Philosophy Statement

There are many aspects that play a part in a student’s success in school. A child or future student’s learning first begins at home and is influenced by their parents or guardians as well as anyone such as a babysitter or sibling who is around the child a lot. After growing to a certain age though the main responsibility of teaching the now student goes into the hands of a teacher. It is important for any teacher that students feel comfortable and able to learn at school. There are many aspects and ways that a teacher is in charge of making sure that students are comfortable including, the environment to learn, the communication and involvement of parents, and the use of community resources to better the students’ knowledge and understanding

The environment for learning is an important aspect that many people may not think of right away, but the space that a student is in for so much time can really have an impact on their learning. I however have spent quite some time thinking about just how I would/ will set up a classroom and I have come up with a number of many different ideas for how to set up my future classroom. I am thinking about teaching second grade which will have an impact in how my room is set up. Journalist Mark Phillips has an article A Place for Learning: The Physical Environment of Classrooms, and in the article he is talking about a particular story of an experience he had but he concludes with two main lessons from the story that I think are pretty much universal to learning environments. The first lesson Phillips points out is that the physical layout of a classroom has a critical effect on a student’s morale and learning, and his second mail point is that having the students help to decide how the classroom is set up and how it runs gives them motivation and empowerment (Phillips, 2014) . In my classroom I plan on starting out each year with

An article, The Parent-Teacher Partnership (2003), from pbs.org mentions some of the reasons and ways that communication between parents and teachers is important. The article mentions that if a student knows that his or her parents trust the teacher than he or she is more likely to trust their teacher as well. It also talks about the importance of the two-way communication and that as much as parents need to know what is going on in the classroom, teachers need to know about if similar things are happening at home or anything specific about the home environment or circumstances that may affect in class time or behaviors . While many teachers only communicate with parents when something is wrong or their student is in trouble, I at least plan on letting parents know when their student has done something good or something that needs improvement. In the age that we are in now I will probably start my communication with parents through e-mail. If there is a lack of response or another reason to do so I will have to look at the parents and the situation about whether sending a note or a phone call would be more effective. Generally for positive messages I plan to start by sending a note home so the student can have something positive that they want to show off to their parents. The article Five Keys to Parent-Teacher Communication from the Scholastic website talks about the