Lucas Gilman

ENGL3690
Mrs. Meeusen
April 26, 2023
My Teaching Philosophy
Teaching was a profession I never thought I would end up going into. For most of my
life, I was of the thought process that I would be anything but a teacher, since that is what my
mom is. However, once I reached my senior year of high school, everything started to change. I
started to want to become a teacher. Then, once I started working in childcare, my viewpoint was
solidified. I loved working with children! The relationships that I have built with students so far
have been indescribable, and what is even more amazing is that they have survived even though I
have moved out of childcare and just started helping out in the building on Friday’s. With this all
being said, working in childcare is vastly different than working in a classroom. This paper will
examine what my philosophy as a teacher in a real classroom will be.
So, what do I want to be as a writing teacher? Well, this is complex and simple at the
same time. For one, the ultimate goal I have as a writing teacher is to have them reach their
fullest potential as a writer when I have them. This is a lofty goal, but it seems pretty obvious.
My hope is that my individual goals mentioned in this paragraph will hopefully help lead to this
ultimate goal that I have for my students. My first individual goal is that I want my students to
take away a lot from my class. If my students do not take away information from my class, then I
did not do my job. So, I will make sure to present the information in a way that gets students
invested and makes them want to learn more about a topic. A lot of the time, students mention
the fact that they don’t remember what they learned because it did not connect with them due to
the use of boring activities. This leads to my second goal, that being the creation of fun activities.
In my classroom, I plan to create activities that make students remember what they are learning
and make sure that what they learn is portrayed in a meaningful way to them. Finally, I want my
students to think critically about their learning. If they have a question, I want them to ask it. If
they do not think critically and just take in all the information given to them, then they won’t be
able to reach their full potential as a writer. They also might not fully understand the information
presented, leading them to struggle with one of several aspects of writing, which could include
format, structure, punctuation, vocabulary, or many others. I want all of my students to be unique
in their thinking. Of the three goals mentioned, this is definitely the toughest goal to reach, but I
am up for the challenge.
One of my other goals as a writing teacher is to make my students feel comfortable and
engaged in writing. To do so, I need to make sure that my classroom environment is one that
allows students to reach these goals. To do this, I need to implement a writing community in my
classroom, something that Steven Graham, Charles MacArthur and Michael Herbert bring up in
chapter two of Best Practices in Writing. By creating a writing community, students will feel
safer in publishing and displaying their work. I will work to create a writing community by
creating a positive classroom environment, along with creating a class goal when it comes to
writing. When creating these class goals, students will be given a role that they are responsible
for in the classroom. It is important to have a strong classroom setup that allows students to
move to quiet locations for them to write down their thoughts. By doing all this, you will have
created a space in which students feel comfortable and engaged to write, as they do not have to
worry about what others think about their writings, as everyone knows they are working towards
the same goal.
 My classroom environment will also utilize a plethora of different methods in order to
teach students. For one, I will utilize group work in the classroom. I find group work to be
important in building a solid classroom environment. By having students work together, they
learn together, and help each other succeed. Without using group work in the classroom, students
might stagnate in what they learn and isolate themselves from their classmates. When having
them work in groups, I will try and get them to differentiate who they work with. Hopefully, they
can do this on their own, but I am also willing to make groups for them. Students need to learn
how to work with everyone, as in the future they will have little choice over who they work with.
Another method in which I plan to teach my students about writing is through the utilization of
mentor texts in the classroom. Mentor texts can be used to help students understand how to
compose a certain style of writing, as it effectively shows the way in which that style is written
by a professional. This means that when students are struggling with their writings, they can look
towards these mentor texts in order to pull ideas, which is brought up by Ruth Culham in The
Writing Thief. Students are also able to use these texts in order to strengthen their vocabulary, as
it might introduce them to new words. One final method I plan to use in my classroom is Kagan
Strategies. These have been taught throughout the entire semester and I find them particularly
important to implement in the classroom. It gives students the chance to move and talk to other
people in the classroom, depending on the strategy, while remaining on track with the material
that needs to be covered. This helps keep students engaged in their learning, as it can serve as a
semi brain break. I especially like the utilization of strategies such as quiz-quiz trade and think
pair share in the classroom. The first gives students the chance to evaluate their knowledge, and
the second gets students the chance to see what others are thinking about a question posed. These
three methods will be primary methods used in my classroom.
Within my classroom I will also assess students in many different ways. Of course, I will
use the traditional assessment method, as this is something that students are used to, and what I
will likely be evaluated on. However, I will also differentiate the ways in which I assess them
using projects, papers, and presentations. All three of these ways give students the opportunity to
show their writing skills in different ways, as well as give them different ways in which they can
present their writings. With papers, I am able to see the traditional way in which students can
write. This tests their more long form writing skills and can focus more on the structure and
punctuation aspects. As our books have said, in order for students to improve their writing skills,
they must write. Assigning papers will help assess how students can improve their writing skills.
With projects and presentations, the focus is a little less on punctuation and more on the
creativity aspect. These are also able to be presented. I love the idea of using projects and
presentations in writing because it differentiates the way in which students utilize their writing
skills, helping them gain new skills in the process. All three of these methods are very different,
leading to students being able to be more engaged in their writings. There will also be some
freedom in the projects and presentations, leading them to be able to do something that they want
to do, rather than be forced to complete a specific task. For all three of the previously mentioned
assessments, I will be able to tell if my students are succeeding or not. I will be able to see if they
are meeting my criteria of competency or mastery. If they are meeting it, I know they are
succeeding. If they are not, then work needs to be done. That work might be me changing the
instruction for the following year or working with a student individually.
Over the past couple of years, teaching has been a hobby of mine. In the next couple of
years, it will become my life. To prepare myself for this, I need to start coming up with strategies
to use in order to teach writing, as well as find out what I want students to gain by being in my
class. My hope is that my students will understand that I care for them, and that they will
understand that I want them to become a unique thinker that searches for evidence in order to
find out if an answer is correct. My teaching philosophy will change, but as of right now, this
paper reflects it in this very moment.
 References

Alexander, Kwame, and G. Kylene Beers. The Write Thing: Kwame Alexander Engages Students

in Writing Workshop (and You Can Too!). Shell Education, 2019.

Culham, Ruth. The Writing Thief: Using Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing. Stenhouse

Publishers, 2014.

Graham, Steve, et al. Best Practices in Writing Instruction, Third Edition. Guilford Publications,

2018.