When thinking about my personal teaching philosophy, it is my belief that we as teachers need to first focus on the child’s needs and interests.  Then, we can worry about the specific subject we want to teach.  This is true of the progressivism philosophy of teaching.  In order to get students to learn and to really be active in their learning one needs to relate what he/she is teaching to some of his/her experiences.  If the child is not able to tie what you are trying to teach him with something in which he is familiar, then he is probably not actually learning anything, but rather memorizing whatever is needed just to get by.  Another idea of a philosophy that goes along with my beliefs is the existentialism philosophy.  This is basically just the idea of letting students make their own choices in certain situations rather than always being right because of being told what to do.  I do understand the idea of structure in the classroom and I do not suggest totally giving that up; however, everyone has to make their own choices in life at some point so why not try it out some in the classroom?
     There is one teacher in my life, Tammy Gilmore, who never even knew she made an impact on me in any way, but she did with her personal style of teaching.  I had her as a teacher both my junior and senior year of high school for Fashion Merchandising and Hospitality and Tourism.  I can remember how she always found a way to relate what we discussed in class to our everyday lives, which created the desire in me to want to learn more, simply because I had something to relate to.
     I want to try to implement some of her ideas in my own classroom when I begin teaching.  I want the students to feel like they are learning things in my classroom that they can relate to their own lives today. I also do not want to act like a dictator in the classroom making the students feel like they have no say-so in what goes on in the classroom.  I want them to feel like they are allowed to make some of the choices so we are all equal.