My Philosophy of Teaching

 

         Since I first developed it during my high school English internship in 1982, my philosophy of teaching has evolved surprisingly little. I noticed that each student learns in her or his own way. This makes it the teacher’s goal to individualize the material so the learner “gets it.”

       Then I was teaching general education English to tenth graders. During this time and the following two years with sophomores and seniors at an all-boys high school, practicing this philosophy meant working to present lessons various ways, and assess students in as many ways as I could think to try. Several intervening years of training adult learners taught me that personalizing education is crucial at all age and ability levels. The related challenge became keeping the delivery fresh enough that those who “got it” three iterations ago gain even more insight from this varied reinforcement.

       This individualization is codified in Special Education, which made this field a good fit for my philosophy and helped make me a great fit in Special Education.  However, I grew more than a little frustrated with the egg-crate model of teaching as it is still done in many U.S. public prekindergarten through twelfth grade (preK-12) schools.  Despite an increased emphasis on state-wide assessment, the resulting teaching to the test has made the classroom teacher’s job more insular, not more collegial.

       Working alone in a crowd of students was even more frustrating for me in 2008 because the student teaching I started with in 1981 was a team-teaching model, with the sophomore English teachers developing the curriculum and assessment together.  It was still delivered individually, and this is appropriate.  So I broke with preK-12 in December and have cast my lot with Strayer because I see the collegial course development and individualized course delivery I had been missing in public primary and secondary education.  One holdover from time as a public educator is the belief that anyone can get out of an education what she or he is willing to put into it.  Strayer’s enrollment policies are open acknowledgement of their agreement with this ideal.

       In a previous life, I conducted training development and delivery for Department of Energy employees.  I never made the distinction between education and training because frankly, I do not see one.  Good teaching is effective teaching, whether it is evidenced by showing a federal employee how to complete her annual safety training requirement or showing a seven-year-old cognitively impaired child how to tie his shoes.  All instruction is one-to-one.     

                                               

                                     

Dr. J. Romanczuk

February 28, 2009