Matthew’s Philosophy

My personal philosophy is based around the idea of the community of learners.   This concept was taught to me by one of my high school teachers.   The concept can basically be summed up like this:   Students need to be given the autonomy to own their own learning and given the skills to do that as well as so that they and the teacher together can tackle the educational problems that they encounter in the subject material.   So, some ramifications of this are definitely favoring the prevention of problems over the solution to problems and emphasizing student responsibility to being the kind of person they want to be rather than constantly scolding them.   If you give students big expectations and hold them to it to, they will feel more responsible for their actions.   The last section/module of the book that we read about student responsibility fit in really well with my philosophy.   Students will be asked what the effects of their behavior was on others, how their behavior reflects their values, etc, instead of merely punishing students.   In this model, there is more an emphasis on the whole group rather than one individual student.   However, each person needs to pull their own weight.