Mrs.+Miller's+Educational+Philosphy

= Mrs. Miller's Educational Philosophy=

Teaching is more than a job; it is a way of life. An effective teacher must constantly be reading, researching, learning, and discovering in order to prepare and present classroom curriculum that will help students to realize their fullest potential and to prepare them for the competitive world of a global community.

Classroom curriculum must be well prepared, consistently analyzed, and appropriately modified. Further, the best curriculum for students does not encompass the easiest material, but rather, material that fairly challenges and thus, stimulates students' intellectual capabilities. The best curriculum is designed to foster higher level and critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. A solid curriculum motivates students to question, to hypothesize, and to react. It engenders metacognitive skills, so that students can assume responsibility for their own learning, as well as the desire to be life-long learners. Students must not merely be assigned a learning task, but rather taught a learning task, so that they can proficiently and confidently duplicate that same task using their own intellectual capabilities. Additionally, an effective curriculum must encompass differences in learning modalities and teaching techniques. In presenting such an aggressive curriculum, the effective teacher must make herself available to her students and realize that this availability may often extend beyond the assigned class period.

Lastly, the effective teacher recognizes student assessment as a valuable tool in student learning. The effective teacher embraces the reality that grading goes far beyond merely assigning a grade for a completed task, but that it also involves detailing student strengths and challenges associated with performing the specific task. The use of assessment rubrics is an excellent vehicle for this type of detailed assessment. Through this type of assessment, students can gain confidence from realizing their strengths, and by acknowledging and working on their challenge areas, students can improve their intellectual abilities and become eager life-long learners.