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My Education Philosophy

In my philosophy of education, the teacher strives to possess (1) a mastery of the subject, (2) a nurturing, calm demeanor, and (3) a consistent willingness to demonstrate the lesson in action. The goal of the teacher is to free the student from the anxiety of having to learn and the consequences of poor performance; this results in a sense of contentment within the student.  When this state is achieved, the student desires to learn and apply knowledge, and the teacher can accurately assess learning.
To create this “flow,” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) the teacher must create lesson plans and teach in a manner that emphasizes teacher demonstration. I offer a real life case of integers.  It had been my opinion and strategy to teach that adding positive and negative numbers must be accompanied by the illustration of a number line to guide the students which way from zero to bounce. It confounded me that students could not understand how a number line worked; specifically that zero was, in fact, a number – they kept skipping it!  I lectured - and the students collaborated - endlessly.  One day, having failed repeatedly at this lesson, I scattered plain algebraic tiles onto the group table and said, “The positive numbers are blue, and the negative numbers are red.”  Quite literally, that was the last full sentence I uttered for the rest of the period.  In that moment, my students and I simultaneously recognized a system that needed no discussion.  A non-verbal dynamic exchange of information had begun.  It was quiet, effective, and profound.  I seek always to recreate this phenomenon every day I teach math.
            By my reckoning, the student solidifies learning through observation and quiet reflection instead of teacher lectures or from subject matters that compete for the attention of the student.  In this way, Perennialism and Essentialism are at odds with my view.  The prior insists that learning is teacher-centered while the latter, that the acquisition and practice of Western knowledge (as opposed to the thoughtful, meditative manner of young Buddhist monks) is one if its highest indicators of student success (Morrison, 2009).   
            It can be further argued that my doctrine completely dismisses the other major philosophies of education, but that’s not true.  I, too, look to the latest scientifically based methods in the same way Progressivists, Humanists, and Social Reconstructivists all do.
            Specifically, my educational model embraces brain-centered instruction as a reliable queue for how a teacher can instruct and how a student can learn.  This supremely scientific approach advocates music, safety, neuron-stimulating visual prompts (circles over squares), and memory-based teaching strategies and I completely agree (Stone, 2009).  But my lesson plans and agendas would prioritize demonstration.  The teacher would stimulate the learning modality with a thoughtful, real life application of the topic, rather than overly rely on lecture and group work (or a combination thereof) or an Existentialist exercise to summon an emotional connection to the idea being taught.
The essential question of any doctrine is: What good actually comes of it? Essentialism, for example, champions mathematics - but does applying the philosophy cause students to learn more math?  My philosophy does not champion any subject; rather, it advocates a state of mental clarity and happiness in which educational rigor thrives. 

Conclusions and Future Study
            I would like to expand this paper to include a broad survey of literature regarding happiness, Eastern philosophy, and Micronesian traditions of apprenticeship in navigation and fishing to include how wind and water dynamics were taught by demonstration.


References
Stone, S., (September 29, 2009). Brain research, instructional strategies, and
            e-learning: Making the connection. Learning Solutions Magazine. Retrieved

Morrison, G. S. (2009). Teaching in America, fifth edition. London: Pearson

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience.
New York: Harper & Row

Link, S., (2008). Essentialism & Perennialism. Research Starters. Retrieved
from http://www.dswleads.com/Ebsco/Essentialism%20&%20Perennialism.pdf