I have long believed and acted upon the philosophy that I do not teach art, I teach children. Teaching at the middle level gives me the opportunity to work with students who are growing, changing and developing at a rate so fast that it can only be compared to the first two years of their lives. In this setting I must understand the middle school student and bring to each student the developmentally appropriate instruction that not only teaches them about art but teaches then about being in charge of their own successful journey through the period of time we call adolescence.

My philosophy of education revolves around the belief that all students can succeed, but maybe not on the same day. I try to set up clear educational goals for my students, make them aware of those goals, show them examples of success and give them the means to achieve their best as they work towards goal completion. Every element of my curriculum of instruction is connected to this philosophy. Each student that enters my classroom is an individual with individual social and academic needs. My job is to understand who that child is and go about meeting their needs in a fair and just way. Fairness does not mean every one is treated exactly the same way. To me fairness means equally providing each student with what they need, socially and academically, to be as successful as possible in my classroom. This takes various aspects of opportunities, support and or / consequences because of the wide range of students that are present in today’s classroom. My job is to orchestrate both the instruction and the environment of the classroom to accomplish this for all students who enter.

I also believe it is my job to communicate, in a timely fashion, to the student, parents and needed staff on the progress individual students are making. I believe in two types of assessment, those that give me a snapshot of how a student is doing on any given day, and those that assess an established curriculum benchmark. It is important to keep weekly data to show the above-mentioned how a student or collections of students are progressing through a course of study. This information is valuable for making adjustments to instruction or classroom settings as the year progresses. More formal evaluations at the end of units can give feedback on both how students are doing and the effectiveness of lesson presentation.

Being an art instructor provides a unique opportunity to work with children in a less structured environment where art becomes the means to help them find their personal voice hiding inside. It allows for the opportunities to teach students that creative thought mixed with hard work can produce awesome results. My philosophy of education is to teach children that by taking charge of their abilities and efforts they can succeed at a level that will make proud them and glad they took the journey.

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