Welcome to my Portfolio

Paul Dunkleberger

The first part of any portfolio is introducing myself. Instead of putting it in two different places, you can go here to see my resume to find out specific information. Suffice it to say for now that I am a returning student at Georgia State University and am in the graduate program at the College of Education know as TEEMS. It's a great program and I am happy to be a part of it. Through my schooling, both now and before my graduate program, I have thought a lot about what kind of teacher I am going to be. My educational philosophy can be attributed to two great minds of education, Vygotsky, pictured on the left, and John Dewey, pictured on the right. Click on either picture to find out more about these great men.
From these men, and the experiences I have had so far, I have come to realize that I WILL NOT be the kind of teacher that stands in front of the class and lectures at the students. Now I know there will be times when that is the best way to get across specific information. But I also know that children learn best when doing, not listening. Lev Vygotsky believed that learning is a social activity. The old standard of a lecturing teacher is not how he saw education. There are several particular things Vygotsky is known for. Most notably is the Zone of Proximal Development.
This is when the instruction is at a level just above the child's ability to do work on is own, he needs guided practice. The trick is not to make it too hard, what he calls frustration level. The child learns not just from the instruction at the zone of proximal development, but from the social interaction achieved during the instruction. He finds it impossible to separate content from the method of teaching. He thought that the method of teaching WAS he content. The social interaction is the content. The majority of schooling is to create these social contexts for mastery of information and abilities.
John Dewey had a similar point of view. The social activity of humans IS knowledge. The social activity that children participate in is indistinguishable from the content. Garth Kemerling says,"Dewey supposed that human awareness and action occur as indistinguishable elements within a coherent experience. In any adequate analysis, what we know is just what we do." Vygotsky would agree. He said that mental activity is the result of social learning. Secondly, Dewey believed that students should be taught the realities of our society, using the ideals of our society. From his most famous book, Democracy and Education, comes this passage that means the most to me. We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement. Dewey says we must use the ideals of our democracy to point out the deficiencies in our society. I must agree.
My educational philosophy borrows from these two men. First I believe that children learn by doing. We must engage the student in acitivity and social interaction to transmit the information they will need as productive citizens. In one book, Dewey says that, to teach the importance of what kind and how much crops to grow, have the children plant a garden. The activity IS the knowledge. I think social activity is the primary exercise in which children gain and maintain the information they will need to move forward.
Secondly, I find that as I teach every new lesson, I am pointing out the inconsistencies found in the ideals of our society. I am what Valerie Pang calls a social action multiculturist teacher. She finds that the overall goal of such a teacher is "for all peoples and cultures to experience equality and justice and therefore a lack of opression. Goal of schooling is to prepare all students to make changes in our society so that it is a socially just community." As an example, my latest lesson plans on African history included examples of imports and exports. It was not good enough to pass this information along. I wanted them to understand the inherent inequalities associated with what kinds of imports and exports many African countries dealt with. We even discussed what changes African nations might make to make the situation better. The activity to help describe th inequity was to have the children plan a lunch for their class. Given fifteen dollars, they were asked what kinds of food they could buy to feed 25 children. We found out that you had to make hard choices when given only limited resources. Some found out that there were foods that you had no chance of getting because they were just too expensive. Activities like these are ways to gather children together and learn about something as a group, working together. This activity was a perfect example of how I want to approach my teaching.