Your essay should provide answers to the following questions:
• What are the broad goals of education and how can they best be met?
• What are your personal goals and hopes for your students, and how can you help them achieve those goals?
• In your opinion, what kinds of knowledge and skills are most important for your students to learn? How can students gain that knowledge and skills, and what is your role in the process? This answer should relate, at least in part, to the grade level and subject matter that you teach.
• Will you consciously promote specific values in your classroom? If so, what values? If not, why not?
• What kind of environment do you strive to create in your classroom? How do you create this type of environment? How does that ideal environment relate to your beliefs about students and learning?
• What is diversity and why is it important? What steps can you take to ensure that diversity is celebrated in your classroom? What steps do you take to include diverse parents in their children’s education?
• After reading about the five philosophies of education in Chapter 6 (See Overview 6.1), which do you think is most aligned with your personal philosophy of education? Why? Be specific here. Does the philosophy fit perfectly? Are there some elements you don’t agree with? Provide specific examples of how this philosophy is evident in your personal philosophy.
