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Jo-Anne M. Hernandez

Prof. Sefranek

INGL 6996

23 February 2015

Teaching Inspiration: A Philosophy of Education

I believe “Education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire”. This quote,

arguably attributed to W.B. Yeats, embodies my Teaching Philosophy. To me, students are not

containers, in which teachers pour their knowledge because, ultimately, these containers will fill

to the brim. Teachers must be the ones, which ignite students’ passion for learning and

education. When a fire ignites, it keeps consuming all, which surrounds it, so too a student who

is stimulated to learn will maintain a desire for knowledge through life. As a teacher, I wish to be

an example for my students by demonstrating to them my passion for learning. When educators

demonstrate passion for the subjects they are teaching they make the subjects sound much more

interesting and attractive for students.

My role as a teacher will be to ignite the spark in my students, which will keep growing

throughout their lives. Because I know I am teaching individuals, and not just a group of

unnamed faces, my job is to pay special attention to individual learners and attempt to target

their interest and integrate these interest in my class. From my experience as a learner, I have

seen students learn when they feel comfortable with the teacher and are not intimidated by the

figure of the teacher in the classroom. I aspire to promote a sense of trust with my students, to

make them realize I am not there to intimidate them and tell them what they have to learn

otherwise I will fail them, but to guide them in the learning process. “No one can learn for us”

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(Larsen-Freeman), “to learn is our own responsibility” (Larsen-Freeman) yet with the help of a

mentor and guide the road to learning is mapped out for us.

As this reflection shows, I promote individual learning, and agree with Paulo Freire’s

critique of Banking Education. As a teacher, I will not posses all the information there is to know

and try to implant all this knowledge into students; Instead, I will promote active learning

because learning is an act, which occurs throughout life, and teacher’s will not always be there to

tell students what exactly is they must learn.

In order to achieve my goal of motivating students to yearning for an education, I plan to

use a variety of methods and approaches, as the situation calls for, because I believe there is no

single way to acquire learning. After evaluating different methods and approaches, I will

implement the ones applicable to the context and interest of my students, in order to achieve

education as effortlessly as possible. I firmly believe “Meaningful work both enlarges students'

knowledge stores and sparks their desire to wield that knowledge.” (Moore). Using different

methods and approaches will help me discover which are the ones, which transmit knowledge

aspiration in my students efficiently.

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Background Information

On Monday February 23, 2015, I will begin my poetry unit. During the first month of

class I reviewed the writing process and since many of the students in my class are the same ones

from last semester who had learned the process with me already I proceeded to teach them

comparison and contrast essays. I choose the fairy tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ to compare

or contrast how the story has evolved through time and how the themes are still discussed in

literature to this day. After discussing the stories, I proceeded to teach them the different forms

of creating a comparison and contrast essay and when we finished this, I gave them a week for

brainstorming, outlining, drafting and peer editing. On Friday February 20, 2015, they will hand

me the essay that comes out of all they have learned throughout the month of February. I divided

the course into three sections for the three essays I have to teach. For the month of March we will

focus on explicating a poem essay, I will first present them to poetry terms in order for them to

understand the poems we will be discussing, and afterwards we will discuss the poems using the

poetry terms. To finish this unit I will explain to them the format of the essay and we will take

time to practice explication of poetry then a week for the writing process of brainstorming,

outlining, drafting and finely handing in the finished product. Each of the units I planned has a

theme or a message behind the stories, fairy tales or poems chosen. For the unit on fairy tales I

wanted them to concentrate on change through time since it is a comparison and contrast essay.

For this next unit on poetry I wanted to focus on how in poetry there is a lot of meaning behind a

small amount of words and how they must learn to unpack this meaning in their explication of

poetry essay.

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Purpose of Class

The purpose of Monday’s class is to introduce students to poetry. Many students tend to dislike

poetry because it tends to be complicated and this was the case for me. I came to appreciate

poetry when I was finally able to understand it. Giving students an introduction to poetry

activity, which is fun, and at the same time enlightening and makes them think deeper and reflect

upon the meaning behind the words will be the purpose of this class. I created this class inspired

on Rodolfo Ramirez’s presentation on teaching poetry in the “We Teach Too” mini congress by

graduate students. In his presentation, Rodolfo gave two poems and asked his audience to draw

what they felt the poems meant without using direct drawings of the elements, which appear in

the poem. After this he received feedback on what the audience thought the poem meant going

beyond the direct elements featured in the poem, that is reading between the lines looking for

deeper meaning. I will begin the class discussion opening up with asking students what they

think of poetry and having them write down what words pop up when they hear the word poetry.

After this, I will project a poem and have students read the poem and take out a sheet of paper

and draw what they think the poem means without using the direct drawings. After receiving

feedback from students, I will explain to them how in this new unit we will begin they have to

think deeper and read searching for meaning beyond the apparent meaning of the poems we will

be reading because they will be short but their meaning has more to it than their short

appearance.