Personal Philosophy Statement

My personal philosophy comes from my experiences throughout my own schooling, and the observations that I have made while I was a student aid. My senior year of high school, I was a student aid for kindergarten teachers. During that time was when I realized that I wanted to pursue a career in education. I want to be able to make a difference in kids’ lives. I want to help kids who struggle to find their way, and push the more gifted kids to succeed even more. Numerous of the observations I formed, made me realize that there are a lot of different factors that play a role in a child’s performance in the classroom. In this essay, I’m going to discuss how genetics, intelligence, culture, gender, and motivation play a huge role in a student’s

One factor that influences how well children do in school is religion. Religious backgrounds provide kids with moral values. Knowing the difference between right and wrong, and making decisions every day based on the morals they have been taught while growing up. The kids who were not raised in a religious environment, or their parents did not discipline them correctly when they made wrong decisions, usually do not perform well in their school work, and tend to have problems with their behavior. Thus, bringing me to another cultural factor that influences children’s success – different parenting styles. Based on my observations this year, and during my own schooling, you can normally look around a room full of students and notice which kids are above middle class, or are in the lower class economically. Usually kids who are brought up in poverty struggle in school because they did not have all the same resources that other kids had access to. Kids who live in poverty may not get to see their parents every night because they are working late shifts or taking two jobs trying to raise enough money for the family. When parents are working late or too much, they rarely have extra time to spend with their kids for leisure activities or even to just sit down and help them with their homework – much less, time to discipline them. These are the children that will most likely struggle in school,

During the middle school years you will start to notice the separation of success in girls and the success in boys. At this age, boys are starting to become more interested and involved in sports, and girls are more likely to enjoy activities and learning in the classroom. Boys’ attention and interest is taken away from school work and girls are more drawn in. This also a prime time when bodies of each gender begin to change. When I think about gender differences in the classroom, I think about my sixth grade year. We had boys in my class that refused to read out loud during class because they were humiliated every time their voices cracked. They had little to no self-esteem at this point in time, and I know a lot of my friends struggled with their work in middle school as well as my girlfriends did. Our bodies were changing as well, and we started to have problems with our self-esteem because we were too worried about competing with the other girls in our grade and older. I remember not being able to focus in class because I was too busy thinking about what other girls had said about my body or thinking about what others thought of me. Many boys and girls cannot succeed in the classroom because they have no self-esteem. Another big factor is teachers who have gender bias which is a way of describing teachers who like one gender more than the other. I have experienced this in high school, my teacher liked the guys more than she