Nicholas Flores Dr. Slaughter HIS 463 Teaching Philosophy

Nicholas Flores
Dr. Slaughter
HIS 463
Teaching Philosophy
While attending secondary school between 2005-2011, I was rarely interested in the social
sciences. I took a history class every year, and an economics/government class toward the end, and
constantly questioned their purpose and place in my academic career. When attending college, I
realized that the social sciences are vital to the understanding of the human experience. They link
humanity together by providing a universal memory that allows the decisions for the present and
course of the future to be founded in wisdom rather than chance. I became wildly fascinated in the
social sciences, but I also believed that I could have had this appreciation years earlier had I been
interested during my secondary schooling. I want to become a secondary social science teacher to
help students see the importance and fascination in the included subjects and show why they should
be appreciated to new generations. However, the social sciences make up a piece of a much larger,
educational picture. Education is important since it is an element of one’s well-being, comparable to
health and medicine. It provides people the power and ability to grow intellectually, transcend
political, economic, and social barriers, and contribute toward the technological and civil progress
of humanity. As a teacher, I am an agent of education and therefore positive change in the world.
My general teaching principles will promote structure, participation, encouragement, and
fun while learning. I will first establish routines. Students are creatures of habit, and if there are
constant changes in the classroom there will be chaos. Next, I will set explicit expectations which
clearly address how students should behave during certain tasks and holds them accountable for
their actions. One of my most important teaching principles is the promotion of active mental
engagement. This will encourage students to actively think about what I want them to think about
and consider. Something that accompanies active mental engagement is motivating students
through acknowledgement for students to feel that they are progressing and are on the correct path.
I also believe it is critical to make use of every instructional moment and minimize discipline time
to maximize instructional time. The applications of these principles while teaching history and
social sciences will create an educational, interactive, and entertaining classroom environment that
promotes looking at a larger picture connected with the daily lives of students. I want students to
walk away from my class with comprehension of the general chronologic order of significant
historical events, how each event impacts one another, and how these events created ripples that are
visible in the modern world, all while having fun in the process of learning.
My methods of teaching are specific to history and shine a light on my history-centered
teaching principles. These methods will encourage my students to be historical thinkers and be
historically literate. I will provide primary and secondary source material to promote inquiry-based
learning. These sources will be presented though multiple mediums like text, photography, video,
animation, and music. The evaluation of sources will teach students to ability examine text closely,
make inferences, understand arguments, and weigh evidence to strengthen comparison skills. I will
have students frequently compose minor pieces of writing to teach students how to express
historical understanding, craft arguments, use evidence to support claims, and structure the
expression of ideas and defense of arguments. My students will engage in frequent discussions over
the course content and their ideas of the material. This will promote the exchange of thoughts about
history, teach students how to orally express historical ideas, and create a sense of unity in the
classroom to make learning history more comfortable. In this process, I will connect history with
other academic disciplines, like Language Arts, to teach students of the connection between
educational subjects and show them that history is not an isolated subject in their educational
journey. Perhaps most importantly, I will make comparisons and connections between the historical
content with existing characteristics and ideas of the present day. This will provide students with a
purpose for understanding history and promote the application of history in making present and
future decisions that affect their lives. It is my hope that the application of my general teaching
principles and my history-specific teaching methods will give students interactive, informative,
valuable, educational, entertaining, and fun learning experiences that they will carry with them as
they grow into adults.
My methods for assessing students’ learning will be split into four parts. First, I will
frequently as questions on days of instruction to track the progress of the students’ understanding of
the material of the day. Second, my assigned writing assignments will assess the students’ ability to
read closely and evaluate historical sources, craft arguments, find evidence to defend those
arguments, and properly structure an essays and general pieces of writing. Third, I will give exams
that assess the students’ cumulative knowledge of the content and their ability to apply that
knowledge in both multiple choice and writing sections. Fourth and finally, students will
periodically participate in interactive games that are designed to assess students’ learning in an
entertaining format. This will ensure that students’ learning is not only assessed in formal
assignments but also assessed in a manner that is fun and mentally stimulating.
My overall goals in teaching history is to educate students of the value and importance of
the discipline while teaching them it is an exciting subject to learn. I feel that I learned of the
excitement of history later than I should have, and I want to prevent students from feeling the same
as they grow into adulthood. More importantly, I want students to walk away from my class with
the understanding that history is not only a narrative of the past and see that it is a subject that is
critical in making decisions that mold their own future and direct the course of humanity. I hope to
help students appreciate history and use it to become upstanding citizens of the globe, the country,
and their local community.

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Nicholas Flores

educational picture. Education is important since it is an element of one’s well-being, comparable to

My general teaching principles will promote structure, participation, encouragement, and

My methods of teaching are specific to history and shine a light on my history-centered

they grow into adults.

and their local community.

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