Stefanie Carranza

Professor Suk
Education Field Experience EDUC 230-01
Fall 2014
Rationale Statement
Statement of Standard 1: Learner Development
The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of
learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic,
social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally
appropriate and challenging learning experiences. (NJPTSB, 2014, pp. 15)
Name of Artifact: Personal Philosophy of Teaching and Learning
Date of Artifact: Fall 2014
Course: Education Field Experience EDUC 230-01
Rationale Statement:
This artifact is the Personal Philosophy of Teaching and Learning. The
assignment was to write a paper that would discuss our opinions of the
relationships between teaching, learning, and the student. We also
needed to discuss how we planned to bring our ideal relationships to
life. Furthermore, we were asked to reflect about our experiences as students and how
our past teachers helped us to grow and how we will use these experiences to shape our
relationship with students and help foster their learning environment, skills, and styles.
My artifact reflects heavily upon my experiences as a student and discusses how these
experiences have shaped my opinion of what constitutes a good teacher. Through
thinking about my experiences I was able to understand what kind of environment I
wanted to create for my future students and what teaching methods I would like to adapt.
While creating the Personal Philosophy of Teaching and Learning I learned
several things about becoming a teacher and about myself. Once again I was reminded of
how important details are in teaching a lesson to a group of diverse students and how
much I value the student, as a person before regarding them as a student, and their
interest and growth. This artifact and metacognition processes will be a great source to
reference throughout my teaching career. As a future educator I must remember to
repeatedly place myself in my students shoes; in doing this, I will gain their respect, trust
and help to create a strong rapport all of which I consider important in a classroom. In
addition, this artifact gave me the opportunity to remember philosophies and theories that
I hope to adhere to in my years ahead: differentiated instruction, Gardners theory of
multiple intelligences, multicultural education, culturally relevant pedagogy, essentialism,
progressivism, and social reconstructionism.
Furthermore, I found this artifacts mention of how I hope to use Gardners theory
of intelligences in my future classroom to reflect standard 1.1.1 which states The teacher
regularly assesses individual and group performance in order to design and modify
instruction to meet learners needs in each area of development (cognitive, linguistic,

social, emotional, and physical) and scaffolds the next level of development. The artifact
also strongly relates to standard 1.1.2 that reads The teacher creates developmentally
appropriate instruction that takes into account individual learners strengths, interests, and
needs and that enables each learner to advance and accelerate his or her learning, in so
far as Ive repeatedly mentioned how I will adjust my teaching style to help all of my
future students grow. My philosophy also adheres directly to standard 1.2.4 that renders
the teacher understands the role and impact of language and culture in learning and
knows how to modify instruction to make language comprehensible and instruction
relevant, accessible, and challenging with mention of my sensitivity to multicultural
education and culturally relevant pedagogy.
As a result, I believe this artifact will be a great tool to use in my future. I can use
this Personal Philosophy of Teaching and Learning to help demonstrate my understanding
of the Professional Standards for Teachers in interviews. Once I am a teacher, as
previously stated, I will be able to use this style of metacognition to reflect on my
opinions of how a teacher should behave and what constitutes a good teacher. In essence
it will provide me with a reminder of why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place.
References
Professional Development in New Jersey. (2014, August 4). Retrieved from New Jersey State
Department of Education: http://www.state.nj.us/education/code/current/title6a/chap9c.pdf