"Philosophizing Over Teaching and Technology"

Even though DeVoss et al. discussed the teaching philosophy statement in the context of Ph.D. students pursuing teaching positions, I think that the teaching philosophy statement, particularly the teaching with technology philosophy statement, is an important genre for not only individuals working in higher education, but also PreK-12 teaching because it allows for educators to engage in a metacognitive process about what they are doing. As DeVoss et al. say, “better teaching behavior comes primarily from exploring one’s own teaching from an experiential and phenomenological point of view” and “help us articulate our scholarly identities” (26, 34). The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) program also sees the power in reflection as one of their five core propositions is that “teachers think systematically about their practices and learn from experience” and one of their required components from candidates is a section called “Effective and Reflective Practitioner” (http://accomplishedteacher.org/proposition-4/). Just like DeVoss et al. see a teaching philosophy statement as “living, ongoing reflections of our praxis,” the NBPTS states that Accomplished teachers…stay abreast of current research and, when

appropriate, incorporate new findings into their practice…[and] serve as paradigms of lifelong learning and achievement” (DeVoss et al., 24).

I am about to embark on my tenth year of teaching and have participated in plenty of exercises or workshops that encouraged me to reflect to some degree on my teaching practice or methods. Some of these activities involved putting pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard to write a beginning of school year statement sharing why I choose to teach at my particular school. Other times, I have engaged in feedback conversations with my instructional coach about my choices when planning or executing a lesson for a group of students- why I did what I did and how this aligns to students’ goals, what things did or did not work effectively, and what I might do different next time. Beyond my school building, I always look for ways to get support from teachers at other schools and build connections to community and interdisciplinary resources (art, history, music, etc.) that can supplement my teaching practice. Even if I never created an actual teaching philosophy statement or teaching with technology statement that other people could read or see until my class here at Bread Loaf School of English, I feel that the activities I mentioned above have contributed so much to my effectiveness and improvement as a teacher. A teaching philosophy statement helps connect and put it all in one place, and can help me track the evolution of my own thought throughout my career.

My school uses different professional learning communities (PLC) to support

teachers and we spend time working together each week to look at student work or data, reflect on past lessons, and think about how we will teach upcoming lessons. While I enjoy the collaboration that this structure yields and the fact that it addresses some of the teaching with philosophy question starters, I still feel that it’s not always easy to get a sense of what each person’s teaching philosophy is or how they use technology in the classroom just from these weekly PLCs. Perhaps I am interested in improving cross-cultural communication with students in my classroom and not until a fourth grade teacher down the hall mentioned in her teaching with technology philosophy statement that she used blogging as a way to “pen pal” with a fourth grade class in another part of the world. Knowing this could improve my students’ learning experiences and my teaching practice. If teaching philosophy statements and teaching with technology statements became more of the norm for teachers in schools, it might even strengthen the types of collaboration possible among teachers and allow teachers to improve their practice by reading about, knowing about, and seeing what their colleagues are doing.