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Educational Philosophy - Jay Hargis
My overall educational philosophy is that all students can learn and it is up to me to make the information necessary for student success accessible in an interesting way to all students, regardless of ethnic, socio-economic, or physically challenged differences. My philosophy of history education is grounded on two important points. The first is my unshakeable belief that all students can learn history. It is my job as a community college history instructor to create a positive learning environment that empowers students to learn through helping them master learning skills as well as history content. Thus I aim to actively present the subject while teaching my students practical social science skills such as critical thinking, reading and note taking, library and internet research, collaborative learning projects, and essay writing. Second is that understanding history is the key to understanding our world today. This means making history real and relevant in the classroom by taking every opportunity to tie it into today's news and important public issues. An instructor at a community college has to make important commitments to maximize student academic success. The first is to do my utmost to meet student learning needs while maintaining the high standards of transfer-level classes. To do this I need to utilize an array of instructional techniques and assignments from sound pedagogical practices that help student grasp and master the class content. Instructional approaches can include presenting multimedia in the form of historic music and videos, classroom use of the internet, PowerPoint, or other special software, group projects as well as class lecture. I also try to include field trips whenever possible. Student assignments are planned to cover a wide range of learning styles and skills including: collaborative group presentations, analytical reading of primary sources, community research projects, analysis of current events in historical context, evaluations of historical subject films and videos, class question time, scheduled discussions, internet and library research assignments, research papers, as well as traditional formal evaluations. My other commitment is to consistently try to make each class as interesting, fun, and relevant to student experiences and interests or to current events as possible. I believe in motivating the learner, not expecting him or her to come in motivated. |