Teaching Philosophy
My job as an educator is to help prepare my students for whatever they plan to do after high school, whether that be higher education, entering the work force or trade school. I teach chemistry, a subject that many find to be challenging and some may even say boring. Most of my students will not become chemists, many will never have to take a chemistry class after high school and many will not use science in their everyday lives. I often get asked the question “When will I ever use this?” and sometimes the answer really is “you won’t”. So how can I make what I teach relevant to my students, how can I get them to buy into the idea that there is more to chemistry than just chemistry, how can I show them that they will walk away from this class with a set of skills that they will be able to use for the rest of their lives? I believe that by incorporating problem solving and communication skills in my class I can help my students to leave my class with skills that they will use no matter what field they go into after high school.
In my classroom students are often presented with a problem that they need to solve. This often comes in the form of lab experiments. Students are asked to make observations to solve a problem. This skill is not restricted to a lab experiment, the ability to make observations and deduce a solution is needed in all areas of work. I use a method called Claim Evidence Reasoning (CER) in my classroom. In doing CER students learn to make evidence based claims and arguments, a skill that is desperately needed in todays world. Students work through three steps: 1. Claim-A statement of a student’s understanding about a phenomenon or about the results of an investigation. 2. Evidence-scientific data used to support the claim and 3. Reasoning- Ties together the claim and the evidence.
I have found that students are very familiar with this framework, even though it may not have been called Claim Evidence Reasoning before. This idea of using evidence to back up a claim or argument is a skill that they use in almost every class; history, English and even math. So if students can see that this is a universal skill to have in high school, then it is not such a big jump for them to see that this is a skill that will help students well beyond their academic career even if it is outside of the scientific context.