Last Class

On November 25th, 2008 it was our last class with Mr. Litman... so everyone had to present their personal presentations, including myself, because there was not enough time to do it in another day.

Some of the topics were: Teen pregnancy, work experience abroad, silent way (a method to teach phonetics in an English class), among others.

What I like the most about the class was that all of the topics were very interesting and helpful for our teaching life.

I have to say that I like having classes with Mr. Litman, because it was a good chance for us to express ourselves in different situations and a good way to practise English.

Femicide... a horrible reality!

Katherinne Gonzalez choose the Femicide is not fashionable as her personal presentation topic. What fashionable has to do with femicide? Well... let's see.

The brand Fess, a very well know jeans brand in Chile, recently launched a advertisement campaing promiting its products, but this campaing had direct relationship with Femicide. The posters showed women being hit by men, telling men using those jeans they can feel stronger.

What kind of advertisment is that? Probably the creators never thought those images would cause problems, but we are all aware that femicides is a very known topic nowaday and hard to deal with yet in this society. Every single day, tons of women are being murdered or attacked by their husbands or boyfriends...

Our duty is not to promote any kind of thing that support femicide!! women die every single day due to the irrationality and insane of some people who can not appreciate life how they should.

Stress... a hard issue to deal with

Stress is a used concept nowadays... why? because the end of the year is coming and everyone seems to have tons of things to do every day.

Nicole Mundaca presented this topic to the class and she talked about how can we cope with stress inside a classroom.

Not only the teacher gets stressful at this time of the year but also students, so we must be able to be patient and aware that this is something that happens to everyone. The classroom should have a nice and pleasant enviroment, no screamings... but I guess that is impossible!!

We and everyone should consider the following: not to perfomed multiple tasks at the same time, take a break whenever you feel exhausted, drink plenty of liquids in order to keep yourself hydrated, do not lock yourself into what you are doing... make some time to have fun and share with your friends.

These tips will help you to cope with stress and enjoy life a little bit more!

ITs

ITs or mostly known as Information Technologies, was the topic presented by Daniela Bilbao. She attented to a seminary about ITs at the Universidad Finnis Terrae. There different expositors talked about how these technologies have changed the world since their first release to the public eye.

This topic is very familiar to me due to my thesis topic is the ITs and wheather they can improve or nor the acknowledgment of reading comprehension and listening English skills.

What Daniela showed is simply the truth... ITs have changed our way of thinking and perfoming our tasks, the way we learn and the way we live is directly affected by these new technologies. These one are the Internet, Television, Radio, Softwares, Movies, DVDs, etc., everything that transmitt information as fast as possible.

We must be aware that ITs will keep changing our society and we need to learn to live with them, because in the future, there might be machines perfoming our jobs!

Personal Presentations... Drugs!

Diego Escudero, my classmate, today presented the topic of Drugs as part of the personal presentations for Mr. Litman's class.

He talked about the effect drugs have between our brain and body. It seems incredible but when someone gets addicted to drugs, wheather is marihuana, cocaine or extasis, the way they behave changes one hundred percent.

People who takes drugs start working less, they become self dependent of drugs and their start imagining things that are not real. Of course, school or college perfomance gets low and the capacity of thinking seems to be a hard thing to do.

Drugs not only affect the personal life of who is taking them, but also affect families and friends. What it is important is to be always aware if our children or friends are acting different... because they might be into something such as drugs.

In Chile, people from 14 years old or less take drugs and they eventually end up stealing or in jail, due to that drugs make them to things they never thought they could have done.

Suicide... what happens with teenagers?

Teens seem to be changing from generation. Nowadays teens are very different from what past generatiins were. Their interests and likes are very different, they tend to be more independent and capable of doing anything by their own.

If they are who they are is all thanks to society. These teenagers, this generation, were raised under different rules and life style, that makes them feel more free in front of life.

But not everything is happiness and rainbows... suicide is still a tabu topic, specially when it is related to teenagers. Why do teenagers suicide?.... most of them is because they have personal issues that lead them to not want to live anymore, but I guess that happens with everyone who does not want to be here!.

Peer presure, bullying, domestic violence, money problems, etc., are some of the most common factors that affect a teenager. Being in top of them does not work either....

What do we have to do? As future parents and teachers, we have to make sure our children feel safe, comfortable whenever they are, we have to let them know everything is possible and when they feel something can not be fixed, they must talk to someone who can help them... they should not be left alone specially at the teenage stage of their lives, where they are constantly changing (physical and emotionally).

Bullying at teachers??

As everything evolves in life, bullying is not only related to students but also to teachers. What? Yes, to teachers... now teachers are victim of bullying by their students.

How can they manage to this? It is very simple, thanks to the technology (cellphones, video camaras, digital camaras, etc) student can record the agression to the teacher and uploading it to the Internet. That is one way. Another one can be hitting to the teacher, yelling at him or her and making his or her life impossible inside a classroom.

How can we stop this? Probaly teaching our children that the teacher and their classmates are human beigns just like them and that we all deserve to be respected by some else. Let them know that with violence they can not accomplish anything, that is bad to be annoying other people, etc. Probably these are very utopic solutions, but I truly believe that we are what we are due to how we were raised, everything we are is buildt with our life experiences and parenthood.

What are these concepts about?

As a task, Mr. Litman asked us to investigate what the following concepts mean.

Learning to Learn: For some people, this concept seem to be the most effective methodology for students to learn something new. Learning to learn is all about a process who settles into certain step.
As teachers, we must be able to teach our students how to learn in order for them to be succesful at life. We have to make sure, they learn everything step by step and that the most effective learning is through knowing.

Agression at school: This concept seems to be very popular nowadays at many schools. Violence inside a classroom or in the school itself is increasing every single day. Agression at school can be presented in different ways: verbal agression and physycal agression. Some of the most known agressions these days is the bullying, probably a custom brought by the television and movies, who are constantly showing how the American Students are used to bully another student.

What people who practise any type of agression do not know is the social and psichological consequences this brings to the victim. Not only teachers and school must make sure students learn about this type of agression and promote them not to perform them, but it is a family matter as well.

My debate... Preuniversitarios!

I had to admitt it was not easy to choose a topic for the debate, but we did it anyway.

My groups was Marlene, Claudio and myself and we decided to talk about Preuniversitarios in Chile, and how effective these institutions are.

On the presentations we talked about what Preuniversitarios are and how important they are for students. As we all know, these private institutions help secondary students to improve their skills at the moment to give the PSU test who select students to sign up into a University in Chile. Most of them have intensive courses that lasts all year and reinforce what students have learned at highschool.

For some people it is very important to get into a public and prestigious University, due to different facts, and those people study very hard and choose to complement their highschool learnings with a Preuniversitario.

The debate turned out very well, we divided our class into a for and against group and my classmates discussed about if the Preuniversitarios were effective or not.

I honestly think that these institutions can help someone who really needs it, but if you are not interested in getting into a public University, sometimes they are not so necessarry.

Keirsey Temperament Report

I took the temperament test Mr. Litman told us, who can define how our temperament is. According to the results, I turned out to be a Guardian!.

I must say I agree with the results, the reports says a guardian is someone who is very down to earth, that enjoys working on a team and someone who is very passionate about what he or she does. It is just like me!.

This is an extract from the report that I liked very much, because it describes who I am: " Guardians can have a lot of fun with their friends, but they are quite serious about their duties and responsibilities. Guardians take pride in being dependable and trustworthy; if there's a job to be done, they can be counted on to put their shoulder to the wheel. Guardians also believe in law and order, and sometimes worry that respect for authority, even a fundamental sense of right and wrong, is being lost. Perhaps this is why Guardians honor customs and traditions so strongly -- they are familiar patterns that help bring stability to our modern, fast-paced world.

Practical and down-to-earth, Guardians believe in following the rules and cooperating with others. They are not very comfortable winging it or blazing new trails; working steadily within the system is the Guardian way, for in the long run loyalty, discipline, and teamwork get the job done right. Guardians are meticulous about schedules and have a sharp eye for proper procedures. They are cautious about change, even though they know that change can be healthy for an institution. Better to go slowly, they say, and look before you leap." (1)


Definetely, this is me... I have no more words to describe it.

(1)http://www.keirsey.com/sorter/user.aspx

Continuing with the debates... Cuban Education

Cuban Education was presented by Katherinne Gonzalez, Pedro Perez and Fabian Verasay. It was a very interesting topic, because as teachers, we must be aware of what is happening in other countries regarding education or at least have a little knowledge about other realities.

I had never heard about the educational system in Cuba, so it was very nice to hear and learn something new.

The presentation was good, but I think there was too many information on the power point slides and sometimes that makes the audience to feel overwhelmed and bored about the quantity of information.

But in general terms, I think it is always good to learn something new, and as I said before, it is our duty to know that chilean education is not all, that there are other children in the world that are beign educated in very different ways and learning from them can help us to improve our teaching methodologies.

A funny web page!

Today we went to the computers lab and Mr. Litman showed as a very funny web page (http://www.wordle.net) where you can write something and the page gives you what you wrote back in a different and amuzing way.

You can customize the text by changing the layout, the fonts, the colours, etc... and leave it in the most attractive way. The text becomes into a picture with the words written in the inside of the pic.

Here is an example of what I wrote... my text is part of a Robbie William's song called "No Regrets"

British Educational System... debates part II

My classmates, Evelyn, María Teresa and Rodrigo, continued presenting the debates. Their topic was the British Educational System, something that was new, at least for me... because I had no idea of what this system was about.

The classmates gave a little review about the topic, exposing the characteristics and how it works in England. What it caught my atenttion the most, was the fact that the public schools in Britain were actually considered as private ones. It was weird to hear it backwards because we tend to relate the concept of public with the goverments and politics.

They also talked about the boarding schools, which are very common in England and students seem to be very fond of them. This type of school led to the debate topic in the class. We had to decide if signing up children in these schools was a good choice, due to the fact that children most of the time grow alone and away from their families.

I was part of the against group but we could never decided our answer to the topic, because in my opinion these types of schools have more advantages than disavantages. Why? because children start developing their independence since they are little kids and start growing up with strong values and principles given at school... the fact they do not live at their homes, it does not mean they are going to turn out different, but I think they gain more confidence beign out there by themselves. Their families are always going to be there, but it is very important to grow up in confidence and beign able to solve our personal issues by ourselves.

Apart from the debate, I think the topic was very interesting... all of my classmates had the chance to talk and express their opinions. The groups was very clear in their ideas.

A jar of water...

When Maria Musica threw a jar of water to the new Minister of Education, last July, everyone thought and including myself, what a lack of respect!! But after that, I started thinking after all what had happened with the secondary students and their protests in order to have a better education, maybe Monica Jimenez (the Minister of Education) deserved something like that.

Probably it was not the best way to proove to the Minister that what was happening at the moment was very serious, but I guess she represented every single secondary student that was protesting every day and was not beign heard.

I have always believed if someone wants to be in a public position, such as beign a Minister or any other Politician, he or she must be someone who can connect with people, someone who can at least be friendly or an empathic person, that can really understant what the rest of the normal and commmon people are going through in order to help them. But, in my opinion, this new Minister of Education did not take very seriously the big issue of Education, she took it very lighty and tried no to give it so many importance to the subject, when in fact, what the students were prostesting for was something very real.

That is why I agree with what Maria Musica did, because she got tired that no one was hearing what they have to say and that they were not getting any support from anyone and no solution at all.

First Debate (July 8th)

Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to see the first debate in classes due that I had a job interview and I had to leave early.

But I stayed most of the class and I remember Mr. Litman made us translate different headlines from newspapers into English. I think this is a very good exercise because here is when we realize that we cannot translate literally one word, sometimes in English, we can use more than one word to say the same and even we can make it longer without changing the sense of the sentence at all.

It was a funny exercise because it made us think harder, putting into practise all our knowledge of grammar we've learned so far.

The Debate Class (June 24th)

We're supossed to learn how to make a debate.... interesting! especially if it's in English because we're forced to prepare ourselves to perform well, more than if if were doing in it in Spanish, because it's out first language, and therefore, we can express more widely, but the dificulty is in the L2 when we have to be careful about the words we're going to use and the way we're going to express ourselves.

I think this new topic in classes will be very very, as I said, interesting because we will have the chance to discuss important issues of the world and Chile and to know what our other classmates think about it, which it's always nice to know the opinion of other people.

My presentation!!! (May 13th)

Today it was my turn to present "Troubled Teenagers at School" along with Marlene Toro and Maria Rios, my friends.

I truly believed we did a good presentation with the concise information about the topic, our pronunciation was clear and the language we used, was very easy to understand... which I think my classmates did.

What I didn't like was the fact we wanted to show the class a video about troubled teens but something happen with the computer that didn't allow us to do it... It was a shame because it was a pretty good video that showed how "normal" these teenagers are.

Anyway, we made some mistakes in the worksheet we gave out classmates, but this can happen right? not everyone is perfect, and we're learning... that's why we're at school for LOL.

After the presentations we went to the English Laboratory to keep updated with what it's happening in the world. This, I think, it's very useful because we live inside a society and this society is part of a big community call world, were every single thing that affects the world will eventually ended up affecting us... as a country and as part of this chilean society.

I know sometimes can be not some fun to watch news or read the newspapers, we let's face it... an uninformed person is someone that doesn't even know where he or she is and that doesn't have an opinion about anything, but we, as future teacher, must be informed about the world and about education (that changes constantly) and to have an opinion... a good one, were we can show off that we know and that we care about what other's think and about what it's happening outside this far away country called Chile.

Leadership (May 6th)

What can I say about this presentation? Well, I liked it very much. Especially the fact that Fernanda knew the information, she didn't look nervous at all and she was able to control the class to make it pay attention to their presentation.

About Fernanda's partners, Felipe and Rodrigo, they did well too but you could see that they were nervous (which is normal) but sometimes you have to learn how to control yourself in front of an audience, even when we have done so many presentations along the four years of college. But hey, I've got nervous too in the easiest presentations ever, so I get them very well.

Leadership... not everyone has the capacity of being a leader. Some people are born with that, with the talent of managing a group of people and to stand out as someone who can be in charge of doing something and do it well.

Of course they are different types of leaders, I'm not going to discuss that because we all know it, but what I do want to say it's that a good teacher is someone who is a leader. This because a teacher must be able to manage a bunch of kids, that sometimes can be very annoying LOL, and he or she has to be role model for them, someone they can look up, etc. A teacher, a good one even the best one, it will always be a leader no matter what.

Classroom Managment (April 22nd)

After 4 months of being away from Chile, this was the first class of the year and the first time I met Mr. Litman. It was a placer to meet you! as you told me when you were doing the roll call.

My classmates had to make a presentation about different topics, and today it was Classroom Managment. I must say I liked the presentation a lot because the information was appropiated, very clear and easy to understand. Besides my classmates were informed about the topic and they knew how to manage, not only the information, but also the class.

We were also discussing about some gramatical issues, how sometimes we confused words that are written very similar but that they mean something different. And I think this kind of discussions are very important because, for us students of English and not native speakers, it's so easy to get confused at the moment of writing when we use these similar words; not sometimes when we're speaking because if the pronunciation is the same it will only depend on the context and we won't get confused, but when we have to write something it's vital to know the difference in spelling and in meaning, in orden not to confuse ourserlves and the reader of our paper.

What students think...

Since 2006 secondary high school students have shown off that they can express themselven into what Chilean education implies. They let us know they are not just passive people who go to classes and do what the teacher says in order to pass the course, but they are active students who are involved in what it is happening with their education system, wishing and hoping to make it better for the next generations.


After the Revolución Pinguina, students movement seemed to have calmed down and that they had gone back to their classrooms as they used to. But it didn't happen such a long time untill they were back in action again.

The agreement on 2006 was that there was going to be a special comision of education that will improve the educational system in Chile and they were going to removed the LOCE due to different reasons students did not agree with. So they decided to create the LGE, a new educational system that will be better than the LOCE and where all the demans students asked for, were going to be included. But this didn't happen.

The students movement came back this year arguing their demands were not in the LGE and that this new law was just another political and economical issue and that it was focused on improving the education. Anyway, students protested again on the streets fighting for what they think it's right and just asking for what it's fair for every single student in this country.

What they asked is simple... they're only asking for a better quality of education, an equal education to every student without making any distiction between social classes or economic levels. They want to be better students, they want to have better teachers, they're just asking for what's fair.

It's important for us, as future teachers, to support them and let them know that they can be heard all the time, that their opinions are important even if the think they can promote and create a better future...

I must say what this new generation of students is doing is very admirable, because they have been strong enough to make themselves heard, they have closed their schools and they have recieved the support from their teachers and from other people who have nothing to do with the educational system. They have been brave along the way... they feel free to say what they think, which I think is awesome... this is what democracy is about, expressing ourselves without being scared.

Besides, let's face it.... these kids are the future of Chile, these people are going to be the next generation of teachers, doctors, etc., some of them are going to rule this country one day and if they are interested in make in it the best place to live, we should give them our support and congratulate them for the braveness old generations didn't have.

Presentations....

Being a techer implies different aspects. It is not only about teaching an specific subject, but also about understanding your students and the society they live in.

Nowaday bullying has become a very common problem among different schools. Sometimes these type of actions cause fatal consequences and we, as future teachers, must have at least some conscious about what it's happening with our students and how do they feel.

No one is an expert in dealing with bullying, of course there are specialits that have more knowledge about the topic, but we must try to help too. This is not only the parents' resposability... it's also ours, because we are the one that are helping our students to become somene in the future, we are their role models for life.

Troubled teenagers sometimes are related with bullying but not in all cases. Most of troubled adolescents have deal with drug problems, violence, sexual abuse, alcohol dependency, etc., among other problems, that lead them to have disciplinary problems at school. That's why it's very important that every school have a phsycologist or someone that teenagers can come to everytime they need it, if they want to talk about something that is happening in their lives or to help those kids that are going through tough moments.

But of course our mission as teachers is not only to help our students in every situation apart from teaching our subject, but also we must have some classroom managment too. This means how to have "control" of the class, to know how to use your voice, the classroom space, to know how to arrange the sittings in order to make a productive lessons, etc. We musyt have control of our classroom because otherwise, we are not going to produce anything and students are not going to respect us at all.

Teachers are part of every student's life. Some of them are more important than others, some mark a difference in students' lives and some are not even remembered by them... but the most important thing is to remember that we are here to help them become better person in the future more than acquiring more knowledge into their minds.