Devan Coetzee

My teaching Philosophy

I am a passionate teacher and committed to instilling lifelong education in my students.

I possess a high level of professionalism and consideration of the well-being of children.

I respect all members of a school community, irrespective of position, gender, age and ethnic background.

My attitude towards my working life encompasses positive and solution-focused ideals.

I embrace an inquiry based learning approach whereby I use Socratic questioning to peak the interests of my students, encouraging them to come up with their own hypotheses. Through this approach, students exercise critical thinking, connecting to past knowledge with the aim of building new understanding and reflecting on their metacognition.

I often combine this method with problem based learning, focusing more on how to apply knowledge and understanding, as opposed to memorizing facts.

I set high expectations tailored to student ability and insist on hard work and focus on tasks at hand, while at the same time providing an enjoyable learning experience adding to a growth mind-set.

My students enter the classroom with a positive attitude toward learning.

I strive to connect student understanding from a local to a global scale, fostering respect and understanding of differences in appearance, race, gender and religion. I expose my students to a large variety of cultures, landscapes and ways of thinking.

I direct a transparent education system with all stakeholders, students, parents and school management.

Assessment is important to me as a teacher, helping me to measure my own teaching efficacy. I often learn from my students.

I follow a holistic approach to child development. Students’ social, physical, emotional and cognitive development needs equal attention to help raise balanced children with 21st Century skills.

I do my best to get to know my students as fast as possible so I can best meet their needs. Students need to Maslow, before they can Bloom.

I aspire to be a teacher who instils curiosity and a love of learning, analysis and critical thinking in all the students I encounter, guiding students towards lifelong learning.

My subject knowledge and interests make my teaching methods adaptable to any student level.

I have an innate ability to get students interested and curious about history, geography, science and philosophy, providing students with necessary skills and understanding to thrive in an ever changing world.

I aim to provide my students with the ability to identify problems and patterns, with the goal to understand them and create innovative solutions with the help of class discussions and interactive lessons.