore, using encouragement aligns with my teaching philosophy. I would like to nurture self-directed young learners who are not fearful of taking challenges and make mistakes as they understand that mistakes help them learn better (Tan et al., 2017).

In all, I will infuse my teaching philosophy which the element of love plays important role in Dreikurs’ theory to build a loving and democratic classroom culture. Encouragement from teacher to students will be frequently used in the classroom. This way, I am able to maintain positive teacher-student relationship with my students and develop social and emotional competencies in them.

Establishing a Supportive Learning Environment

Physical setting of a classroom not only influence the social interaction between student-and-student but also teacher-and-student (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). However, I also believe that it is impossible to promote positive social interaction without a safe classroom environment. Therefore, I will focus on the physical setting of my classroom to provide a safe environment for my students that facilitate them to develop social emotional competencies through interactions between individuals in classroom.

As I mentioned in my teaching philosophy, a safe classroom environment is important. Therefore, I will provide security and shelter to students in classroom. Safe classroom environment comprises both physical security and psychology security (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). In order to create a physically safe environment, I will keep all potentially dangerous equipment in cupboard, i.e., places that are not easily reach by students to make sure my students are not expose to dangerous environment in their learning activities in class (Weinstein & Romano, 2015).

I will make proper space arrangement in class as this provides psychological security to my students as this will create great impact on social interactions among students and teacher-student relationship. If the classroom environment is crowded, students will feel ‘cramped’ in their own desk and be easily distracted when learning (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). This not only created a sense of oppression due to sensory stuffy environment, but also limit their interactions with peers in class activities.

Creating a smooth traffic flow will allow students to interacts with others more easily, exchange their thoughts, build bonding among peers during class activities (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). It is also more convenient for teacher to move around to interact with students; students can also approach teacher more easily. This way, both positive student-student relationship and teacher-student relationship can be fostered. Therefore, the aisle in the classroom must be wide and there are enough spaces between seats to provide free spaces for student to ‘breathe’ and also allow student feel comfort to move around without obstacle during class activities. Moreover, this also avoids student from being tripped by obstacles due to packed classroom environment and there are always spaces available for students to store wheelchair or clutches when necessary (Weinstein & Romano, 2015).

I will also arrange the seats in clusters to promote social contact between students. Clusters arrangement allows teacher to design and facilitate small group discussion in class. Students also tend to have more direct eye contact with their peers (Weinstein & Romano, 2015) and thus are able to read the facial expression of their peers during discussions. Through this, students will be able to understand the feelings of their peers, thus learning to communicate and build positive relationships with their peers. Social and emotional competencies will be developed as social awareness, relationship management and responsible decision-making skills (Tan et al., 2017) will be applied in the interactions among students. Hence, students will eventually be equipped with communication, collaboration and information skills under 21st century competencies framework (Tan et al., 2017).

Cluster arrangement also facilitates buddy system that I want to implement in my class. In clusters, students sit closely to one another in clusters provides a better environment for them to have small group discussions, work closely in activities, provide assistance among one another in assignments and share materials (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). Through this, the values of love and care will be instilled in students and a loving classroom culture can be created. Clusters arrangement will definitely make the buddy system I established in class work more efficiently. A buddy system-friendly environment will be able to reinforce the values I want to instill in my students, encourage my students to work together and help each other to achieve success.

It is important for students to have a strong sense of belonging to their class so that they will love their class, anticipate to attend class and thus enjoy learning in class. To inculcate a sense of belonging, I will allow students to take initiative in decorating classroom. In the beginning of new academic year, I will embark discussion on classroom decoration with students and provide guidance for them to do planning. I will also encourage them to draw a small art work according to the theme they discussed and use the art work to decorate our classroom (Weinstein & Romano, 2015). Therefore, every student is given an opportunity to contribute in decorating the classroom. In this way, their efforts and abilities are acknowledged. This activity not only build a sense of belonging to their class but also nurture confident young learners who comply with 21st century competencies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, interweaving my teaching philosophy in the physical classroom setting will allow me to create a loving classroom culture. This will eventually facilitate the development on social and emotional competencies in my students, comply them with 21st century competencies to be confident person, self-directed learners, concerned citizens and active contributors.