Teaching Philosophy Statement
"The passion for helping others needs to quench the fear of failure. "
As I pursue my education in outdoor leadership, I’ve developed a plan for my own teaching and style for environmental education. My ideas and beliefs surrounding education have come from my personal experience in the field as an instructor as well as my time spent as a student. After five years and over 1,000 hours of community service dedicated to counseling children, I have begun to discover and develop my own philosophy for what I want to pursue and teach throughout my career.
I teach to guide students through an enriching path of visual, auditory, and experimental methods. I bring children into nature to explore hands-on a world that might have been left unknown and untouched. I desire to communicate and facilitate in an encouraging manner that focuses on bringing students who do not have the resources to spend time outside.
Originally, I imagined myself in a classroom, teaching 20-30 students in an elementary school. That dream began when I started camp counseling at the YMCA. For entire summers I was out exploring Oregon while guiding children on hikes and adventurers that seemed endless. Without this experience, I would not have developed a love for education in the way that I have through being a part of the Eugene YMCA summer camps.
My second summer as a camp counselor, I left Eugene to pursue an overnight summer camp experience at Camp Ocean Pines in Cambria, California. As a junior counselor, I was both a part of teaching the students and learning from my older peers. What I gained from that camp was the ability to immerse children in outdoor education for weeks at a time. At the end of my stay in California, I was a part of a weeklong backpacking group that climbed Alta Peak in the Sierras. It fostered the desire to pursue outdoor leadership, and provided me the experience to follow through on those dreams.
To find success as a teacher, one must be dedicated. The passion for helping others needs to quench the fear of failure. Education needs to be well rounded. Learning outcomes and pre-established goals for teaching can help assess knowledge retention of students. My goals surround helping students find their own desires to learn, even when it is at a different pace than everyone else. I want to address as many of the different intelligences as I can - from kinesthetic to intrapersonal, spatial to linguistic.
I was a creative learner throughout my life, and I still am. I cannot confine to what our education system has turned into, and I want to teach students who are feeling as lost as I once did. We should be celebrating our differences.
I teach to guide students through an enriching path of visual, auditory, and experimental methods. I bring children into nature to explore hands-on a world that might have been left unknown and untouched. I desire to communicate and facilitate in an encouraging manner that focuses on bringing students who do not have the resources to spend time outside.
Originally, I imagined myself in a classroom, teaching 20-30 students in an elementary school. That dream began when I started camp counseling at the YMCA. For entire summers I was out exploring Oregon while guiding children on hikes and adventurers that seemed endless. Without this experience, I would not have developed a love for education in the way that I have through being a part of the Eugene YMCA summer camps.
My second summer as a camp counselor, I left Eugene to pursue an overnight summer camp experience at Camp Ocean Pines in Cambria, California. As a junior counselor, I was both a part of teaching the students and learning from my older peers. What I gained from that camp was the ability to immerse children in outdoor education for weeks at a time. At the end of my stay in California, I was a part of a weeklong backpacking group that climbed Alta Peak in the Sierras. It fostered the desire to pursue outdoor leadership, and provided me the experience to follow through on those dreams.
To find success as a teacher, one must be dedicated. The passion for helping others needs to quench the fear of failure. Education needs to be well rounded. Learning outcomes and pre-established goals for teaching can help assess knowledge retention of students. My goals surround helping students find their own desires to learn, even when it is at a different pace than everyone else. I want to address as many of the different intelligences as I can - from kinesthetic to intrapersonal, spatial to linguistic.
I was a creative learner throughout my life, and I still am. I cannot confine to what our education system has turned into, and I want to teach students who are feeling as lost as I once did. We should be celebrating our differences.