"Education is what is left over when you forget all the facts your teachers made you memorize in school." -Mark Twain
Education is not about the content to be learned, the words read, or the numbers calculated. Rather, education is about the entirety of the learning experience. In math, this looks like being an active contributor to problem solving, discovering and unveiling the relationships and informationthat exist in the world around us, and making sense of knowledge through meaningful experiences. I would define my philosophy of educationthrough three important foundational pieces.
The first component that students are active participants of learning and not just passive recipients. Knowledge is gained through the senses, thus using primarily listening as the means of teaching is not the most effective method. Students must be an active participant, which includes social interaction, being problem solvers, being a reflective, critical thinker, and being literate in communicating hypotheses and argumentation.
The next component of my educational philosophy states that the role of the teacher is a guide thatframes and sets upactivities and experiences that students will learn from. Teachers are the facilitators that foster the intellectual process that students will be the participant of. Another aspect of education that teachers must keep in mind when developing a space for learning to occur is that the curriculum should be chosen with the students' needs and background in mind.
The last component on my philosophy of education is that the curriculum should be focused on inquiry techniques. These methods promote an environment of discovery, where students are unveiling knowledge about the relationships and workings of the world that already exist. In this curriculum, teachers are questioners, invoking curiosity among students.