Sarah Hawley Philosophy of Education

I believe that the purpose of education is to foster a love of learning in order for students to

become confident adults in the future. My goals center on this purpose. One of my goals, for the students

that I will teach, is to learn about the students interests and connect these interests into the curriculum. I

believe that a large part of teaching is about knowing your students and who they are. This goes along

with my teaching style of building a community of learners in the classroom. Another goal of mine is to

have respect for the students, their parents and co-workers. I have a strong belief that a good classroom is

built upon mutual respect. Through my observations and student teaching experiences, once a student

sees that they are respected by the teacher and peers they take a further interest in learning and become

more engaged in the learning by taking risks.

As far as discipline in the classroom goes, I believe in sitting down with a student, talking about

their behavior and what they feel they could work on better. I am not a believer of taking away

something from a student. I view children as confident young adults who should be treated the way that

we would want to be treated, with a high amount of respect. As for my teaching styles, I believe in

emergent curriculum. Children become interested in learning when they are given opportunities to

generate their own questions about what they want to learn. Emergent curriculum provides endless

opportunities for all types of play and numerous amounts of dialogue and exploration. Because standards

are so present in the curriculum, through my student teaching experiences, I have seen how emergent

curriculum works to meet both the students interests and the standards that we are required to meet.

Diversity and tolerance are of great importance to me because I believe, at a young age, children

are first introduced to respect and if they are taught to respect one another in a classroom then this respect

will follow them through adulthood. Learning about cultures other than the child’s can be rich in learning

if it is presented in authentic ways. I believe that relationships with parents are important. During my

student teaching experiences I was able to see how parents are an important part of a child’s life. To

build a working relationship with parents is essential to a classroom community. I believe that parents

should be informed about their child’s learning experiences and they should not feel like they can not

speak to the teacher at any point if they have questions about how their child is doing.