Let's Talk About... My Teaching Philosphy

When I was a young girl I think I always knew I was going to be in school, this lead into me becoming a teacher.  But deciding what to teach, well that was the tricky part, and then they wanted us to create something called a "Teaching Philosophy," which I had no idea what that was.  Turns out, it's essentially (to me) what drives you to teach.

Some preservice teachers, like myself, want the students to learn how to critically read a text, others want them to change their lifestyles for the better.  Me?  I want to push people out of their comfort zone.

I grew up, and still live in, a rather homogeneous society where there wasn't a lot of change, coming from either within or outside our community.  This means that we weren't exposed to a lot of texts.  I'm not going to lie, this effected me greatly.  Now our community mostly consists of caucasian individuals, and I began noticing how this was affecting me when I would play The Sims.  Most of my Sims I created were caucasian, which resulted in my Sim neighborhoods mirroring my neighborhood.

It was this realization that made me decided that I want to become cultured (aka exposed) to other cultures around me.  I realized how centered we were on our "right" culture when there are so many other cultures in our country, let alone our world.  So when they asked us why we wanted to teach, I immediately thought of my experience with The Sims.

My teaching philosophy revolves around the idea of exposing my students to other cultures.  Whether by the shock-and-awe value of just exposing them with no warning (which at times can be fun and quite useful) or gradually which (in a homogeneous society like mine) can be more effective.  Since physically moving my students across the world would be impossible, curriculum adaptation is the next best bet.  I plan for my students to interact with students from other cultures as well as having them read novels and watch videos from and about other cultures.