Teaching Philosophy Statement
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops” (Henry B. Adams). I can’t remember when I decided that I wanted to become a teacher. I didn’t just wake up one morning and think to myself I want to be a teacher, it just seems that I always knew that I would teach. Both of my parents are teachers but they actually tried to persuade me to go into a different profession. Even though I was warned about the disadvantages of being a teacher, I knew I wanted to become a teacher.
As a child one of my favorite games to play was school. I could play school for hours whether I was teaching my little sisters or a classroom of stuffed animals. I think that I loved playing school because I respected my teachers so much. I thought that my Elementary school teachers were the smartest people in the world. I loved pretending to be the teachers that I looked up to and admired.
As I grew older I knew that I wanted to be an elementary school teacher because I wanted to work with children. I knew that I wanted to be a part of the enthusiasm that young children have for school and I wanted to someday be able to provide the knowledge for my students’ hunger to learn. I knew that teaching and helping children would be the most rewarding job that I could ever have. I want to be a teacher because I think that I can make a difference in a child’s life. I want to be able to make a shy child feel safe in my classroom. With patience I can help a slow child feel smart. I can help neglected or underprivileged children feel special. The satisfaction of making an unhappy or troubled child smile is one of the most important reasons that have helped me decide to become a teacher.
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...’s degree in reading. I would also like to become nationally certified through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
I will use my past and present experiences to be the best possible educator that I can be. Although summer vacation and holidays off are good incentives for me to want to become a teacher, being an important figure in a child’s life is all of the inspiration that I need. I know that being a teacher is not a glamorous job but to me it is the most important position a person can fill. I have the want and desire to become the best teacher that I can possibly be and I am will to work my hardest and give it my best effort. If I can have a positive affect on the life of at least one child than I will feel that I have accomplished my goal. “What sculpture does to a block of marble, education is to an human soul” (Joseph Addison).
In Swift’s satirical essay he stated the main issue to be the hunger and starvation of Irish country and their lack of money to support oneself. He said the complication was they themselves don’t have food, to many families in poverty, and that the Englishman took their land and charging high prices for rent. Swift makes this argument because he too is an Irish men and he struggles to see his fellow men parish in the streets. He desires his people to stand up against England and take back what’s theirs. He argues that the Irish...
Swift goes beyond just describing the socioeconomic distance between the aristocracy and the poor. He goes beyond showing the deplorable state of the country. Swift clearly shows the ludicrous nature of the society in which he lived, the feudal system, religious conflicts, the lack of social mobility, the aristocracy, and overpopulation. In condemning Catholics, he is condemning the Irish. In making the Irish out to be a problem that can be solved by this proposal, he shows his disapproval of English involvement in Irish affairs, and furthermore, the expanding British Empire. Thus "A Modest Proposal" does not present an answer to the societal problems of its day, but ultimately raises more questions. Not questions of fact, but questions of a profound socio-philosophical nature.
During the 1720’s, the Irish people were suffering dearly, due to the oppression by Great Britain. There oppression came in the form of being displaced by wealthy English people who were buying up land in Ireland and then not living there. They would proceed to rent some of their land to the Irish people at extremely high rent, which eventually led to them not being able to pay neither their rent or provide their families with food or clothes. The reason behind Swift’s proposal is simple. He is an Irishman. He has a sense of patriotic duty to attempt to help his fellow Irish people. He wants them to know that it is possible to move forward form poverty and out from under the oppression of the British. He structures his essay through a basic form of presenting an idea and then backing it up with “facts” like the growth in weight of babies or expert accounts on the taste of children from a credible source. Something that Swift just assumes that the audience will take for granted. Additionally he assumes that the audience won’t simply put his article down, taking it as the ramblings of a mad man talking about eating babies like it’s a normal everyday thing.
The entire proposal stands as a satire in itself; an analogy paralleling the tyrannical attitude of the British toward their Irish counterparts and the use of babies as an economic commodity. In short, Swift suggests that Irish parents are owned by the British, and babies are property of their parents, therefore, England has a right to consume the Irish babies. Swift uses this syllogism to show the British that their despotic reign in Ireland has left the miserable nation in poverty and disarray. Historically, it has been evidenced that England first colonized Ireland for security against, at that time, the Irish barbarians that inhabited the land. Thus, England continues to justify their power over Ireland as “restraining the temptation to consume among England's enemies” (Mahoney). Along with “the assurance of English military power to defend the colony from threat,” the degree of “English political and economic control that the colonists deeply resented,” grew exponentially into a full blown autocracy over Ireland (Mahoney). Swift writes, “Some persons of a desponding nature are in great concern.” This is not simply a concern ...
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality,” this was stated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a very crucial women’s suffragist. Over time, women’s history has evolved due to the fact that women were pushing for equal rights. Women were treated as less than men. They had little to no rights. The Women’s Rights Movement in the 1800’s lead up to the change in women’s rights today. This movement began in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention. For the next 72 years, women continually fought for equal rights. In 1920, they gained the right to vote which ended the movement and opened the opportunity for more change in women’s lives. Because of the Women’s Rights Movement, women today are able to vote, receive
During the 1500’s England’s Protestant King, Henry VIII, ruled Ireland. Over the next several centuries Protestant English became the primary landowners and government officials. They made many laws limiting the rights of the Irish Catholic, making it nearly impossible for any of them to advance. The English thought of the Irish as savages and trash, and forced them to live in deplorable conditions. As a result, many fled Ireland. Those remaining were poor and starving. This was the Ireland Swift was writing about.
In 1729, Jonathan Swift published a pamphlet called “A Modest Proposal”. It is a satirical piece that described a radical and humorous proposal to a very serious problem. The problem Swift was attacking was the poverty and state of destitution that Ireland was in at the time. Swift wanted to bring attention to the seriousness of the problem and does so by satirically proposing to eat the babies of poor families in order to rid Ireland of poverty. Clearly, this proposal is not to be taken seriously, but merely to prompt others to work to better the state of the nation. Swift hoped to reach not only the people of Ireland who he was calling to action, but the British, who were oppressing the poor. He writes with contempt for those who are oppressing the Irish and also dissatisfaction with the people in Ireland themselves to be oppressed.
The idea of eating all the youth in the country is obviously self-defeating and is not being seriously suggested by the writer. He is simply trying to show how desperate the lower class is in Ireland. Swift introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting, taxing absentee landlords, of encouraging the domestic economy by buying Irish goods, of discouraging pride, vanity, idleness, by dismissing them in his essay by saying that they are impractical. However, these reforms greatly differ from his ?modest proposal? because instead of the poor sacrificing their children, it would involve the rich sacrificing some of their luxuries. He is trying to point out the fact that reforms that would be practical and beneficial to the people of Ireland are being overlooked for the convenience of the rich.
I want to teach—I’m going to teach— because I have never wanted to do anything else as a career. Never once have I imagined myself working in any field besides the field of education. While most young children were daydreaming about lofty future professions, becoming an astronaut or a renowned magician, I pictured myself in front of a chalkboard explaining simple addition to a room full of eager students. I’ve changed my mind about many, many things in my life, but my choice of career? I’ve never questioned that.
In “A Modest Proposal” several forms of satire are demonstrated throughout the story. Satire is defined as the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose or criticize people’s stupidity or vices. (Google) In "A Modest Proposal" Swift uses parody which is a form of satire. Parody is primarily making fun of something to create a humorous feel for it. In “A Modest Proposal,” Swift uses parody to make fun of the people and children of Ireland, expressing the children as delicious food to be eaten.
Niger and Sierra Leone, the two poorest countries in the world only have a GDP of around 500 dollars per capita. Which, compared to Canada’s 27,000 dollars per capita, is considerably low. In the 48 poorest countries, an average of 2$ a day is made by each working person. Imagine living off 2$ a day in Canada, you couldn’t even buy a Big Mac and a drink for 2$. This is making starvation a very serious problem in 3rd-world countries, not to mention their low immune systems, used for preventing disease, not working right from the lack of nutrition.
Jonathan Swift employs satire, irony, and humor in his political pamphlet A Modest Proposal in order to bring attention to, and in some cases lampoon, many different issues in his country of Ireland. The chief issue among these being the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. Swift’s “modest proposal” turns out to be anything but, and he masterfully creates a long running joke throughout his pamphlet that never concretely delivers the punchline until the very end. This underlying, sapling, humor forces his audience into taking his ironic proposal seriously until the final moments of the proposal, making the irony throughout all the more effective. A Modest Proposal introduces such a horribly ironic plan that the reader’s natural instinct
My decision to pursue a career in teaching is due, in part to my desire to make an impact on the kids that I teach. Teaching is a very rewarding profession in which the teacher is directly able to affect a child’s life. During this stage of my college career, I have reached the realization the becoming a teacher is not too far from my grasp. There have been many influences on my life that have led me to this point and that helped me to establish goals for my career. Due to my father’s influence mainly, I decided I wanted to become a teacher. I will be a third generation teacher when all is said and done, and growing up in an educational environment provided me with the foundation to pursue a career as a teacher.
To begin out of the countless professions one has to chose from in the world today I have chosen to become a teacher. I have chosen to become a teacher because I myself am a product of some whom I consider to be the best teachers in the world. As a child in North Carolina I was inspired by a wonderful woman named Mrs. Hollyfield. Mrs. Hollyfield taught me that no star was too far out of reach, if I put my mind to accomplishing my goal I could make it. Mrs. Hollyfield inspired me to be the best I could be at anything I wanted to be. As I have grown I have had other important teachers, some whom I am surrounded by daily whom inspire me to set out to accomplish my dreams. These wonderful inspiring people in my life have led me to the decision of becoming a teacher.
I have not always wanted to be a teacher. I always knew that I wanted to work with children in some way, but I was pretty sure that teaching was not for me. I was well on my way in my junior year of college working toward a biology degree so that I could become a pediatric physician’s assistant. I still cannot explain what happened, but one week I was a biology major, and the next I knew that I have always been meant to teach children. I suppose I just took the longer route to get there than most people do. The two main reasons that I have chosen to become a teacher is that I believe that teaching is extremely personally rewarding in many ways and the fact that I can actively make a difference in someone’s life.