1. DAMIENDEVAUX
Philosophy of Education
An education consists in providing students with many opportunities to discover and
experiment with different lenses or fields as varied as history, literacy, arts, languages and
sciences. All of these fields of study aim at helping individuals develop in a way that will be
useful, efficient and empowering for both themselves and for society. However, students are a
diverse population, with different cultural and social backgrounds as well as different needs and
abilities. While it is important to set them up to the standards our society needs, it is also
important to enhance their development from the ground up, from their inherent qualities,
rather than from the top down, a blanket of knowledge applied uniformly without any regard
toward whom they are. Teachers not only instruct but also assist students in their acquisition of
practical knowledge, a set of ideas, facts and adopted methods which will help them progress
for themselves rather than for a letter grade. For this exhilarating task I chose to focus my
teaching on Physical Sciences.
I have always had an interest in how “things work”; how the behavior of planets and galaxies,
as well as that of car suspensions and electric motors, can be explained using a few scientific
concepts; and how those concepts can be used to understand and engineer efficiently. The field
of Physics is deeply exciting in a playful way. It is about understanding the “tricks” behind the
“magic” of Nature from the ground up, using sound inquiry. It is also a field that requires
analysis and methodology, skills that are indispensable to an academic career as well as a
professional one. In addition, acquiring a solid understanding of scientific concepts and
practices helps people become knowledgeable as citizens. It is a deeply philosophical process of
investigation and, as such, is not limited to fundamental sciences.
Analysis and problem-solving are important to master in Physics, even though they seem
difficult. In my work, I see too often a superficial grasp on concepts and a lack of methodology
which result in errors and frustration. A comprehensive approach to solving actual practical
problems is necessary in order to develop experience with these skills. Difficulty arises when we
fail to make connections between concepts and with the real world, but once we create sense
through actual scientific experimentation we weave a solid and elegant fabric of understanding.
In order to attain such ambitious learning goals, it is necessary to place the student at the
center of instruction. Indeed, if we want them to develop as sense-makers, it is only natural to
provide them with opportunities to express themselves, experiment with and apply scientific
knowledge. Integrating modeling activities and graphic organizers as part of formative

2. assessment strategies help them to first rephrase and make this knowledge their own. Then,
applying these concepts to new situations, such as a scientific “mystery” or an engineering
project, provide them with valuable experience while developing an understanding of the
usefulness of the concepts studied in many different aspects.
While student teaching a 7th grade Physical Sciences class, I was given the opportunity to teach
a unit on atoms and molecules. In order to effectively teach these very abstract concepts, I
developed a coherent unit of instruction based on the Bohr model and the periodic table to get
students to motivate and understand explanations for the physical and chemical properties of
substances. Specifically, students were asked to find patterns in the Periodic Table; find
molecules they could build with three different atoms and a few rules; use the patterns they
had found to switch elements in their molecules and discover new ones; infer physical
properties from the mass of the molecules; and finally uncover conservation of mass by
comparing the reactants to the products in a chemical reaction. All of these tasks were done
through activities and labs with a minimal amount of direct instruction so as to privilege an
active role in learning. They were then capable to use Atomic and Molecular theories to explain
the behavior of substances in specific situations: why a thin stream of water bends in an electric
field; why carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas; and how to use chemical properties to identify
substances.
My objective as a teacher is to help students develop skills and connections, make sense about
what they learn, and how it applies to the discipline of science as well as other academic fields
and the real world. Learning how to learn, investigate, build models and approaches to solve
problems, is building a path to success. Reflect, practice and experiment is building a mindset
which will help students in an ever more diverse and connected world.