Hi, I'm Gili Omer, a Student Teacher from the University of Florida.

During my time at the University of Florida, I have been exploring numerous educational perspectives, their applications and their benefits. However, two philosophical perspectives stood out to me the most, those being humanism and western/non-western perspectives. In my future lesson plans, I intend to keep these philosophical orientations in mind as I construct lessons that foster my preferred theoretical framework of cognitivism.

The humanism philosophy focuses on people’s natural tendency to strive for what is right. Essentially, people have a substantial potential for growth inside and outside of the classroom, and over time they will seek to be the best that they can be. In order to foster this gradual improvement, the classroom teacher should learn the strengths and weaknesses of each individual student and design a classroom environment that helps address each student as an individual learner, rather than as some form of average or median learner. My belief is that we, as educators, should not try to make the learning process a simplistic list of steps to be followed. If we attempt to simplify the individual learning process, we stand the chance of losing our uniqueness as teachers and students.

Next, I will discuss the philosophy of western/non-western perspectives and the ways in which it goes hand in hand with humanism. When it comes to education in the United States, schools often dedicate a large focus of the classroom time to concepts commonly found in classical Greek thought rather than those common to many indigenous cultures. In other words, schools in the United States often fail to recognize that some students may come from parts of the world that utilize other perspectives that can have merit and be beneficial for other students to explore. Relating this philosophy back to humanism, I believe that since each student is an individual with their own defining culture and practices, teachers in the classroom should not choose to ignore non-western perspectives simply because they are less common than western ones. Rather, we should embrace the differences between the students, utilizing them as a way to learn new and uncommon material that is globally relevant despite being nontraditional in the American classroom.  

Humanism and non-western perspectives yield themselves to cognitivism as cognitivism is a theoretical framework that focuses on the process of each individual students’ learning. The cognitive approach acknowledges mental planning, goal-setting, and organizational strategies as essential steps to learning. Learning is seen as a change between states of knowledge as is achieved through the structuring of information by each independent student – the learner organizes their information in their own brain in order to recall it in other scenarios. Utilizing a similar philosophy as humanism, cognitivism is centered around each individual and the influence a student can have on their own learning. The goal of this framework is to address how information is received and retrieved by the mind. The student’s thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and values are considered to be extremely influential in the learning process. In my opinion, a large part of how students have come to know what they know comes from their own culture, what they grew up with and their general attitude towards learning. Thus, it once more becomes essential to address any non-western perspectives and humanism in the goal of promoting a classroom approach that prioritizes the student over their environment.

When I start working, I hope to teach a biology or chemistry class to high schoolers. These are both subjects that stand to be intimidating, especially when students expect that their individual needs will not be met. While I love these two fields of science, I can relate to such intimidation from any physics class. Therefore, I would like to implement a similar system when teaching biology and chemistry as the one used by my high school physics teacher, one of the most influential teachers I have ever had. For my first year of having him in physics 1 and 2, the class was set up by “standards” that contained different content, and each exam contained several standards. However, in this class, it was an option to reassess every single standard whenever I wanted. I thought this was very helpful -- it showed that the teacher’s focus was not on time nor grades, but rather on us learning the material fully. The next year in this class, he also allowed us to take our exams whenever we wanted to in addition to reassessing them. His philosophy was that so long as we got it done, the best method to teach was the method that would make us learn the best, not one dependent on time constraints and deadlines. In allowing his students to take their time building upon the taught material and taking the focus away from numerical grades, this teacher showed me the importance of fostering each individual’s own learning process. From a cognitivist point of view, everybody takes their own time to acquire and retrieve knowledge, and allowing each student to do what works best for them is beneficial in the long run. The humanistic and cognitivist approach of allowing students to be in control of their individual learning plan is one I plan to employ in my classroom in the future. As a teacher, I would like to create an environment where my students don’t focus on grades and deadlines, but rather focus on learning fully and in their own time.

An essential part to humanism is individuality, which can be difficult to apply in a classroom where the students are strangers. Getting to know every student can take time, but I believe it can be achieved by establishing a primary respect and trust between teacher and student. As a student, I do best in classrooms where teachers are more like my friend rather than my superior. I think that as long as there is a basic sense of trust between the student and the teacher, the student should be able to prosper. After all, even just showing up to class means the student must want to learn something. When I become a teacher, I hope to show students that I recognize their effort and not just their results, and in doing so I hope that my students can feel open to communicate with me and share their culture and perspective. I believe that in building mutual trust, the student will continue to do their work even when granted with the independence to choose when or how they go about doing it. 

This same fundamental trust that will help me achieve my humanist philosophy will also help me address western and non-western perspectives in my classroom. Specifically, once the students feel comfortable in the classroom with both myself and other students, we can begin having class discussions about differing perspectives and approaches. A particular application of non-western perspectives that I can include in a science classroom has to do with the idea that learning is communal. For example, if I am teaching biology and the topic pertains to climate change, then I could explore different ways in which what the students are learning can help benefit the community and nature in the long run. Furthermore, I can encourage in class discussions about the different ways in which what we learn in school affects each other and the earth, even if the material does not relate to science. In establishing a safe classroom for students to respectfully share their culture and ideas, communal learning will take place.