EDUCATION MANIFESTO

EDUCATION MANIFESTO

EDU – 101

L. NOELLE MURPHY

CHESAPEAKE COLLEGE

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Education Manifesto

I think everyone who plans on being an educator has a plan on how they want to teach

their future students and even how their classroom will look in the future. I know I have

thought about it time and time again. I have thought back on why I want to be a teacher and

how my previous educators, from elementary school all the way up to college have influenced

my education career. Along with this, I also think about how these teachers have influenced me

to be a better human being in general and to be the best teacher I can possibly be. I have

known for a long time that I wanted to be an educator. I have always loved working with young

children and watching them grow and learn. Along with this passion of working with children,

many previous teachers of my own experiences have influenced me to be a teacher as well. As

educators though, we need to understand that it is much more than just helping students grow

and learn academically but also helping them to grow socially as well.

I would say that my vision of teaching looks most like the philosophy of social

reconstructionism. “Social reconstructionism is a philosophy that emphasizes the addressing of

social questions and a quest to create a better society and worldwide democracy” (Oregon

State, n.d). This philosophy of teaching was founded by Theodore Brameld in hopes to fight

back against the realities of World War II. Theodore’s main focus was to bring the humanity and

harmony back into the society and to engage in social change and world unity (Haindel, n.d).

Along with this philosophy, students should have the school given to them as a tool to solve

their own problems with the teacher as a guide (Haindel, n.d). I believe that this philosophy is

much more beneficial to the students as well as the teacher, rather than the normal teacher-

based learning. Or as Oregon State would say, “Switching from ‘teaching as banking’ to where

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the educator and the student work as one to reinvent the world” (Oregon State, n.d). I believe

that in my classroom, I will treat my students as equal rather than making them feel as if I am

smarter than they are. That is most definitely not the fact. Students are very intelligent, so we

need to use this intelligence to encourage our students. By being a teacher and having much

more educational experiences than the students, I will have more knowledge. I would like to

use that knowledge to steer the students to be just as knowledgeable as I am, while also

understanding how to apply this knowledge into their own lives.

I believe that as an educator, I need to bring a social change within the society,

especially within this day in age. I have witnessed students now a days are much more self-

centered and expect things to be handed to them, whether that is a physical object or

information. So, I plan to help my students to find a new and improved outlook on life. As a

teacher, I plan on using social reconstructionism in order to teach students to take their

experiences from school and apply them to real world problems and situations. It is so

important to teach students that everything that they will be learning in my class can and will

be applied within their future lives. In order for my students to have a “more unbiased and

neutral social order” (Edupedia, 2018), I as their teacher need to have an open mind and be

unbiased towards not only the society but to my students as well. This open-mindedness can be

brought into the experience of student learning. If I, as an educator am well rounded and open

minded to all aspects of learning, my students will succeed at a much greater level. This is

because I will be knowledgeable on all versions of learning and I can modify my lessons for the

specific learning style.

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As stated before, there are many reasons I have decided on becoming a teacher. These

reasons include the positive interactions I have had with previous teachers, the fact that I love

working with children, and the fact that watching children grow and succeed in life is a lifelong

passion. What I have learned most in the past semester is that, teaching is much more than just

that. Teaching a classroom full of students is about preparing them with soft skills, preparing

them for the future which is a combination of book knowledge and real-world knowledge. One

of my main focuses as a teacher will be to apply more real-life experiences in the classroom in

order to teach children how to apply these experiences to incidents or situations that they may

run into in their adult life.

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References

Edupedia. (2018, June 10). What is Social Reconstructionism? Retrieved from

https://www.theedadvocate.org/edupedia/content/what-is-social-reconstructionism/

Haindel, B. D. (n.d.). Theodore Burghard Hurt Brameld. Retrieved from

http://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/nadams/educ692/Brameld.html

Oregon State. (n.d.). Section III - Philosophical Perspectives in Education. Retrieved from

https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/PP3.html