TE 825: Final Paper

August 16, 2018

Tyler Holmes

Philosophy

I am passionate about earth sciences and I love geology, but that is not why I decided to become

a teacher. I became a teacher because I want to inspire my students to be excited and curious

about the world they live in, but I want to do more than that. I want to help them become the best

versions of themselves they can be.

I wouldn’t be where I am in life without the help of coaches and teachers who mentored me,

guiding me into becoming the reasonably well-adjusted person I am today, and I want to honor

their hard work and dedication by passing on what I learned to others. As a teacher, I have the

chance to have a lasting impact in the lives of students who must contend with serious obstacles

and give them the same kind of support my own mentors gave me as I overcame my own

challenges and barriers. I want to help my students get the best opportunities they can get, while

ensuring they are prepared to make the most of every chance they get. Many of my students

intend to pursue higher education, even though most of them would-be first-generation college

students. My goal in the classroom is to give them the chance to develop the skills and

competencies that will help them navigate the next stage of their lives after high school, whether

that includes college or not. They need to learn how to problem solve, how to find and take

advantage of things that will help them advance towards their goals, whether that is scholarships,

mentoring, or identifying opportunities for advancement at work.

As a teacher, I don’t just want my students to finish my class with more knowledge about how

the Earth works, or with a greater understanding about the universe than they originally had; I

want them to have skills and access to resources that will help them take their educations and

futures in whatever direction they want to go in. I would love to be the kind of teacher that

inspires a life-long passion for learning in my students, leaving them imagining about making

exciting new discoveries or exploring unknown frontiers. If they don’t want a future in science I

still want them to see how what they are learning in my class can apply to whatever it is they are

going to do. Careful observation, pattern recognition, explaining and justifying an argument to

others, and a sense of perspective are all skills students pick up while studying earth science that

can apply to other fields and interests as well. Regardless of where they will go, I want my

students to have a greater appreciation for the world around them and the impact they can have

on it and ultimately for them to be better people because of it. People who are confident in who

they are and what they are capable of. People who are going to go out and change the world.

Maybe not in huge, massive, exciting ways, but in the kind of small, day-today ways that

arguably make much, much more of a difference.

My classroom emphasizes student interaction and hands on learning, giving students the

opportunity to follow their interests and express themselves in what ways interest them. Students

perform at their best when they try to explain their thoughts to others and must wrestle with the

difficulties of comprehending what they’ve been doing well enough to explain it to another

person.
Analysis

Piaget argued that learners move through discrete stages of learning and that a person’s ability to

learn develops just like their bodies develop over time (McLeod, 2018). One thing Cognitive

Development Theory reminds us that our students aren’t just tiny adults; their capabilities depend

on a number of factors. The way we approach our students needs to keep in mind where they are

on the scale of development. Piaget has been criticized for using small sample sizes, lack of rigor

in his assessments/observations, and projecting the results from a limited highly population to the

broader global population without considering how outside factors might affect the timing and

order of development (McLeod, 2018).

Piaget was also a proponent of Cognitive Constructivism, which posits that learning happens as

the student grapples with incorporating an alien concept into their conception of how things work

(Powell and Kalina, 2009). Teachers act as guides, giving the students opportunities to wrestle

with concepts. Piaget doesn’t view social interaction or language as being particularly important

parts of learning, he believed that language happens so we can communicate our thoughts, which

I disagree with. Much more my speed is Vygotsky and his Social Constructivism, which argued

that learning happens when we try to communicate (Powell and Kalina, 2009). When I was an

undergraduate I was told in my geology classes and research that I didn’t really understand

something if I couldn’t explain it to a non-specialist. I believe that communication is

fundamental to the learning process, and it’s an important skill that the students can apply to any

number of fields and professional directions.

Vygotsky’s emphasis on language and the social component of learning lead him to focus on

how communities develop around learning. These “communities of practice” develop around

groups where there is trust and a clear goal (Lave and Wenger, 1998). As the community

develops attracts newcomers who are welcomed and developed into experts, who then welcome

more members into the community. The teacher assists this by creating a “Zone of Proximal

Development” (ZPD), as the presence of a content expert allows the students to achieve more

than the students would be able to achieve on their own. This is an important part of my teaching

philosophy: I want to help my students become better people, and I can help them handle

challenges that they would otherwise be overwhelmed by.

Wang discusses a number of that affect the students outside of the classroom (Wang et al., 1990).

It’s important to keep in mind the broader context our students exist in. While we cannot control

many of the influencers Wang discusses, such as legislative policies or the students’ home lives,

we need to keep them in mind as we plan our lessons and interact with students. Teaching is a

dynamic job that requires us to always be adapting our plans to the needs of the student.

Race, gender, sexuality, and other differences can have a huge impact on a child’s education.

Harassment and other outside stresses can distract children from learning. But learning can also

help reinforce who they are in a positive way. Something that we’ve emphasized all summer is

the importance of giving kids experiences that will validate their identities and allow them to see

people who look and sound like them. If I can give my students interesting content while giving

them space to figure out who they are (not that they’ll ever stop that process) then I can make a
positive difference in their lives, which is why I’m doing this.

This summer, we went to the Burma Center in Battle Creek on a field trip. While we were there

we talked to several current and former high school students about some of their struggles as

refugees who started school in the U.S. with little-to-no ability to speak English. Even as their

English improved and they seemed to “fit in” as far as society was concerned, they still felt like

strangers. Their teachers didn’t seem to appreciate just how alienated they felt. As a teacher, I

want my students to feel valued and appreciated. Students face plenty of challenges, and

mitigating as many of those struggles as we can will only help them reach their goals.

One of the unique challenges associated with the sciences is the vocabulary. Each field of science

has its own unique lexicon, and it tends to get even more insular as you start to dive into the

specific subfields (the language I was speaking as an igneous petrologist was different than that

of a geophysicist, even though our practices were reasonably close). Of course, using jargon isn’t

the point of science education, but that jargon functions as shorthand to easily discuss complex

concept. I can use one or two words to describe a concept that I would have to spend at least five

minutes explaining if I wanted to use laymen’s terms. Vygotsky stresses how language is a

critical part of the learning process. As students grapple with the content we expose them to

they’ll start trying to come up with words to describe and communicate the ideas they have, and

jargon will naturally be incorporated into their lexicon. While students who are proficient in

English and science might struggle with technical terms at first, students who are English
Language Learners (ELL) have additional strategies. Many of the technical terms we use don’t

translate well if (if at all), so even if we can reliably translate our class material to try to make

things more accessible there are going to be problems with the more complex content, which is

difficult enough as it is!

Several strategies can be used to assist ELL students or students who struggle with reading.

Helping students break down readings to identify the core ideas and what matters is something

that can be done regardless of subject, and as a teacher you can have several different versions of

readings that scale for different reading levels. Talking slowly and clearly, repeating important

phrases or ideas, and giving students time to check notes or write things down can help students

with some English. Using body language, hand gestures, and physical props/examples can help

communicate across the language gap and attempting to understand what your non-English

speaking students are saying and doing your best to reinforce what their learning in their own

language will go a long way to help them feel safe and welcome as well. If there are students

who are fluent in both languages or are particularly proficient in the content and English, you can

also pair them with students who are struggling with the language. This helps both students, as

the student who is struggling has someone who can give them more attention and direct

assistance than a teacher who has to juggle twenty to thirty more kids and the student who is

more proficient gets more experience communicating their ideas and understanding, which only

reinforces their own learning. Since language and learning go hand-in-hand, placing students

together like this creates a small ZPD, where the students working together will have more

success than either one of them would have on their own.

As students develop language, they also start to develop an ethic as the community of practice

begins to form. Cultural historical activity theory (henceforth CHAT) is all about how the

communities we are in affect us and how we in turn affect them (Saka, 2009). Similar to the

communities of practice, CHAT is characterized by the individual internalizing the culture and

adopting it as their own and contributing to the culture of the group. The community can have a

major effect on you, Saka discussed linked teacher turnover rates to teachers not assimilating

well and when communities aren’t supportive of the individuals interests or concerns the

individuals will leave. As the teacher in my classroom I have to set a good, supportive example

for my students if I want the class culture to be a safe, collaborative place for the students to

come to. CHAT isn’t really the normal theory that the public associates with teaching, however.

That would be behaviorism.

Behaviorism is how most people think about teaching: You reward the good stuff, punish the

bad, and the students get better and smarter. Despite behaviorisms ubiquity, it is not without

serious problems (Ullucci, 2005). Behaviorism might seem to quickly produce results, they don’t

last long term and the students aren’t really “learning”, they are putting on a performance to get a

reward of approval. Behaviorism is really a terrible way to approach teaching, since it’s very

topdown and authoritarian. The emphasis is placed on the teacher who molds the room to their

desire, which isn’t a healthy or particularly productive learning environment (Ullucci, 2005).

While there will probably be some positive and negative reinforcement in my classroom, I really

don’t want it to be characterized by behaviorism. There are much better ways to go about
teaching. Of course, any discussion on teaching is replete without a discussion on how our

physical surroundings and actual human bodies influence learning.

Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory of Human Development is a theory about how

individuals are influenced by nesting factors, starting with our immediate close relationships and

environment and rolling back to our broader cultural norms (Bronfenbrenner 1994). The

different levels nest together and affect each other differently, and these processes are also

affected by time. We need to keep in mind how different systems can interact and impact our

students, even if they don’t think they’ll be affected. We also need to keep in mind that the way

we approach science teaching (using the NGSS framework) is probably contrary to how the

students have been taught their entire lives. Even if the new methods are more engaging and

effective, it will still take some time for the students adapt to new way of thinking. It might be a

change for the better, but we are still making a massive change to our students’ mental space and

it will affect them just as much as rearranging a room they’ve grown comfortable in. Aesthetics

has a role to play in the students’ development as well. Science has too long been viewed as

“practical” or “mechanical”, with no more sense of beauty or art than one would expect from a

dry field like engineering or accounting. “Scientists are just concerned with results and

efficiency” society seems to think, with no appreciation for just how neat the things they’re

studying actually are.

The Sublime, eliciting a sense wonder, awe, and (hopefully) investigation, is an incredibly useful

tool for science teachers (Cavanaugh, 2014). There are things in science that are beautiful,
terrifying, and simply breath-taking; things we can show our students that will blow their minds.

As an earth scientist, I have an especially wide arsenal: concepts like deep time or the scale of

the universe are absurdly humbling concepts once the students can wrap their heads around

them. There are so many unexplained or interesting phenomena that we can give students to get

them to engage, getting students excited about science should be easy. Science can be beautiful,

surprising, and awesome if we let it be. The world we live in, the universe we fly through is such

a fascinating place, helping our students to begin to understand it and appreciate it is an

incredible opportunity that we have as teachers. I’m honored to have that privilege.
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