A View of My Philosophy :: Teaching Education Teachers Essays

A View of My Philosophy It’s hard to decide on a major as a high school student preparing to enter college. There are so many possibilities and it seems impossible to choose only one. It was a major decision for me, and I was terrified I would make the wrong choice. What if I didn’t like my major? What if I found nothing that I liked? I attended West Virginia Wesleyan College my freshman year with no decided major. Education had always been in the back of my mind, but I wanted to make sure that there was nothing else that would catch my attention. It turned out that nothing else did. During my freshman year I took a variety of classes in many different subject areas, but nothing seemed to spark a major interest. I was beginning to worry that I would never make up my mind until I started volunteering at an after-school program at a local elementary school near WVWC in Buckhannon, WV. It was a program designed as a place for students to do their homework while they waited for their parents to pick them up. From the first day volunteering, I loved it. I loved the puzzled looks on the faces of the young children as they tried to work through an arithmetic problem. I loved their smiling faces and their eagerness to learn. Most of all, I loved the look of accomplishment when a struggling student fin ally understood. That was how I knew I was meant to be a teacher. Just to know that I made a difference in the lives of the children I helped was better than almost anything I’ve ever accomplished. During the program I truly realized I wanted to teach, and not just on a temporarily volunteering basis. The idea of having my own classroom and my own group of students to influence became more and more appealing. My philosophy of teaching is a combination of some of the most well known philosophies. One philosophy I support is progressivism.