The importance of guiding their actions with a personal, overall vision
of the purpose of teaching.
I feel that KSA 16 can be applied to my teaching and to student learning. Students need an overall vision and purpose for learning and teachers need to reflect upon their overall vision and purpose for teaching.
My reflections on my overall vision and purpose of teaching:
Although I have not been teaching for very long, my style and beliefs about teaching have evolved. As I gain more and more experience and knowledge about the practises of teaching my overall vision has transformed; and I know that as I grow as an individual and as a professional my overall vision will continue to change. Personally, I feel the best way to reflect upon these beliefs is to write a journal and communicate with other colleagues. I have developed my teaching philosophy over the past year and I have put my core thoughts about the nature of teaching into a document. Please read this document, which is located under Kira Goodrich and My Teaching Philosophy. In this I explore what is most important to me and my goals as an educator. These core beliefs are an extension of my personal beliefs and I am confident that I will believe in these for the rest of my life.
How I guide students to see the importance and purpose of learning:
Learning is so much more than just memorizing facts to pass a class. I believe that the subject material should be related to real life. Many students want a purpose to learn a certain topic and if they know something interesting they are more likely to understand the material. Sometimes, finding links to real life applications can be difficult, so I often find small interesting facts or I include students into an example; for instance, in physics, I made questions that included students in the class. I have one student in my class who plays hockey, so for one question I had the students find out how fast he hits the puck. Students were much more excited to do an example that included someone in their class rather than a random example.
Listed below is an example of how I had included real world applications into my Biology 20 class.
My reflections on my overall vision and purpose of teaching:
Although I have not been teaching for very long, my style and beliefs about teaching have evolved. As I gain more and more experience and knowledge about the practises of teaching my overall vision has transformed; and I know that as I grow as an individual and as a professional my overall vision will continue to change. Personally, I feel the best way to reflect upon these beliefs is to write a journal and communicate with other colleagues. I have developed my teaching philosophy over the past year and I have put my core thoughts about the nature of teaching into a document. Please read this document, which is located under Kira Goodrich and My Teaching Philosophy. In this I explore what is most important to me and my goals as an educator. These core beliefs are an extension of my personal beliefs and I am confident that I will believe in these for the rest of my life.
How I guide students to see the importance and purpose of learning:
Learning is so much more than just memorizing facts to pass a class. I believe that the subject material should be related to real life. Many students want a purpose to learn a certain topic and if they know something interesting they are more likely to understand the material. Sometimes, finding links to real life applications can be difficult, so I often find small interesting facts or I include students into an example; for instance, in physics, I made questions that included students in the class. I have one student in my class who plays hockey, so for one question I had the students find out how fast he hits the puck. Students were much more excited to do an example that included someone in their class rather than a random example.
Listed below is an example of how I had included real world applications into my Biology 20 class.
Biology 20 Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/8/6/11868955/29461.png?369)
Unit C, Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration, is an abstract unit. Students often find this unit challenging because they cannot see the connection to the real world. To engage students when talking about cellular respiration, I showed the video "Operation Cue" which is a 1955 propaganda video about a nuclear war. This video is interesting because it is a glimpse of life in America in the 1950's. I related this video to photosynthesis because if there is a nuclear war it will cause a nuclear winter which will block the sun for a decade. We discussed how this would impact the world we will in. Also, this demonstrates the power of energy. Students had a discussion and answered questions about how the suns energy is the fuel for life on earth.