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Michael Tomasulo

Philosophy of Education

As an aspiring teacher and education student, I wholeheartedly believe that the purpose of

education is to positively impact students’ lives in a way or ways that inspire them to do great

things with their lives; teachers should have impact their students in ways that inspire them to set

goals for themselves and aspire to accomplish those goals so that students do not go through life

being unmotivated or indecisive. I believe this because, in eighth grade, I had a social studies

teacher who impacted me so greatly that I am now aspiring to make social studies teaching my

career. This teacher, Mr. Yost at Bordentown Regional Middle School, inspired me not solely

because the content he was teaching was interesting, history/social studies was always my

favorite subject in school, but Mr. Yost also inspired me by the way he organized his classroom

and with his pedagogical strategies. Mr. Yost did not simply want to teach us United States

History, he wanted to shape us to be respectful citizens in our community. A lot of the

inspiration I got from Mr. Yost stems from the learning environment that he produced.

The quality of a learning environment is greatly impactful on overall instruction in

classrooms. Some teachers do not understand that students give back what they, as the teacher,

put out; the students will treat the teacher the same way the teacher treats the students. The

learning environment is important for building connections between students and teachers as if

teachers are open and show that students can trust them and talk to them about things other than

the content of the class. When I become a teacher, I will make myself open to communication

with students and parents outside of my classroom while being respectful, kind, and

understanding with my students in the classroom so that a strong connection is built. I will also

make myself visible by going to school functions such as dances, sporting events, theatre
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productions, etc. so that my students know that I care about them and everything that they are

passionate about. By doing all of these things I can promote a comfortable learning environment

for my students so that they feel comfortable participating in class and talking to me about

anything they want whether it be content related or not. I want to be a mentor for my students so

that they know that if they come to me with a problem or issue, I will try my absolute hardest to

help them in any way that I can. The comfortable learning environment is also important for

learning to truly take place in a classroom.

In my opinion, learning is the absorption of knowledge that is passed from one person to

another. Students in schools and classrooms are the most prominent learners in our modern

society, though learning can take place outside of the classroom and school because there are

different types of intelligences according to Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple

intelligences. For learning to take place properly, teachers need to incorporate different strategies

to motivate and engage their students. However, the pedagogical strategies that teachers use must

(at least attempt to) meet all of the needs of their students. To do this in my future classroom I

will utilize different methods to teach my content (i.e. lecture, hands-on projects/assignment,

media) so that the different needs of my students are met as not all of them learn the same way. I

will also attempt to use several forms of technology and media like music, videos, and films to

help engage my students. An effective teacher needs to know the needs of their students so that

they can plan and prepare their lessons to meet all of their needs. All of this is absolutely

necessary for teacher to be able to teach and students to absorb and understand the content

dictated by the curriculum.

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Finally, a quality curriculum is defined, in my opinion, as a curriculum that not only

teaches students the certain aspects of a subject, but also teaches them how to apply the teachings

to their lives as frequently as possible. In my subject area, social studies, it is important for

students to learn history, but also how to either envision themselves in certain time periods to

make it engaging or to apply it to their lives which also makes the content engaging. For

example, in my sixth grade social studies class for my current fieldwork experience, my class

recently learned about Mesopotamia and the problems they faced (i.e. drought, food shortages,

farming, irrigation) and to do this my cooperating teacher had them work in small groups to

debate the best possible solutions as well as the least effective solutions (there was a list of

solutions presented to them). This not only taught the students about the struggles of

Mesopotamian society, but also how to debate and politely argue which is important because

without their learning how to debate, they might have gone out into the world and aggressively

argued with people rather than politely debated with others.