What is your teaching philosophy?

I believe that Bloom’s Taxonomy is important to all areas of education. It is important that students learn and understand the significance of historical events that our society may be strengthened by their good citizenship. I believe classroom management is important to the successful educational process. It is important that a teacher is a role model and treat students with respect, and in return to have high expectations for the way students treat them. It is also important that a teacher be accessible to his students and able to relate to them on an individual basis. I believe that classroom should be student centered and constructivist in nature. Constructivism provides the student with a far greater grasp of the subject matter than traditional teacher centered instruction. I believe that, despite my relative inexperience, my strong desire to see my students succeed and ability to learn quickly will help me provide the environment conducive to excellence. I believe that it is important students learn that every issue has an opposing viewpoint. Only by seeing more than one side of an issue can you be truly informed and educated about a subject. It is important that students are able to understand the importance of patriotism, function in a free enterprise society, and appreciate the basic democratic values of our state and nation.

What might you do in a typical first session with a student?

A typical first will be spent setting goals and attempting to understand the student's current level of educational performance.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

I think the path to independence lies in understanding what the student's roadblocks are. Once we can ascertain what is keeping the student from understanding and progressing the material we can then help them move beyond their previous difficulties into true independence.

If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?

Try to deconstruct their difficulty. What doesn't make sense? What about the skill is confusing?

How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?

Vocabulary practice is the gateway to reading comprehension. The only way to expand comprehension is to improve sight words, vocabulary they instantly know and comprehend.

What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?

Getting to know the student and building rapport. Nothing is more helpful to a student/teacher relationship than this. This is usually built by treating my students as individuals and expressing interest and support for what's most important to them, be that sports, their favorite video game, a hobby or what have you.