Whitney Booth

Background

About Whitney Booth

My teaching philosophy is based on a belief that students are unique individuals with unique strengths and unique learning needs. As an educator, my role is assessing my students’ unique strengths and perceiving each student’s potential for excellence. By seeking out their strengths, I feel compelled to nurture, refine, and stretch each student toward excellence. By perceiving their potential, I help each student grow uniquely by providing individual feedback and encouragement. My role is also to aid the students in gaining knowledge through their unique way of learning and creating a learning environment that meets those unique needs. I assess the learning styles of my students and provide visual, auditory/musical, and kinesthetic opportunities for the students to learn based on their unique learning needs. Students have a very short attention span in this fast-paced, “I want it now” world. I recognize the connection between entertainment and education. I enjoy creating unique learning environments that are catered to my students’ learning styles. To engage students, I add vivid and exciting anecdotes to lecture. I also bring dialoging to the classroom to allow students to formulate opinions and share experiences with one another. When students are engaged in a story or emotionally invested in their studies, they find a passion for learning and tend to retain more information. Exclusively providing text on a screen can be disengaging but adding pictures and videos to my presentations help visual learners retain the content. For tactile/kinesthetic learners, I bring props, including the actual medical equipment with me to lecture to allow these learners an opportunity to interact with the equipment to help them understand it. Regardless of content, I think that students should finish their courses with skills that they will use in their everyday lives. These skills include critical thinking, problem solving, effective communication, punctuality, working well with others, and integrity. I design my courses to include components that develop these skills. Through group projects, engaging discussion topics, researching, and meeting deadlines, students are better equipped to enter the workforce and excel.