Philosophy of Teaching

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Philosophy of Teaching

I have known for a long time now that I want to be a high school Spanish teacher. There were other considerations for a while, but none that lasted very long; they couldn’t supplant what I felt so strongly about. Because of this, I have had a long time to think about exactly what the profession means to me.

In my opinion, any teacher should be driven primarily by the desire to share his passion for a subject with others. A Spanish teacher (for example) should love the language and the culture that his class will deal with. Of course, many who love these things love them but are not teachers; I feel that teachers are possessed of a particularly strong passion for their subjects that compels them to educate others. I am certain that, unfortunately, there are teachers who do not feel so strongly about what they will teach, and I am doubly certain that these are not good teachers. In my opinion, such passion is the most important aspect of a successful teacher’s personality.

There is a second facet of a good teacher’s personality that is almost as crucial, in my opinion: the ability to relate to his students on a personal level. These teachers recognize that their students are not merely students but also young adults and that they therefore carry with them all the emotional baggage of adolescence. They do not view their students as objectives or sets of characteristics but as people, and they understa...

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