Vision statement

The world of education is vast and wondrous and full of many discoveries yet to
be made by students. Teachers act as guides to their students in this environment and
lead them through the twist and turns that may come up. Brad Henry once said that "a
good teacher can inspire hope, ignite imagination, and instill the love of learning."
Teachers should strive for their students to explore and make discoveries about the
world around them without the worry of becoming a statistic in the news. Within my
lifetime I've formed ideals of what teaching in the classroom should be like. Having
grown up in a family with educators, teaching young children in my local church for a few
years, and believing that teaching gives a unique opportunity to make a positive
difference in the lives if others reintegrate my reasoning on my beliefs on children and
the etching profession. Continuing my journey on becoming an educator, all the
experiences and life lessons I encounter will further build upon my convictions of the
ideal of education.

In my eyes, essential qualities for a teacher to appropriate in classrooms include
responding to diverse learners in an appropriate manner, implementing learner centered
instruction within the classroom, and on top of that encouraging movement with this
instruction to help further the students learning. An educator that displays these values is
a shining example to students that learning can be fun and it's something to strive for in
the course of their education. The Learner-Centered schools for Texas:a vision of Texas
educators is one resource I will be using to reinforce my statements, as well as some
input from Eric Jensen's Teaching with the Brain in Mind text.
I really think that being a learner centered instructor is important for we should
really strive to both engage and be engaged in our students learning. Being a teacher I
need to display the love of learning and hopefully pass that on through my students so
they can value what they learn. The skills I wish to equip in my classroom would be
using both cooperative learning structures in the classroom to build upon students social
skills. According to Kagen'sarticle about Kagen Structures Enhancing
engagement(http://www.kaganonline.com/free_articles/dr_spencer_kagan/277/Kagan-
Structures-Enhance-Brain-Engagement!)
The more of structured learning being taught to students, the more they are
engaged in the classroom. In doing this students will not only improving on the skill of
working together with their peers but also that of being actively engaged in the learning
process. I will not just give group activities but individual activities to build on their
knowledge gathering. This will help reinforce what they learned in a group and students
will be able to exercise what they learn by themselves.

I would also like to incorporate diversity into my classroom, instead of relying the
diverse students to teach others, incorporate cultures and beliefs into lesson plans.(an
approach to teaching diversity
http://www.uww.edu/learn/diversity/dozensuggestions.php)
This helps an gain engage students and helps the understand the world a bit
better than they did before. I also think incorporating learning with something the
students are familiar with. Angela M. O'Donnell and Donald F. Dansereau did an
experiment about this and found when they had students teach teachers they found they
did better giving the information due to their prior knowledge.
(http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220970009598497)
If students can relate something they are learning with something they know,the better
understanding they have on the subject. I believe no matter what the obsticle, any
student can excel at anything they set their mind to and these are a few ways I wish to
instill that belief within them.

As I stated at the beginning, I believe an important factor is keeping students engaged
all throughout the day and one way to do that is through incorporate movement within
the classroom environment. This is an element I wish to implement in my classroom
because Jensen in his text states that movement helps with memory and recall skills.
Also giving instructions with certain movements helps students ingrain what they've
learned with certain movements and repeating those movements will help memory recall
on what they find difficult to do.

Brad Henry once said that "a good teacher can inspire hope, ignite imagination, and
instill the love of learning." I want to make my entrance into the teaching world with the
passion to ignite the embers of learning in students hearts. I will strive to remember that
students learn at different levels and to respect that fact. I find that guiding students
through the winding path in the mystical realm of learning.