Education Goals Mission Statements First

Education Goals Mission Statements First Statement As a result of my teaching, my students will become life-long learners, and use the learning skills I teach them in higher education and in their professional lives. Second Statement As a result of my teaching, my students will approach every classroom they enter thereafter with joy, not with dread. Third Statement As a result of my teaching, my students will become more effective problem-solvers and not accept opinions as knowledge without questioning and testing what they are told.

Fourth Statement As a result of my teaching, my students will become more creative in their ability to think outside of the box, and view issues from many different perspectives. Fifth Statement (subject of following paper) As a result of my teaching, my students will become more aware of their multiple intelligences and unique strengths and weaknesses, so they can become more engaged and creative learners. Notes to a New Teacher (on the 5th Principle) There are two competing philosophies of education today.

Advocates that take a so-called measurement philosophy in regards to education are primarily interested in determining how pupils learn so as to meet annual testing goals and fulfill basic requirements. Learning must be assessed, the argument goes, and without assessment too many students will 'fall through the cracks' of the system (Ediger 2006: 1).

However, a more fruitful way of looking at students and what students ought to know is to take an intrapersonal or humanistic view of the learning process, recognizing that pupils have diverse talents, innate strengths, and inclinations that should be fostered within the classroom environment. Yes, some student achievement must be assessed by standardized testing.

However, students must also learn to cope with solving the kinds of problems and open-ended questions that are the antithesis of standardized testing, that are more like the problems they will grapple with in real life. Students, based upon their unique intelligences, will favor different problem-solving skills over others. A teacher must view his or her class, every year, as different, and the classroom environment must foster a unique dialogue between educator and pupils. Student differences need to be recognized in the classroom by the teacher.

The development of creative and critical thinking can be beneficial for both the individual student and society. The ability to engage in creative thinking is associated with certain personal characteristics, such as flexibility and open-mindedness that facilitates later learning, like the independent learning that is characteristic of higher education (Ching & Chau 2004:1).

Rather than seeing creativity and diversity as antithetical to learning basic skills, a number of researchers emphasize that even learning critical thinking and basic skills involves not only logical, but also creative cognitive skills and a willingness to deal with uncertainty. By deploying the diverse needs of different students into the holistic classroom environment, ultimately a more broad-based curriculum is created that enables all students to see the connections between the curriculum and their daily lives.

When using an integrated curriculum to study Japan, for example, pupils strong in spatial intelligence might benefit from studying the art of that nation while students with strong kinesthetic skills might benefit from learning traditional Japanese dances. Using the multiple intelligences of the classroom in an integrated fashion expands student's range of interests and abilities and fosters creative approaches to learning. Using multiple student interests and intelligences is also helpful because it gives students a sense of empowerment when their strengths are deployed in a positive fashion.

This is especially important for students with strengths that are not always fully utilized in the current academic curriculum, like music, art, and interpersonal skills. Feeling as though their individual excellence is recognized can foster a life-long love of learning in other subject areas that require different cognitive strengths. Even students who excel in traditional academics can still benefit from more creative strategies of coping with assignments and challenges of learning.

For example, when assigning more conventional, logical, verbal, and linear assignments, using open-ended questions rather than assigning tasks with clear right and wrong is helpful for students to learn important creative, out of the box ways of thinking. To teach students to be creative learners and problem-solvers, a teacher must be a creative teacher. The teacher must think outside of the conventional methods used in most schools, like lectures, textbooks, and directed writing assignments. Brainstorming by 'clustering' ideas is an effective technique to create a lesson plan.

For example to make use of diverse student intelligences, a teacher can put the topic of the lesson in the center of a blank sheet of paper, and draw eight straight lines sticking out from this topic and label each line with a different intelligence and a different way to use that intelligence while teaching the subject.