Teaching Educational Philosophy

Abstract

Our least-served students are taught by our least-experienced teachers. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, teachers in high-poverty public schools are twice as likely to transfer to another school as their colleagues in low-poverty public schools. Consequently, many students in high-poverty, urban public schools spend their academic careers watching a parade of new teachers pass through their classrooms on their way to “good schools” with “good students.” Until new teachers arrive ready to join their constituents in a collaborative effort to reform the pathology of urban schools by asserting an educational philosophy rooted in their beliefs about the purpose of education and forged in the day-to-day context of urban schooling, the teacher parade will continue marching through the poorest urban communities.