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.