Educational Philosophy

My educational philosophy is profoundly influenced by the memory of my own struggles in a standardized classroom. I struggled within the confines of formal education until I reached college. There, I excelled, stimulated by the exchange of ideas and the freedom to pursue my many different interests. I wish to help students achieve these feelings of success, and to help them attain goals which may otherwise escape them. I wish to contribute to learning environments in which the individual interests of the student and the teacher are appreciated and applauded, and the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate disciplines is recognized.

I believe that learning takes place both in and out of the classroom and that healthy, happy humans cannot help but learn constantly. Every action we take, every thought we have and every activity that we engage in shape the people we are and become. I hope to contribute by creating active, positive, humanistic learning experiences however I can, be it in front of a computer, in a garden, or interacting with other people. I have a sustained belief that individuals can and do make a global difference.

Experience

It is amazing to me the diversity of teaching experience I have accumulated in what seems like a very short period of time. The common thread running through all of these instructional situations is the desire to do the best job possible of fitting the methodology and content to the audience in order to have the best instructional outcome possible. While in these situations I have the role of teacher, but I have my own learning outcomes as well–I learn more about the content, more about how to teach and more about my audience, learning from them as well.