Personal growth and reflection, in my own opinion, are a large portion of one’s educational philosophy. In my experience as a first-year Education student, I believe I have grown as a person and educator, both socially and professionally. Before entering into the faculty of education, I was majoring in Biology. However, I wasn’t very focused on the idea of a lifelong career as a biologist and wanted a job that served more of a purpose to society. I always bounced the idea of becoming a teacher around, but never truly thought about it until I remembered the impact of one of my high school teachers had on me. This idea of helping shape young minds really drew me into becoming an educator and brought me to the point where I applied to transfer to the Faculty of Education.

Prior to joining the Faculty of Education, I would identify myself as someone with poor public speaking skills and little confidence when it came to expressing my own opinion. As someone who expects to teach in the future, these lacking skills must improve, and that’s exactly what my first semester of classes in the Faculty of Education has done.

ECS 100 is a class that I believe has prepared me for the future, as I have learned about the expectations and duties of teachers that I did not know before. Through the field experience, I have learned to adapt to unexpected events and have gained confidence in talking and expressing my knowledge. Groupwork in this class has also gotten me a step closer to being comfortable talking in front of large groups of people, which was a glaring weakness in my skillset for education.

ECS 110 has grown my interpretation of the meaning of social justice. As negative it is to say, I think my beliefs around social justice issues were very narrow and closed-minded. My tolerance and understanding of issues revolving around race, gender, inequality, etc, were ignorant and weak. Growing older and more mature can be credited to some extent, but this class had a big influence on my interpretation of these issues.

EPE 100 has been really important for me in terms of shaping my confidence and my public speaking ability, as this was a large portion of the class. Further, my educational philosophy has started to take shape as a result of this class.

As an educator, I feel as if my skills have started to develop or refine as a result of education as a whole and the time I’ve spent with those who I teach. I still feel that my potential for these skills must develop further to become the teacher and influencer I want to be. In order to achieve this, I still need to work on my speaking and confidence, because as a teacher, there is no way students will be confident in what I am teaching unless I am confident in myself. Another goal I have is to ensure I am staying professional at all times get into the mindset of an educator and become the person I would want those I teach to look up to.

Overall, my growth as a professional educator and a person has directly been influenced by my first semester of education. I have successfully improved my skillset by exploring my weaknesses and even subconsciously learning to adapt and help children through field experience.