CREDO CONSTRUCTION
PREAMBLE
A credo is a system of beliefs, principles, or opinions that guides one’s actions; in other words, a personal belief statement. Throughout your PDP experience you will be asked to develop, revisit, and revise your personal belief statement, and to be continually questioning your core beliefs about teaching and learning.
Do not worry if your credo seems idealistic and ever-changing; credos are meant to be the purest of principles, and they are often dynamic and experientally based.
ASSIGNMENT: PART ONE
Take a few minutes by yourself and answer these questions. Over the course of 401/402 and 405 you will be asked to revisit these questions as well as your responses to them, so please respond in your journal.
What do you believe it means to be educated?
What do I think happens most the time? Or, what do I want it to be? To be educated means that you are capable of functioning successfully in your own environment wherein functioning is defined broadly to include social, personal, and aesthetic considerations.
What are some of the personal concepts you have about how learning happens?
My basic assumption about learning is that the human brain is hardwired to learn. In other words, it's a natural phenomenon. Learning is the process of creating neural pathways in the brain. In other words, learning is a physical process involving muscles, nerves, and other body parts.
What is your understanding of what it means to ‘teach’?
I think teaching is more about providing optimal opportunities and stimulus for brains to absorb. In other words, teaching is so much about transmitting something from my brain to a students brain but more about using my brain to generate ideas and objects for a student to explore in their own way and to draw their own conclusions from their own sensory data and experiences.
Why should you be a teacher of our children?
I should be a teacher because I love children—first and foremost. I should be a teacher because I love learning and helping others to learn. I should be a teacher because I see myself as a facilitator more than anything else. I'm comfortable in a supporting role or a leading role which allows me to act as guide or observer when necessary. I understand that my experience and my way is not everyone's and I try to see beyond myself to feel out ways that I can assist others meet their own goals.
What do you feel are some of the issues facing schools?
Funding for innovative programs that focus on meeting the needs of 'non-academic' students. In fact, education in all respects is underfunded. There are complex political issues also. Drugs, alcohol, sex work, child abuse. Sexual politics between students, teachers, etc. Reasonable work hours for teachers and administrators.
What would an observer see in your classroom related to teaching, learning, and the community of learners?
Hopefully an observer would see students truly engaged and invested in classroom activities and assignments. They would see a blend of interaction and independent work arrangements. They would see color, texture and light. They would see lots of examples of student involvement reflected in the classroom.
What would an observer in your classroom see you do?
Speak in positive language. Make requests of students rather than demands. Practice empathetic listening. Treating the students more like collaborators rather than adversaries. Asking questions and waiting for answers. Answering students questions respectfully.
What makes your class unique? Describe your classroom.
With any luck (and much determination on my and my students' part) my classroom will be comfortable. I imagine having several distinct areas where different types of activities can occur. For instance, I'd like to have a relatively quite corner for reading but also an area designed for collaborating and interacting. I'd like to see my students' personalities and preferences reflected. I'd like to see color, texture and light. Above all, I want my classroom to be a safe place for everyone.
How do your students engage in learning?
I would like my students to help generate ideas for both activities and content. My students will experience a variety of tasks which will develop skills and strengths they already possess as well as tasks which use those strengths to augment areas upon which they would like to improve.
What do I want my legacy as a teacher to be?
Safety.
After you have finished expressing your ideas, highlight/circle/underline the key words, ideas, and phrases.
ASSIGNMENT: PART TWO
On your table you will find a collection of belief statements, chart paper, glue sticks, and markers. Take some time to sift through the statements, and collect the ones that evoke emotion in you. *I have attached them for you. You’ll have to do this for yourself with whatever you have available.
Once you have gathered the statements that ‘speak to you,’ organize them in order of importance on your chart paper. You may display your learning in any creative way. For example, you may number them from most to least important, you may put them on a chart, use a Venn Diagram, or a web. This may take some time as these are heady educational statements.
After they have been organized, glue them on the chart paper, then explain and/or decorate your ideas as you see fit.
Be prepared to discuss your statement chart with others and be ready to ask questions as your colleagues explain their rationale.
Enjoy!
My List
It is important for learners to enjoy learning.
Children learn from play.
I will consider revising my teaching methods if
they are criticized by learners.
I will give learners some options
in what we will study.
It is not fair to use the same criteria to
evaluate all learners.
As a teacher, I will be concerned
with changing society.
I will serve more as a group facilitator than as a transmitter of information.
As a teacher I will tell my students
a great deal about myself.
Learners should have some control over the order in which they complete classroom work.
Since people learn a great deal from their mistakes,
I will allow learners to learn by trial and error.
I will allow learners to go to the
bathroom just about any time.
I will allow students to call me by my first name.
As a professional, I should be left free
to determine the methods of instruction
that I use in the classroom.
Schooling as it is now helps perpetuate the
social and economic inequalities of our society.
I will allow students to email me at home.
It is important for learners to enjoy learning.
In secondary instruction note-taking should take up most of the class.
Parents should be active in formulating curriculum.
As a teacher I will tell my students a great deal about myself.
I will give learners some options in what we will study.
I will feel free to depart from the official curriculum when it seems appropriate.
People learn better when competing with each other.
When people compete, they don’t complete.
Even when a teacher is not in the classroom s/he must serve as a role model in the community.
I will consider revising my teaching methods if they are criticized by learners.
The principal/department head should determine what I teach.
Schools today spend too much time on social/emotional needs of children and not enough time on academic skills.
It is not fair to use the same criteria to evaluate all learners.
As a teacher, I will be concerned with changing society.
As a teacher my primary task will be to carry out the educational goals and curricular decisions that others have formulated.
Children learn from play.
Grades motivate learning.
Praise is damaging in the classroom.
One of the main problems for schools these days is diversity.
Students should not work cooperatively in groups because they learn to depend on each other too much.
Parents have no right to tell me what to do in the classroom.
Schooling as it is now helps perpetuate the social and economic inequalities of our society.
Learners should have some control over the order in which they complete classroom work.
I will allow learners to go to the bathroom just about any time.
My political beliefs have no place in the classroom.
I would lower my expectations for academic performance for those learners who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Students learn best in a quiet, orderly classroom where they sit and listen.
I will allow students to email me at home.
I will allow students to call me by my first name.
As a professional, I should be left free to determine the methods of instruction that I use in the classroom.
Parents and other community members should have the right to reject schoolbooks and other materials.
I will use the comparison of one student’s work with that of another as a method of motivation.
I will serve more as a group facilitator than as a transmitter of information.
Most theories on pedagogy are ‘ivory tower’ and are not useful in the classroom.
I will start out as a strict disciplinarian and gradually become more approachable as the learners come to respect my authority.
Since people learn a great deal from their mistakes, I will allow learners to learn by trial and error.
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