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    What Matters Most

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    The document discusses the author's philosophy of education, which was influenced by difficult experiences in her middle school years where she felt a lack of connection from teachers at a time when her family life was in crisis. She believes that educators must build relationships with students and meet their social, emotional, and educational needs to support the whole child. Her philosophy is focused on providing students with powerful interactions with people, experiences, and curriculum to help them develop understanding of themselves and the world. She cites theorists who emphasized that all behavior satisfies basic human needs and that students do well if their needs are met.

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    What Matters Most

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    29 views5 pages
    The document discusses the author's philosophy of education, which was influenced by difficult experiences in her middle school years where she felt a lack of connection from teachers at a time when her family life was in crisis. She believes that educators must build relationships with students and meet their social, emotional, and educational needs to support the whole child. Her philosophy is focused on providing students with powerful interactions with people, experiences, and curriculum to help them develop understanding of themselves and the world. She cites theorists who emphasized that all behavior satisfies basic human needs and that students do well if their needs are met.

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    The document discusses the author's philosophy of education, which was influenced by difficult experiences in her middle school years where she felt a lack of connection from teachers at a time when her family life was in crisis. She believes that educators must build relationships with students and meet their social, emotional, and educational needs to support the whole child. Her philosophy is focused on providing students with powerful interactions with people, experiences, and curriculum to help them develop understanding of themselves and the world. She cites theorists who emphasized that all behavior satisfies basic human needs and that students do well if their needs are met.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    29 views5 pages

    What Matters Most

    Uploaded by

    api-240251499
    The document discusses the author's philosophy of education, which was influenced by difficult experiences in her middle school years where she felt a lack of connection from teachers at a time when her family life was in crisis. She believes that educators must build relationships with students and meet their social, emotional, and educational needs to support the whole child. Her philosophy is focused on providing students with powerful interactions with people, experiences, and curriculum to help them develop understanding of themselves and the world. She cites theorists who emphasized that all behavior satisfies basic human needs and that students do well if their needs are met.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 5

    Running head: WHAT MATTERS MOST?

    What Matters Most?

    Shelly Treleaven

    Prepared for EEA 535

    M. Ed. in Leadership

    City University of Seattle in Canada


    WHAT MATTERS MOST? 2

    When I explain my philosophy of teaching or how students ought to be taught, one would

    find that I become rather passionate in my response. The commitment to work with children and

    youth holds a deeply personal and emotional connection for me. While I had many excellent

    teachers who contributed to my curricular understanding, I felt isolated, alone and not worth

    effort or time when I was in my middle years. It is my belief that we must always remember we

    have been entrusted with someone’s child, and we impact their perspectives on themselves and

    their future. We must develop relationships and meet them where they are on a social,

    emotional, and educational level to support the whole child.

    My philosophy of life and education has been influenced by a variety of authors and

    mentors. Glasser (Year) stated that the basic need to survive, feel love and belonging, and have

    power, freedom, and fun impacts how we perceive our world and experiences. He stated that

    “[a]ll our behaviour is always our best choice, at the time we make the choice, to satisfy one or

    more of these needs” (p. 28). This theory made sense to me and when Green (2008) stated that

    “kids do well if they can” (p. 28) it helped to explain my struggles as a child and helped me to

    internalize and comprehend these concepts as an adult.

    As I was in four different schools from Grades One to Four, I lacked a connection to my

    teachers. I did, however, have a principal in Grade Two, who seemed to know every student’s

    name and was in the halls talking to the students often. When I got called to his office due to a

    conflict with another student, I was terrified. I knew what I had done was wrong but felt

    justified. He did something that few adults did in my life at that time, he listened to me. He did

    not condone what I had done, but I’ll never forget the way he made me feel, understood. Even
    WHAT MATTERS MOST? 3

    though I was a little girl, he patiently listened to my side of the story. While this happened over

    40 years ago, it continues to resonate within me emotionally, which illustrates its impact.

    All through my middle school years, I struggled, not with school, but with my family life

    as it was in crisis. School for me was a separate part of my life and had no connection to home.

    It was the place I went to feel safe and socialize with my peers. I struggled to be focused; I

    learned in spite of myself. If any teacher had any idea what was going on in my life, I never

    knew it, as no one ever made an effort to talk with me about anything but the content of a lesson.

    Due to the lack of connection at school, I only felt shame and humiliation by my home situation,

    and as a result, my mental health suffered. I often wonder how things might have been different

    if an effort to understand my situation had been made.

    My thought is that many people sense that education is the formal act of receiving

    instruction, however, I feel it is the interactions with those around us, our environment, and how

    we change due to these interactions that define our education. I postulate that we are born to

    learn and that most people spend their lives seeking experiences with variety, novelty, and

    change in order to develop meaning, understanding, and purpose for their lives. At the school

    level, a student’s education would ideally focus on the whole child and would provide powerful

    interactions with the people, experiences, and curriculum in order to shape their comprehension

    about themselves and the world around them.

    As educators we are not given just the brains of students so that we might fill them with

    knowledge, we are also offered their hearts and souls. “They may forget what you said - but they

    will never forget how you made them feel” (Buhner, 1971) and I agree. We must build
    WHAT MATTERS MOST? 4

    relationships and meet the needs of the child. Only once they feel a safe, connected, cared for,

    allowed choice and they are having fun, are they truly able to maximize their potential.
    WHAT MATTERS MOST? 5

    References

    Buehner, C. (1971). Retrieved from ​https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/06/they-feel/​.

    Glasser, W. (1988). ​Choice theory in the classroom​ (Rev. ed.). New York: Quill.

    Greene, R. (2008). Kids do well if they can.​ The Phi Delta Kappan, 90​(3), 160-167.

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