My philosophy when it comes to the education of students is that students are more inclined to learn and obtain knowledge when they are comfortable, when they’re heard, and when they are treated like all around human beings. In my classroom I will implement concepts from Muhammad Gholdy’s 5 pursuits, Identity (how my students view themselves), Skills (the necessary standards I have to teach), Intellectualism (how my students take the knowledge accumulated and use it in the classroom), Criticality (how my students apply their knowledge from the classroom in the real world), and lastly Joy (showing my students the beauty in education.) Middle school can be a difficult time for the students due to their bodily changes and influences outside of the classroom, which is why I believe that joy is one of the most important pursuits to implement in the classroom because during the student's adolescence. I will always believe that every single student has the capability to excel in a specific content area if not more than one. My goal is to incorporate culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) into my lessons to keep my students engaged and active in the classroom.

CRP is an ideology that finds creative and flexible ways to integrate student's lives and interests into the classroom. This ideology encourages students of color to excel academically while still allowing them to socialize with their peers. Although we're bringing culture into the school, teaching our students how to become academically excellent and maintaining it is the ultimate goal in implementing this style of pedagogy. CRP will become more and more apparent when unit planning come into play.

When we were first introduced to unit planning, I was very confused. However, after talking to my classmates and doing exercises in class it began to make more sense. One tip I pulled away to assist me in creating my unit plan(s) is when using backwards design, it's important to think about how your students will take this newfound knowledge and use it outside of the classroom. It's also important to consider what do you want your students to gain from your lesson. With this type of thinking it'll be less difficult to create a desired result. In education there is this cycle of making sure students are able to repeat material and perform well on exams regardless to if they honestly mastered the content or not. In my classroom I'd like to change that. I do not believe that test scores are the best way to me how my students have mastered the content I was assigned to teach. There are so many factors that can go into why a student isn't making good grades on exams. My job as their (my students) teacher is to teach them a specific set of skills and their "job" for me is to show me they have mastered the content material. In the chapters I've read over these few weeks the term "assess" is used frequently. To my knowledge testing isn't the only way to assess students, and in my classroom, I will experiment with these other methods to find which one works best for my students.