Teaching Philosophy

Teaching is like being a Studio Guide

Teaching is like being a studio guide. The studio guide's main job is to guide the painters, the students, through different themes of paintings. They may provide the painters with different methods with which the painters may paint their personal paintings. Typically all of the painters in the studio will be attempting the same general picture to start off with. However, the painters can decide how they achieve the picture and how they would like to make it their own. They can decide what colors they want to use, what brushes or tools they use, what they want to add and what they decide to leave out. The end result is that each painter has a unique painting from the other painters around them, which the painters achieved on their own.

In this metaphor the students are the painters. The studio guide may have provided ideas or some help, but the painters have done the work and their own experiences, abilities, likes and dislikes have shaped their own paintings. This is also important because the studio guides themselves are painters. This suggests that while the studio guides are the teachers, they are students as well, constantly changing and learning through their experiences.

The paint is like knowledge because paint comes in a variety of colors, shades, and textures, just like knowledge comes in many different forms and through different methods. This paint decorates a canvas at the painter's will, so the canvas is the accumulation of their knowledge in specific areas as a whole. The painter's palette is the type of knowledge that schools require teachers to teach. While the studio guide may require certain types of paint from this palette to be present, the painters can add paint from outside the palette as well, they can us a different palette altogether, or they can use no palette and figure out which paints work best for them as they go.

On each canvas, there are many sections and layers of paint; these are the accumulation of all the things they have already learned in those areas. Every time the painter completes a section of the painting, a student completes a section or grade level of learning.

However, underneath all of the paint, on the bare white canvas cloth is a base sketch. This base sketch represents the lives of the students before entering school and the lessons they learn before they begin a formal education. This base comes from the students' environments and can be influenced by parents, siblings, friends and other people who play a role in the child's life. Like parents for a student, a good base sketch helps give the artist more confidence going into the creation of the painting and helps direct an artist as they create their masterpieces.

The creation of this masterpiece, however, depends a great deal upon the tools at the artist's disposal. These tools are provided by suppliers, these suppliers are the public, the tax payers. Without the tax payers, students would not have as many tools to use while they learn. The painters cannot complete paintings without the tools. While the public provides supplies through paying taxes, policy makers set the bar and standards. For an artist, the people who set the bar and standards are, in part, the philanthropists.

Typically, a philanthropist supports an artist whose art they like, in this way, they set the standards for what the artist should paint if that artist wants the philanthropists' support and contribution. In a similar manner, students have to perform well on tests if the school they attend wants any extra money from the government and its policy makers.

Standards set by policy makers are part of the standardized curriculum for the state. The teachers have to follow the curriculum and the students have to learn what the curriculum specifies. In this way, the curriculum is like the style of a painting, this just means the way the painting is made or what is in the painting. For example, there are abstract paintings, these would be the more liberal curriculums and educations, and there are also still life paintings, these paintings would be a more traditional education , along with many other styles of paintings. An artist typically sticks to the type of paintings they know how to create. If an artist starts with abstract paintings and does them the most, more than likely that will be his dominant style, if not his only style of painting. However, on occasion, artists will switch styles and try other kinds, just like students who may not find one style of curriculum satisfying, might try to find a curriculum style that will work better for them.

While policy makers are creating the curriculum and standards, the people who actually enforce these guidelines are the administrators for the schools. In the world of art, the ones with a job most similar to the administrators are the art sellers and curators. The art sellers and curators help enforce the philanthropist 'standards' by taking and displaying only the art that fits towards the philanthropists' tastes, as well as the taste of other buyers.

The other buyers, while some are also philanthropists, would be colleges and employers. Colleges and employers generally look for students that fit their criteria and molds. They would be the other buyers because they want those paintings, those collections of knowledge to enrich their school or their businesses. So while the administrators would be the 'salesman' of the knowledge, the colleges and employers are the other buyers, bidding for the individual talents and vast knowledge of each student.