Pragmatist, Existentialist or Both?

After reading on the different philosophies of education I came to the conclusion that I’m definitely a student- centered teacher. I kind of knew this before I took the little quiz or anything because last year during practicum Beth told me after she saw me teach that I would realize that my teaching is based around my students. I came to the conclusion that my philosophy of education is based around the Pragmatist and the Existentialist, (they tied on the quiz). Whenever I planned my lesson plans in Practicum or in Content Lit, a lot of my activities dealt with the students working together in groups, and not a whole lot of the class, if any, dealt with lecturing. I want my students to be able to have a notebook that isn’t filled with my thoughts or information that I feed to them. I want their notebook to be filled with things they have discovered, pictures of things they have worked with, formulas that they have derived themselves with maybe a little bit of my help on the side. I want to be a guide to my students, not a talking website. I want my students to learn through experiments, outdoor activities. I want my classroom to be outside on the soccer field, or in the computer center, or on a gym court or maybe out in the woods behind the school. I want my students to turn into detectives, and explorers when they walk in to my classroom. That would be the reason I am on the pragmatist side of educational philosophy. The existentialist in me comes out because this is how I learned. As a teacher I love having the students work in groups but as a student I wanted to do stuff on my own. When it came to projects and we had the choice of a partner or doing it on your own, I always liked to do it by myself. I liked making my own choices and doing things on my own. It could be the baby of the family in me, because I have always been independent. I also felt like my relationships with my teachers were a bit more personal because I didn’t mind going to see them on my own. I believe that as a teacher it will be good that I am so closely related to both of these philosophies, because I think they are both have very important qualities that will help run a fun, creative classroom.