Do you need a Philosophy of Education?

When we first start out in education we often think that we know what we're doing. We think that we don't need any help and that everything that we need to know we learned in our education classes. It only takes about three days into the job to realize that our college education did not fully prepare us for every single student that we're going to face. It didn't truly prepare us for how we really should deliver a lesson when we have students on five different levels along with multiple types of disruptions. It didn't prepare us to handle all the routines, all the the daily tasks, all the decisions that we have to make.  This isn't intended to disparage any university program, but just an acknowledgement that there is now way for them to fully prepare you for every student and situation you will face.  Experience is the only true way to learn how to handle all of these different types of situations. 

So how do we make up for that information gap?

That is a challenge that faces every educator, and quite honestly it's a challenge that a lot of educators don't overcome and are quickly driven from the field because of that.

When the country is in the midst of what some call a teacher shortage, but quite honestly, it is not necessarily a shortage just a shortage of people wanting to enter the profession, what can we do to encourage people to enter the field?   More importantly what do we do to make sure that those that are entering the field will stay and are fully prepared for what they're going to face?

Departments of education at the national and at the state level and the various teacher organizations have to face this issue head on, and it seems at times that it is an insurmountable task. So let's tackle what we can, and let's prepare those that are entering the profession and already in the profession to best handle the situations that they're going to face.

It is probably safe to assume that many of the teachers entering the profession and those that have been in the profession for 3 to 5 years that the issue is not necessarily content knowledge.  Now granted there are those that content going to be an issue that managed to slide through a program undetected and somehow got away without the the depth of knowledge and content that they should have. Those people are few and far between. The vast majority of people are going to struggle with how to handle and manage or run the classroom because a lot of that is something that you don't really get the opportunity to do until you are given your first classroom.  You can't count your student teaching experience because you are really just a guest in someone else's classroom.  

There are dozens if not hundreds books written about it and those books are beneficial because they are great sources for people in the profession and entering the profession to help them find management ideas for their classroom from "experts in the field." What's critical though is for people to understand that, even though the author may tell you differently, those books are not meant to be a lockstep solution to classroom management problems. What you need to do is pull from multiple resources not just books but from successful teachers around you. That's going to take conversation with the teachers that you work with not just the teachers next door but teachers at other grade levels or teachers at other buildings in your district.  You will have to find and learn from different experts in the field to be able to be truly successful and effective in your job as an educator.

We could spend some time focusing on finding those other resources and finding those experts and books but one of the things that I've tried to do is begin to share books that are recommended by other educators that may be good resources.  Some of them are books that I've read and others are books that were recommended by others I have contact with, while some are books that have been written by people that that I follow on various forms of social media or other podcasts or blogs. The list is growing and it's available as a resource that all link along with this post.  You can find them on the Recommended Products page on The Cluttered Desk website and follow a direct link to them on Amazon from that page. 

What I would like to do instead of telling you this is the book that you should read or this is the person that you should go listen to, I want to try to synthesize some of the ideas that I have come across over the years and have been able to get to work for me. Hopefully you can take some of these and have some success with them for yourself. 

The first thing that I would suggest for anybody entering the field is to plan and prepare ahead of time.   You may not know where you're going to be teaching yet.  You may not have your first full-time position or contract yet but you can start preparing for that day. So here's what I would begin to do:

• Find those ideas or those concepts that are critical to the way you want to run your classroom and begin to compile them somewhere.   
• Develop procedures that will work regardless of the classroom you are placed in and you can add some specific to your room or school later.  This will be one less item to deal with.  
• Create a minimal set of rules and make sure you know the difference between a rule and a procedure.  
• Begin to write out a teaching philosophy. now you you may think that this is an exercise that is just a complete waste of time and quite honestly when I was in the earliest part of my career when I first enter the profession ends not only that when I was preparing to enter the field I thought this this isn't going to do me any good. It honestly took me almost 15 years in the profession before I started to see the benefit of writing out that philosophy education.  

I want to pass that along to those of you that are early in your career or maybe even if you're late in your career it may be beneficial to you too because it can help guide and direct what you're doing. And so here's my argument for putting your philosophy of education into writing:

Everyone has a philosophy of education it may just be unspoken what I mean is that we all have these ideals these believes that we have about education and about students and that truthfully is our philosophy. When we put it in writing we codify in a way that makes more meaning for us and allows us to do things with it that we wouldn't normally do. If you've been assigned the task of writing out your philosophy of education or your beliefs about education for some class go ahead and do that but what you need some realize is that what you put in the writing now may change over the course of your career.  You may put it in writing and in six months scrap most of it and start over. At the very least it's going to evolve over time as you learn more about students and yourself as a teacher.  Putting it in writing allows you to focus your beliefs and put them into action.  Make sure that everything you do as an educator can be tied back to that philosophy.  Don't write it and put it on a shelf, refer back to it often as a reminder of why you do this.  I would put it at the very front of your classroom management plan/binder.  

So where do you start?

I would start with some of the examples that you may have had in your education coursework because they can be a good guide to get you started. After you read through those samples that you were given I would begin to do a a search online for other people's philosophies of education that are working at the same grade level you are. You may come across people that have more than one philosophy of education they have shared. The reason they may do that is because there may be different aspects of their job that are going to cause it to have different philosophies. They may teach adult learners and have one philosophy that pertains more towards how adults learn and their approach to teaching adults and then they may have a separate philosophy related to how they teach second graders. You may also come across some people that have been on the classroom and are now instructional leaders or principles so they may have their philosophy of leadership on there as well.  Those will good resources for you to look at. After you find several resources I would go through and highlight some of the ideas and the concepts that resonate with you and reflect on those. I want you to reflect on those because I want you to think about whether you agree or disagree with those statements.  They may resonate with you because you totally disagree with them so you would want to include something as part of your philosophy that would be the opposite of that or they may catch your attention because you agree wholeheartedly with what that person said. Either way use that to help you formulate and put it to words if you're believe surrounding that

So what are the things that are essential in your philosophy of education?  Please share some of your examples with me so that others may benefit from your ideas and experience. 



Thank you for reading The Cluttered Desk. You can find me on Twitter @jasonbengs. Please feel free to comment on the post and share your ideas with me. You can also leave a response on The Cluttered Desk Flipgrid page if you would like to leave a comment on this or any other post or podcast episode by going to https://flipgrid.com/03fa4e01 If you found any value in this post, please share it with others.