Teaching Philosophy

My classrooms will be very student centered and my main role in the classroom will be to facilitate discussion between the students. I plan to encourage my students to discover concepts to units in class before I give them vocabulary terms and formulas in an informal lecture. My students will do this kind of challenging work in small groups in order to help foster new ideas, as well as providing an opportunity for students to learn how to respect other people and their ideas. I want the students in my classroom to know that it is okay to fail, some of the best scientists also failed at something within their field before successfully discovering a major breakthrough. 

I plan to have my students do a project on scientists from different minorities in order to raise awareness in my students that anyone can have a successful career in STEM. When they walk out of my classroom, I want my students to feel like they too could be a successful scientist, regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, or any other factors.

I feel like students learn best when they are in an environment that encourages the belief that intelligence is not fixed. Promoting this belief in the classroom, will allow students to believe that they are capable of learning anything if they just put in some effort. This type of growth mindset will allow students to face difficult challenges head-on rather than giving up when they can’t figure something out.

​