KATIE OREILLY MORGAN

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I believe John Locke said it best, we are born with blank minds and education should
develop them (Huerta, 2007, p. 6). In my eyes, the true meaning of education is to develop the
mind, prepping it to take you through all of lifes obstacles. As Louis Cozolino (2013) said in
The Social Neuroscience of Education, the brain exists to learn, remember, and apply what has
been learned. Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom humans werent built for speed like a
cheetah, or given eagle eyes to see over vast distances, in all honesty if you put us out in nature
we would be the easiest prey species hands down, but we have one thing going for us that the
other members of the animal kingdom lack, humans have evolved to be the perfect learners. We
havent been wiped out as the weakest prey source because we have been able to set traps, make
fire, manipulate the natural world for our own benefit and so forth. We may not be the most
physically well adapted species, but mentally we have the edge. Back when we had just evolved
into Homo sapiens we were learning through experiences, evolving into better learners and
passing on skills orally, pictorially, or however else we could show the next generation. I believe
we have gotten away from this experiential aspect of teaching and have limited ourselves to what
we call traditional methods such as paper and pencil tests and assignments. Really our long
standing tradition of experientially learning predates both paper and pencil, and it is this
experiential or authentic learning that I wish to get back to as I become a teacher (Frey, 2014, p.
6-12).
Although I believe that authentic learning experiences in which the information you are
gaining can be directly applied to real world situations is the most effective method of teaching, I
do see the importance of traditional methods in the modern day classroom. To get students to use
higher order thinking skills as specified in Blooms Taxonomy, they have to pass through the
lower orders first. This means you must assess their ability to remember, understand, and apply
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knowledge before they can begin to formulate their own thoughts, ideas, and products
(Overbaugh & Schultz, 2002).
There is no substitute for the instincts of a bright, dedicated, and caring teacher
(Cozolino, 2013). Hopefully in our lives we have all been lucky enough to have that one teacher
who inspired us. Maybe they didnt inspire you to completely change the world, but they
inspired you to find passion in something. For me it was my Ornithology professor, the late Dr.
Guy Baldassarre. Guy was always passionate about birds but unlike many college professors too
into their own research, he was passionate about us. One of the many Guy quotes I wrote down
during his lectures was dont let school get in the way of you learning anything (K.O. Morgan,
Ornithology lecture 2, spring 2012). Although some may think thats an odd quote to hold on to
as I progress to becoming a teacher, I think it is one that we should all take to heart. In my future
profession Im sure I will come across classes with students from numerous cultural,
socioeconomic, and political backgrounds, but they are also coming in with different aspirations,
passions and learning styles. Dealing with diversity in the classroom shouldnt be an issue if you
truly get to know your students and earn their respect, the real challenge I believe will be trying
to teach all of them the same material when each student learns so differently. So how do I plan
on tackling learning style diversity in my classroom? By doing exactly what I mentioned above,
by really getting to know my students. In Robin McGees Climbing Walls: Attempting Critical
Pedagogy as a 21st-Century Preservice Teacher, I was baffled by the level of creativity and
jealous of the types of freedoms it seemed she had in her classroom. But when you go back
through and dissect the article a bit more, you come to realize that what she did was curtailed and
molded by and for the students. Two out of her three primary sources of data that she gathered
were student driven, including post student interviews and student artifacts throughout the
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research process. By allowing the students to show what they already knew she was able to
create an experience that broadened the horizons of her students, challenging them to create their
own perspectives and ideas around immigration. She was also able to let the students learn in
their own way, try their strengths and weaknesses through interviews, discussions and more, and
perhaps learn more about themselves in the process (McGee, 2011, p. 272).
In one of my recent classes we were talked to by a 6th grade math teacher and she said
something along the lines of a job is a job, you go out there and you do it, but a profession is a
passion that you live (K.O. Morgan, Assessment lecture, September 8, 2014). Teaching, is a
profession, you are not just there to teach a student about biology, math, or history, you are
teaching them how to continually learn, how to be passionate and care about not just their
education, but their lives. If throughout my teaching experiences I can inspire just one student to
improve their quality of life I will have succeeded in my profession.
References
Cozolino, L. (2014). Excerpt: The social neuroscience of education. Teaching Tolerance.
Frey, B. (2014). Modern classroom assessment. United States: SAGE.
Overbaugh, R.C. & Schultz, L. (2002). Blooms taxonomy.
http://ww2.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm