“The burden of education does not rest solely on the teacher. Education is a partnership requiring responsibility, cooperation, and diligence from both the instructor and the student.” ~President Ronald Reagan~
The opportunity to serve as an educator is a gift, a gift that comes with incredible reward and awesome responsibility. The teacher sets the expectations but must consider themselves a partner or facilitator in the educational process. Today’s high school and adult learners bring varying degrees of life experiences, educational successes, educational failures, expectations, and intrinsic behavioral standards. Ronald Reagan best outlined the partnership between teacher and student with his quote above.
In addition to the classroom being a partnership and learning community, my teaching philosophy focuses on the tone of the learning environment and sets the expectation for participation in a community-minded environment. By giving students permission to go out on a limb and risk being wrong, it puts them at ease and enables them to participate on a freer basis.
The classroom is a safe and interactive community of learners. The classroom is a safe place to fail and a safe place to succeed. In a community, everyone has to participate and must support each other’s failures and celebrate each other’s successes. The learning process itself is a risk; to participate completely, learners must be vulnerable, impressionable, and open-minded. Learners should risk being wrong during their learning, it is part of the learning process. It is better to be wrong and participate than be right and not participate. Participation makes the community stronger.