Philosophy:
Questions
I believe a teacher is a guide. I need to provide students access to my knowledge, but also lead students to discover, research, and develop their own knowledge. Lecture and recitation have their place in my classroom, alongside hands-on, inquiry based activities. I work to engage and encourage my students' curiosity, answering their questions and helping them find their own answers. Questions matter; they are everything to learning. I try to teach my students the art of asking the next question. It isn't enough to find the answer to the first question, there's always another one waiting to be asked. My students need to keep asking "what if?" and "why?".
Growth
My lessons are intended to spiral. A topic will be revisited and re-examined several times, using new information to see it in new light and understand it more deeply. This means that as the course goes on, your mastery and understanding of a topic should improve. I believe that growth is what learning and school is all about, and I believe that grades my students earn at the beginning of the class don't mean much in the middle or at the end of the class, other than to show them how they've grown. My students' grades are fluid, moving up or down as they show improved mastery or a lack of retention.
Personal Responsibility
How well my students do in my courses is largely up to them; they can see from the grade book what they need to improve on. It is up to them to take personal responsibility for their understanding and work to improve. That does not mean they have to do it alone. Rather, it means they need to spend some time reading feedback, using tools like their notes and textbooks, and asking questions of their classmates or me. Learning takes effort on the part of the student. I can explain and demonstrate, but I cannot do the learning. As students get older, it is expected that they make these efforts to learn without prompting from the teacher. If a student is a freshman, I am far more likely to ask her if she's thought about how ready she is to reassess skill 8 than I would be if she were a senior.