Brittany Granquist

3 March 2010

Philosophy Statement for Assessment Portfolio

I believe that effective instruction must recognize each student as an individual,

comprised of unique experiences, backgrounds, races and ethnicities. Each student needs to be

challenged in ways that complement their individual learning styles, and praised for their

strengths rather than their weaknesses. In order to provide the most high quality and

nondiscriminatory education, both instruction and assessment should not be limited to a “one-

size-fits-all approach” but rather should be modified according to the individual needs of all

students, which in turn will foster student’s self-esteem and self-growth. In order to best reach

each child and make their school experience positive and meaningful, I will promote mutual

respect and trust as the basis for both teacher-student and student-student relationships, I will

communicate clearly and consistently with parents, who undoubtedly know their child better

than anyone else, and I will seek the help of my colleagues so to learn new ideas and experiment

with fresh instructional strategies.

I believe in constructing a learning environment that embraces cultural and linguistic

diversity by fostering awareness and respect. Students need to feel comfort and take pride in their

own unique cultures in order to grow and perform to the best of their abilities. They should not

feel shunned our isolated because of their race or ethnicity. Teachers can help children feel

comfortable sharing and expressing themselves by finding effective ways to make real life

connections to each student’s cultural and personal identity. One way to do this is to have

students learn about and from one another’s cultures by integrating core content areas with

cultural practices from around the world. Culturally embedding the content will not only make

the material more accessible and fun for children, but it will also help students make personal

connections with each other and help them understand that diversity should be celebrated.
 Brittany Granquist

3 March 2010

Another way I plan to commit to teaching for cultural diversity is to provide many opportunities

for my students to get acquainted with their community by means of service-learning projects.

Giving them the opportunity to experience the cultures within in their community, and promoting

reflection upon these experiences will deeply impact students’ views about themselves and the

members of their community.

Teaching should be highly dependent on collaborative learning. When children are able

to share their knowledge with each other in working towards a common goal, the results are

powerful. For this reason, I will create a physical classroom environment that facilitates

discussion and inquiry based learning. I believe that giving children the opportunity to discuss

and debate with their peers in order to discover and explore new knowledge is far more

beneficial than individualistic instructional methods. Discussion and debate will be centered on

the idea of respect. Students will respect their peers’ inputs and their ideas, and will offer their

own opinions in a polite manner. Students will be held to high standards as it pertains to

classroom behavior as well. I believe that in order to best achieve appropriate classroom

behavior as a whole, the teacher needs to clearly state expectations and clearly state the

repercussions for children not meeting these expectations. I believe that providing children with

certain freedoms can aide in the establishment of mutual respect and trust: freedoms will be the

rewards for good behavior, and the loss of freedoms will be the punishment for poor behavior. I

believe in rewards and punishments, only if they strongly correlate with children’s intrinsic

motivation.

I believe strongly in doing my best to get each and every student to either meet or exceed

standards in reading, because it is easy to fall behind in this area and very difficult to regain

footing. Not to say that I do not value other core and fine arts subject areas, I just see the dire
 Brittany Granquist

3 March 2010

need for students to be literate for the entirety of their educational careers and on to their future

workplaces. The belief that students’ reading and writing skills should be a main area of focus

goes along with the importance of early identification of students falling behind grade level

expectations. If and when a student is perceived by the professional as having difficulty, not

only in reading but in any content area, immediate accommodations must be made to help this

student catch up to the grade standards. Possible accommodations include: after school help,

tutoring services, one-on-one help from teacher’s aide, and/or pull-out services from an LD

specialist. I believe that early detection and quality help can prevent the prolonged feelings of

anxiety and inadequacy associated with low levels of achievement.

I believe in advocating for life-long learning. In addition to providing my students with a

quality education by implementing the aforementioned pedagogical and affective strategies, I

will also do so by making a personal commitment to life-long learning. I will continue to seek

further education so to grow as a unique person but also as an educator of our nation’s youth.