PEDAGOGICAL PHILOSOPHY STATEMENT

Sara McManus

School of Education, University of Northern British Columbia

EDUC 393: Foundations of Education

Melanie Baerg, M.Ed. – Lecturer

December 6, 2021

“The world is better because you are in it” is what I want every student to know at the end of their time with me. In other words, I want them to know that they are seen, heard, and valuable in this world, that their presence matters and that they can make a positive difference. Through my emerging practitioner beliefs as a new Educator in British Columbia, I strive to achieve this goal. As a learner myself, I am discovering the foundations of my personal teaching pedagogies through my new responsibilities, growing knowledge, lessons of relationships, desire to create safe and open learning environments, developing teaching practices, aspirations to increase learner outcomes, and hopefulness for a long-lasting practitioner impact for myself.

I am grateful to be bound by the nine BC Educator Standards (BC Teachers’ Council, 2019) and the nine points of the BCTF Code of Ethics (BC Teachers’ Federation, 2021) which sets out a framework for me to build my responsibilities in my teaching practice. Together these eighteen mandates will aid me in ensuring that I am always vigilant in doing my best and expecting the same of others. Within the description of the ninth BC Educator Standard, it is written that “Educators critically examine their own biases, attitudes, beliefs, values, and practices to facilitate change.” I am eager to accept this responsibility as I learn more about Indigenous ways of knowing and being and historical events that have impacted the people, place, and land where I live and teach. During the first term of my Teacher Certification program, it has been through the close examination of the First Peoples Principals of Learning (FNESC, n.d.) and Dr. Tina Fraser’s Nine R’s (Fraser, 2021) that I have been able to recognize that I have a natural strength to teach using these methodologies.

Being a life-long learner through professional development has always been a significant aspect of who I am. A person should always try to do their best; this involves keeping an open mind to new ideas and continual learning. As an educator, professional expertise is required. Students, parents, colleagues, and administrators look to teachers as the knowledge keepers of classrooms and the world. Elementary school teachers, in particular, must be a Jack-of-all-trades generalist of teachable subject areas. It is implied that intermediate-level teachers will have the broadest assortment of knowledge, as they will potentially teach the curriculum assigned to their classroom grade level(s), as well as that of all preceding years beneath them. They do this as the breadth of Social Studies, Science, English Language Arts, Physical Education, Math, and Fine Arts simultaneously increases. Elementary stream educators must also be experts in literacy and numeracy to develop these foundational skills at any age, and therefore I am keen to dive deeper into these two subjects to advance my skill and knowledge base. During the EDUC 393 lecture on Literacy is a Social Justice Issue, I noted, “Every student can still have value in our world if they cannot read, but they will have a much more difficult time in their life if they are illiterate” (Baerg, 2021). From my teaching experiences, I believe that teachers do not need to know everything, but they need to source the knowledge quickly, obtain resources, and learn as they teach to be successful.

During my interview for a non-certified Teacher Teaching on Call position, I asked my interviewer if he had one piece of advice to a new teacher, what would it be? His reply was, “RELATIONSHIPS!” I whole-heartedly understand and believe that now. Relationships are one of the foundations of my personal teaching pedagogy. I have witnessed both the impacts of positive and negative relationships on the ability of a student to learn. Positive relationships between students and teachers show improvements “in both the short- and long-term with improvements on practically every measure schools care about” (Sparks, 2019). Students who feel safe in a classroom will engage in learning. In my lived experiences, this is especially true for Indigenous students and those who have experienced trauma. As I learn about boundaries between teachers and students, I can recognize more potential situations that could be misconstrued or viewed as unethical and the implications for Educators. I am developing a new sense of personal boundaries with a lens balanced between relationship building and the perspective of others, which will always be outside of my control.

A second foundation to my personal teaching pedagogy is my inclusive educator spirit. I believe that every child has value and a place in my classroom to learn. I know there is still a vast quantity of information for me to consume to be better prepared to serve a wider variety of learners in my future classrooms, but my instinct has always been to include everyone, and I am appreciative to now be able to name what I do, as Universal Design for Learning. My strategy mirrors that of UDL’s in that I like to find out what my students know (access their background knowledge), then I present the information in a variety of different ways (multiple means of representation), then they are given time to process and can choose how to return their work (opportunity to present in different ways) (Litz, 2021).  In addition to learning diversity, my present and future classrooms are a safe space for students of diverse ethnicities, religions, cultures, languages, socio-economic factors, LGBTQ2S+, and physical and mental health diversity. Schools and classrooms should be warm and inviting to students, families, and communities. There should not be barriers to entry, and staff should be accessible when families need support.

Similarly to relationships, I believe that the needs of students, as described in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Hopper, 2020), must be met before learning can indeed occur; this is the third foundation of my personal teaching pedagogy.  Students who are under toxic stress cannot learn, and “the result can be damaged, weakened systems and brain architecture, with lifelong repercussions” (Harvard University, n.d.). School Districts and the Provincial Government of BC should provide adequate access to food, learning, social-emotional, behaviour, mental health, and physical health support for all learners; and schools should be responsible for ensuring the distribution of these supports to create a positive school climate and culture. Therefore, teachers and support staff could feel safe in their ability to portray the needs of the students accurately and only then would the movement to an inclusive education system be possible.

In life, I have learned that I am in constant motion. Learning something new tomorrow may change my entire perspective, and who I am as a teacher may completely be altered. I feel uncomfortable selecting labels of historical pedagogies and educational theories, which I know require much more research than I have afforded them. However, I can see myself reflected in Progressivism, Perennialism, Essentialism, and Social Reconstructivism. Here are some key things that I believe in that make it hard to choose between the philosophical perspectives of education:  I like social learning and think that modelling and mentorship are fundamental in all stages of learning. I also believe that everyone needs to master the same foundational skills in literacy, numeracy, and other core subjects. I believe this happens best through teacher-driven initiatives and explicit instruction before student-centred activities, exploration, and discovery. However, student-centred activities do help to develop internal motivation and a student’s sense of self. I appreciate good quality scope and sequence resources. I regularly use small rewards, like stickers in my classroom; however, I would not consider myself a heavy-handed disciplinarian and do not believe in corporal punishment. Additionally, I have discovered a few things about my teaching practice over the past few months. I prefer the teacher’s desk to be at the front side of a classroom, near the doorway, because I tend to have a hard time keeping track of students and cannot see students’ faces when I am at the back of a classroom. I also feel lost without a teacher-student workspace for one-on-one lessons or conversations. I love using different visual and audio mediums while presenting in a lecture in style.

Although I am discovering my likes in a classroom environment that match my teaching style, I have learned that flexibility is the fourth foundation of my personal teaching pedagogy. As an Educator, I need to be versatile and adapt to change on the fly. I am very skilled at this in the classroom and can think to diversify a lesson or change activities if it is not going as well as planned. I am becoming aware that my coping ability regarding sudden change is much greater when it involves youth than adults. This insight is allowing me to work on my flexibility as a professional. I recognize that my type-A personality tends to place high expectations of others and that when working in the public sector, I will need to use BC Educator Standards #5 (BC Teachers’ Council, 2019) to help guide me.

As I have experienced the first-hand joys of a high school teacher at graduation, learner outcomes are always in my mind. I believe that all students have the ability to learn given the right circumstances. It is the responsibility of educators to lead learners through their education path to ensure that they work towards a series of learning outcomes leading towards their end goal. I have attended several Professional Development training sessions led by Sandra Herbst on Assessment for Learning. These workshops have been instrumental in the development of my perspectives on assessment. I believe that students must be assessed on what they have actually learned. During these Pro-D opportunities, I received advice and tips on collecting formative assessment evidence on my students throughout the year/term, etc., in various ways. Although I still want to believe there is a place for summative assessments, I am finding it less valuable in practice each day. The fifth foundation of my personal teaching pedagogy is Assessment for Learning.

My final point and conclusion are regarding my hopefulness for a long-lasting practitioner impact for myself. I am beginning to identify myself as a practitioner. It has been a complex concept to wrap my head around. However, when I consider that I have chosen to dedicate my life to teaching, it becomes the right word for my evolution. I cannot imagine any other gift that I can give to the world or that the world can give to me than to share my time with people who bring me such joy. It is what Dr. Tina Fraser’s Nine R’s refers to as reciprocity between the student and the learner (Fraser, 2021). The truth is I push so hard because something internal is pushing me. I am excited to find out what it is. Maybe the world is better because I’m in it too.

References

Baerg, M. (2021, October 25). EDUC 393 – Foundations of Education. Social Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [Lecture]. South-Central Campus, Quesnel, BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education.

BC Teachers’ Council. (2019, June 19). Professional Standards for BC Educators. [PDF]. Retrieved October 09, 2021, from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assests/gov/educations/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/teacher-regulation/standards-for-educatiors/edu_standards.pdf

BC Teachers’ Federation. (2021). BCTF Code of Ethics. Retrieved November 16, 2021, from https://www.bctf.ca/about-bctf/bctf-ethics

Cherry, K. (2020, March 21). The 4 Stages of Cognitive Development: Background and Key Concepts of Piaget’s Theory. [Article]. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/piagets-stages-of-cognitive-development-2795457

First Nations Education Steering Committee. (n.d.). First Peoples Principles of Learning. [Website]. Retrieved December 05, 2021, from http://www.fnesc.ca/first-peoples-principles-of-learning/

Fraser, T. (2021, September). EDUC 446-3 Aboriginal and Indigenous Education: Epistemologies. [Course Syllabus]. Nine R’s. BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia. School of Education.

Harvard University. (n.d.). Centre for the Developing Child. Toxic Stress. Retrieved December 03, 2021, from https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/toxic-stress/

Hopper, E. (2020, February 24). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Explained. Plateresca / Getty Images [Photo]. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www.thoughtco.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4582571

Litz, D. (2021, November 18). EDUC 394: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Teaching – Theory in Context. Teaching Diversity and Inclusion [Lecture – Video Conference]. Terrace, BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education.

Sparks, S. (2019, March 12). Why Teacher-Student Relationships Matter. Education Week. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-teacher-student-realtionships-matter/2019/03

 

 

Sara McManus

School of Education, University of Northern British Columbia

EDUC 393: Foundations of Education

Melanie Baerg, M.Ed. – Lecturer

November 16, 2021

It has been over one month since my last Cross-Curricular Reflective Writing assignment and submission. My days are long and filled from early in the morning to late at night about education in one form or another.  I feel like an exhausted, giant sponge. As much as I am overwhelmed by adding this new learning experience into my life, I also enjoy and appreciate the majority of the content of my courses.  I see evidence of my learning in my practice in the classroom and elsewhere in my life. In this reflection, I would like to address the impacts of our EDUC 393 Foundations of Educations lecture on Social Justice on October 25, 2021 (Baerg, 2021) and the video conference BCTF Workshop on Professional Boundary Issues held on November 8, 2021 (Baerg, 2021).

On my drive to the campus on October 25, 2021, I chatted with a person close to me who lives in another community. Her daughter is one and a half years old right now and has an exponentially developing vocabulary. This baby was born during the start of the pandemic, and I was one of the few visitors in the first six months of the little girl’s life.  I was incredibly proud of the Mom for naturally speaking with an adult voice and verbalizing everything she did with her new baby.  In our call, the Mom inquired about reading to her toddler. Her spouse had been applying pressure to read more regularly to help their daughter become an avid reader when she grows up.  Being the Mom’s virtual support person, she was eager to hear my opinion on the subject.  I shared with her some tidbits of information Melanie Baerg had shared throughout our classes about the advances in neuroscience, and from what I had learned in my readings, I told her that I would know more about it soon.  I could not listen close enough to the YouTube presentation of The Brain Prize Presents: Stanislas Dehaene  (The Brain Prize, 2016).  After our class, I was able to call her back with a wealth of information!  I was able to explain to the Mom that her gut instinct was right. She just needs to continue to have conversations with her daughter, as she has since day one.  I told her – of course, she should have books in the house. She should encourage her daughter to touch, look and play with books. When she reads books to her daughter, the focus should be on the story, the language, and the pronunciation of the words, not necessarily teaching her to read.  I explained to her how there are twenty-six letters and 44 sounds in the English language and how it takes four different parts of the brain to read. I loved providing her with the process and phenological awareness and decoding steps, which leads to orthographic mapping.  It was empowering to share what I had learned in our EDUC 393 class from our focus on Literacy as a Social Justice issue (Baerg, 2021) in an unexpected area of my life. The Mom appreciated it too!

Another tie to the October 25, 2021 lecture on Social Justice (Baerg, 2021) occurred during a video from our EDUC 390 Observational course (Baerg, 2021) when Tom Schimmer said, “Think of assessment as relationship building, as a way to drive inclusivity, as a focus on how we nurture a culture of learning in an environment where students feel supported, they feel motivated, and they feel engaged” (Schimmer, 2018). I appreciated this statement because I philosophically agree with its sentiment.  In one of my practicums, I shared feedback with the classroom teacher on what she had done well throughout the day. (i.e., excellent use of formative assessment, great circulation of the classroom, etc.) (Curle, 2021 ).  A few minutes into our conversation, she mentioned that sometimes teaching is so natural that you don’t even recognize what you are doing until you step back and take a moment to reflect. She noted that she hadn’t been conscious of using formative assessment or the other things I mentioned, but that was precisely what she was doing.  Being inclusive is a big part of my version of “we teach who we are” (Palmer, 1997). Although to me it seems natural to include everyone, especially youth in my care, it has not been without its challenges. Until now, I have not had any formal training in diversity, equity and inclusion, such as special needs education. I have depended on observation from developing relationships and intuition to guide my action with youth.  During my two years of teaching at the alternate high school, no one told me that I had to open my classroom doors; I just knew that the only way I would reach those students to help them achieve their graduation goals was to develop a strong relationship with them.  When they really knew I cared about them and that I would be with them every step of the way – they would really open themselves up to learning. I can feel it already at the high school. The students who talk to me are learning from me; those who are mad, that their previous teacher is absent, are stuck. I am literally watching their grades drop by the day. My mind is filled with ideas on how to reach them before another week is wasted.

When I reflect on applying my learning into practice in my classroom,  I see it every day in so many ways. One way is how I love to wear my microphone now to help my two hearing disabled students. Whenever my students ask me questions about the microphone, I can respond confidently, normalizing the microphone without specifying any particular students. I don’t know if I would have been able to do that as easily in the past.  I also experienced an extremely steep learning curve in practice this past two weeks. In my TTOC position, I had the daunting task of reporting on one hundred plus high school students whom I had known for less than three weeks.  I was tremendously grateful that I spent so much time learning their names and working with them during our classroom blocks in the first two weeks. Developing these new relationships allowed me to provide feedback to their parents regarding their work habits to accompany their previous teacher’s summative evidence. During this process, I learned the designations of my students. It was incredibly frustrating to find out the particulars of these students halfway through a six-week placement. There is a fine line between figuring out the students on your own and what you need to know when you go into a classroom for more than a one-day on-call placement. In-hind sight, I wish I had known where to find the information a lot sooner. (Lesson learned.  Now, I know that each CSS classroom has a student services binder.)

The final subject area that I have chosen to reflect on is the personal boundaries between teachers and students. After attending the BCTF Professional Boundary Issues Workshop on November 8, 2021 (Balfour, 2021), I can now say that I have widened my scope of understanding regarding the professional boundaries between teachers and students. I especially appreciated the legal background knowledge, especially the Shewan case.  I am sincerely able to look back and reflect on my first Cross-Curricular Reflective Writing and now see the special position that I held as a Resource Teacher at the alternate school.  However, I did find that Shelley Belfour tended to generalize her presentation primarily towards classroom teachers to reach the widest audience. Listening to the workshop, I felt like I had already broken many of the rules in my first two years of teaching. (Really, I stopped counting how many when it went over one hand’s worth of fingers!) When I came home that night, I had to reflect on what the difference was.  One of the first things that Shelley Balfour talked about was how it is the responsibility of all teachers to support each other through the BCTF Code of Ethics #5 by addressing colleagues directly of any criticism or work-related issue like professionalism. (BC Teacher’s Federation, 2021).  Looking back at the colleagues I was surrounded by and the Administration that supervised me during my two years of teaching, I know that they all take their commitment to the BC Educator Standards and the BCTF Code of Ethics very seriously. I taught under two very different Principals. One was slightly older than I am, and the other was highly experienced and had come out of retirement to provide coverage. Both were mentors to me, and both were involved in overseeing everything that I did in the small alternate environment. The second of the two is one of the most moral and ethical persons I have ever met. I know, without a doubt, that she would have taken me aside and let me know if she felt like I was breaching any professional boundaries; instead, she wrote my reference letter to UNBC and has made future predictions on me becoming a Principal in less than ten years.

Now that I have been back in many more general classrooms, I can easily say that I am not drawn to open my personal life up to them in the same way as my alternate students. I know there are many vulnerable students in the general classroom population, but they are different somehow as a whole.  Age will undoubtedly factor into play.  I have no desire to tell a Kindergarten class much more about me than that I have two dogs named Rosie and Iris. My high school students, on the other hand, all know that I’m a student teacher, that I have a son named Duncan in Grade 10, and anyone at school last week now knows that I take every third Thursday off work to go to the hospital for Breast Cancer Treatment, so I genuinely do appreciate it when they wear their masks in my classroom.  However, there must be other factors as well, like how other schools have designated Resource Teachers and procedurally operate differently.  The size and composition of the classroom would also be factored in.  My alternate classroom only had a maximum limit of 15 students per block; often, I had fewer in a class which allowed me time and physical space to have in-depth conversations with students if they could not focus on their work.

I like that my alternate students will keep a special place in my life that other students will not have.  They needed me at that time to see them for who they were, and I did that by saying, this is who I am – an open book. I was available and made time for them.  I was safe because I allowed them to speak freely with me. Without knowing it, I was opening a space to develop a sense of belonging using the Circle of Courage (Brokenleg, 2015). Individuals, couples, and groups of students would find their way to my classroom. I couldn’t imagine what my two years would have been like had I closed myself off to them. I don’t know how I would have ever learned so much or how I would have been able to teach them as much as I did. I am, however, excited to bravely enter a world filled with all these professional boundaries with a newfound understanding of their implications for educators today.

References

Baerg, M. (2021, October 25). EDUC 393 – Foundations of Education. Social Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [Lecture]. South-Central Campus, Quesnel, BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education.

Baerg, M. (2021, November 08). EDUC 393 – Foundations of Education. BCTF Workshop: Professional Boundary Issues. South-Central Campus, Quesnel, BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education.

Baerg, M. (2021, November 16). Observational Practicum. South-Central Campus, Quesnel, BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education.

Balfour, S. (2021, November 08). Professional Boundary Issues: Teacher/Student Relationships. ([. Conference], Ed.) BCTF.

BC Teacher’s Federation. (2021). BCTF Code of Ethics. Retrieved November 16, 2021, from https://www.bctf.ca/about-bctf/bctf-ethics

Brokenleg, M. (2015, October 26). First Nations Principles of Learning. [Video}. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PgrfCVCt_A

Curle, A. (2021 , November 9). Lakeview Elementary School. Quesnel, BC, Canada.

Palmer, P. J. (1997, Nov. – Dec.). The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching. Vol. 29(No. 6.), pp. 14-21. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40165413

Schimmer, T. (2018, Septemeber 14). Assesment Literacy in BC. Province of BC. [YouTube]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7C20alZElI&t=5s

The Brain Prize. (2016, November 01). The Brain Prize Presents: Stanislas Dahaene. BrainFog.org. [YouTube]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlYZBi_07vk