Amanda Coomer

Personal Philosophy of Teaching

10/11/15
As a special education teacher candidate, my belief about special
education is that it is necessary for all students with disabilities that
are not academically successful. The role of special education in the
schools is to provide students with special needs, an education that is
a free, appropriate, public education in the least restrictive
environment. Students need to be educated in the setting where their
needs are met and they can be the most academically successful. My
role as a special educator is to provide accommodations and
modifications to help the student reach academic success.
I believe students learn in a variety of ways. Each student learns
content in a different way and we all have different types of
intelligence as proposed by Gardener. Each student has a unique set of
skills and talents that need to be brought out by me as the teacher,
and this comes with me knowing my students. My belief is students
learn best by being able to construct their own knowledge as they
learn content. Piagets theory of constructivism allows students to
construct their own knowledge about a topic by adding it to the childs
current schema, placing the new information into categories and
creating new schemas based on the new information. It is important for
me as a teacher to activate the students background knowledge about
a topic and clear up any misconceptions about a topic as students
learn new information. Finally, I believe students have a zone of
proximal development as suggested by Vygotsky. Students need
lessons in real world contexts, in order to make the learning
meaningful to them. As the teacher, my job is to scaffold students to
reach their highest ability, in order to master a new skill.
In terms of managing challenging behavior I believe in many
behavior theorists methods, however I believe I most identify with the
theories of Redl & Wattenberg, Jacob Kounin and Rudolf Duikers. As a
teacher, according to Redl & Watternburg my role as a teacher is to be
a role model, a judge, referee, a source of knowledge and a surrogate
parent. I should also be supporting student self control by keeping eye
contact with a student when challenging behavior arises and use low
key techniques such as humor, moving closer, encouraging the student
or ignoring the behavior in order to keep it from escalating. I also
believe in offering situational assistance to students in order to help
them be successful. This may include restructuring the students
schedule, establishing a classroom routine, removing a student from a
situation, taking away distracting objects and physical restraint, as a
last resort. If a students behavior escalates, when a student calms
down, I believe the teacher should follow up with the student about the

choices they made and what choices they could have made, in a
positive tone.
Like Duikers, I believe in finding the underlying causes of student
misbehavior. His theory suggests that students challenging behavior is
caused by the student seeking attention, power, revenge or displaying
inadequacy. Students should have those mistaken goals met in positive
ways such as offering the student choices in their work and using
encouragement to give students positive attention. Teachers should be
seeking improvement, not perfection and should address all major
behavior problems by talking to the student about the perceived
problem.
Lastly, a classroom teacher can be the source of many behavior
issues in the classroom. I discovered this during my undergraduate
experience. Teachers need to keep to a schedule and make sure their
lessons are fluid and the students are easily transitioned from task to
task. Teachers should focus on the task at hand, not move back and
forth between activities or overwhelm students with unrelated
information.
My overall classroom management style is a mix of moderate
control and high control. I believe during certain types of lessons and
classroom situations such as resource rooms, if the teacher sets up
appropriate procedures that the students can follow it is okay to loosen
the reins a bit, as long as students know what is expected of them and
know their logical consequences for their actions. In certain situations,
such as lectures, or very structured activities, I think high control is
necessary so that students are focused and can learn everything they
need to know for that lesson.
Lastly, my ethical obligations to my students, parents, school and
community are that I should set high, but realistic goals for my
students with special needs. I should inform my instruction based on
data and research based practices. I will protect the physical and
psychological needs of my students and not engage in any behavior
that will harm my students. I will also work closely with those who help
the students through related services and the families of the student.
All people involved in a childs life have the ability to impact their
education in a positive way.