Educational Philosophy Statement

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to explain why I want to be an educator. Why in this world of increasing diversity, political correctness, low teacher salaries, and high societal strife, and with the threat of teacher tenure being eliminated, would I want to take the leap, to be a science educator? The myriad of reasons seems to increase, much to the chagrin of my friends, family, and benefactors. I am not sure if they thought I would change my mind or that they hoped I would, but the process for changing from a Regional Occupational teacher to a single subject science teacher has been a long time coming. I am excited to continue my educational journey at Cal Poly. I honestly believe passion is contagious, and my passion for

My mother was a principal’s secretary, from the time I started school until her death, my father a math, science, drivers education, and whatever else they needed teacher. Throughout my childhood I swore I would not be a teacher and really fought the “family” tradition, but although my high tech job paid well, it was uninspiring and I was never home. My reluctance to be a teacher, I feel stems from the fact that my father was really burned out by the process of teaching for 34 years. I have so much respect for my father and even had a few opportunities to see him in action, mostly when I was in high school, but I remember when I was in grade school visiting him and it was fun to watch him teach, it could have been that he was much younger then. When I was in grade school my dad was in his mid-forties, but toward the end he turned into the ditto teacher and it was hard, because he was so vibrant in his younger years of teaching and he was getting older and liked the idea of working around the house and closer to home. My dad is one of my heroes, he did right by us and I am proud to be following him into

I really enjoyed learning for the sake of learning, I liked school, where my siblings were great in sports, I was great in school. My own education was inspirational and that sparked passion needed an outlet, and teaching is the best fit. The catalyst for my awakening was deciding to get my Masters in Geography. Around that time I went to a conference by Maya Angelou, “When you get, give, when you learn, teach,” she said. I started to think about giving and teaching. I thought maybe high schools could sneak geography curriculum, by masking it as technology? So I went back to my high school and talked to the principal and pitched my idea, and began my masters thesis on “The Creation and Implementation of GIS in High School: A Case Study for Teaching Geography Through Technology”. During that process I worked with a tenure teacher as a volunteer, we took over a closet installed twenty computers in which you could not even back up your chair without running into someone, but to me this was the high point in my