Philosophy of Education
In 25+ years in education, I’ve only every been directly asked about my personal philosophy of education a handful of times. Nevertheless (and I suspect this is true for most teachers as well), there’s always sort of a running dialogue in the back of my head about it. When things happen, those “teachable moments” in life, it automatically drops into my constant churn of ideas about teaching and learning.
I don’t think my philosophy of education is particularly groundbreaking or complex. I don’t see where it needs to be. It’s more of a “What do you need? What do we have to work with? And what’s the best path to get us from A to B?”
I was designing some lessons for post-assignment reflection for my students recently. What did I need? I needed them to identify their own areas of success and potential areas for growth after getting an assignment back. What did we have to work with? Their understanding of the assignment, their process of completing the assignment, their reflection on their feedback and grade on the assignment. What’s the best path to connect the dots? A couple of well phrased questions and space to contemplate their answers.
What were you supposed to demonstrate on this assignment?
What was your process for completing the assignment?
What will you do differently next time?
And that’s it. That’s enough for any motivated or curious student to re-explain the purpose of the assignment in their own words. When I read their reflections, if it becomes obvious they didn’t understand the purpose of the assignment, that’s on me. That’s feedback I need. If they didn’t think about how and why they completed the assignment, that’s on us. I need to be better about conveying the directions; they need to be better about the metacognitive aspects of completing work. If they don’t have a plan for improvement, that’s mostly on them, but I’m always here to help. That’s where the real learning occurs—not when you cook dinner, but when you eat the dinner you cooked.
So when I’m designing trainings for groups, setting aside the formal codes and cute acronyms, that’s really what it comes down to: need, have, connect. There’s a clarity and simplicity inherent in that which I truly enjoy. I think a lot of lessons fail because of over-complications. Designers spent more time on making things pretty than they do on making the lessons clear and relevant. Pretty is good; effective is everything.
