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TIME TO GET REAL

Revisit Your Personal Philosophy’s Value

A component of teaching I think is important for every educator is having a personal philosophy or some core beliefs that underpin how you view your role as a teacher. If you are just beginning your teaching journey, this might be something new for you, or at least something not yet fully formed. If you have many years or decades of teaching behind you, this is something you can easily articulate. Regardless, allow me to take you back to the days when I was training to become a teacher.

When I enrolled in a credential program in 2001, my first assignment was a two-page essay on my philosophy of teaching. A year later, at the end of the program, the director told us that the first question a job interviewer would ask us would be, “What is your philosophy of teaching?” Although no interviewer actually asked me that question during interviews, I always saw its importance for teachers new and seasoned. It makes us think about what we do and why, and it holds us accountable.

After more than ten years on the job, having worked with countless students and having experienced all of the challenges, rewards, thinking, and rethinking we associate with teaching, I have finally pieced together enough information to truly answer that first important question. My philosophy can be summarized in two words: be real.

In this chapter, I want to share this philosophy with you, as a motivation to start off a new teaching year or semester, as a reminder for myself, and as a call to reconsider (or consider for the first time) your own teaching philosophy in action. Using the strategies I provide, you can adapt and use my philosophy as you see fit. As fellow teachers in the trenches, I think it will resonate with you.

What It Means to Be Real

Be real means be real with yourself and be real with your students. Teaching is an art, a science, a passion, and an opportunity. It is an opportunity to prepare students not only for the world as it is but for the world as it can be. It’s an opportunity to summon the past, to examine the present, and to shape the future.

Real teaching is not perfect teaching, and real teachers are not flawless people. We have moments where we stumble, and entire days we’d rather forget. Students and colleagues say things to us (sometimes good, sometimes not so good) that will forever imprint on our soul. Yet we allow those moments, and those days, to become a part of who we are, to strengthen us, and to keep moving forward. When we own it, we’re being real.

True teaching takes courage. It takes persistence. It takes honest self-reflection in order to continuously improve. It requires being real with oneself about what is necessary to be a great teacher.

Strategies for Success

My philosophy for being real includes three core strategies: (1) teach what is real, (2) be reliable (or be realiable, if you prefer), and (3) be realistic. I detail each of these strategies in the following three sections. You can use or adapt them as best suits your own teaching philosophy.

Teach What Is Real

No student can truly learn a subject, especially the mathematics that I teach, if he or she does not see the relevance of the information in his or her everyday life. To help build connections between the content I teach and students’ own interests, I constantly look for ways I can meet them where they live. On any given day, I weave lessons about the mathematics the students are learning with issues important to them, such as advertising, the internet, and popular music. I make it my mission to never have students leave my class thinking that they will not use the information we discussed or wondering how that information relates to the world around them.

I’ll never forget when one of my students told me how she had been looking at a bridge and noticed all of its parallel lines, a subject I had covered in class. It occurred to me the student would never see bridges (or parallel lines) the same again, and when students see how the content we teach fits in to the context of their lives, that’s teaching what is real.

Be Reliable

Put simply, we cannot demand that our students be organized, focused, and passionate unless we ourselves are all of these. With each word we speak, each lesson we deliver, and each situation we react to, we’re teaching our students who we are. When we present ourselves as adults whom students can rely on, we have every right to ask our students to be reliable as well.

As an example, my students know what is expected of them well before they enter my classroom each day. My expectations of them, the procedures in my classroom, and my relaxed yet firm and consistent manner are all aspects of my teaching that my students can rely on. In cases where students make poor choices, and consequences are clear and necessary, I’ve found they often readily accept those consequences because I’ve delivered them with consistency and fairness. As I embody the traits of a reliable human being, my students learn what it takes to be reliable human beings.

Be Realistic

Living in one of San Diego’s poorest neighborhoods, my students are constantly dealing with serious issues of violence, racism, and low literacy rates (to name just a few). It is not realistic for me to expect each of my students to show up on the first day proficient in his or her academic content areas. However, throughout the year, I take students from where they are to where they can be.

In this book’s introduction (see page 2), I wrote about the importance of establishing or building in students a growth mindset (Dweck, 2006). I believe all students in my class can learn, can improve, and can surpass their own expectations of themselves, regardless of where those expectations previously began and ended. I also believe this is true of every student in every classroom. Perhaps not every one of your students will graduate from college; however, each and every one of them will someday be a neighbor, a coworker, and a person who has the potential to make a better world for those around them and those who come after them.

Summary

Educating is hard. I believe, and most teachers I know agree, educating struggling students is arguably the hardest job there is. However, it is my philosophy that, as teachers, we are working for those with the most potential to create a brighter future for everyone. This is why I teach, and this is why I love teaching. Being real with your students is an opportunity to engage in real teaching while teaching what is real.

Here’s to getting real and getting to the heart of being teachers.

Reflection Questions

Now that you have completed the chapter, consider and reflect on the following questions.

1. In a few sentences, what is your philosophy of teaching?

2. How has your philosophy changed (or stayed the same) since you first began teaching?

3. As an educator, what do you still yearn for?

4. How might you change your instructional approach to be more real with your students? How might your students benefit from such a change?

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