Final Blog Entry

After Rodrigo's presentation, professor Litman told us to choose one relevant topic related to education. In view of the fact this last Friday and Saturday Mary Spratt gave a free seminar in our University; "Methodology is Central", I decided to focus on the most important aspects of the seminar.

Mary Spratt has taught EFL in Cyprus, Algeria, Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Hong Kong. She also has extensive experience in teacher training, teacher development and assessment. She worked at the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate for 5 years on the production of exams, including IELTS and the revision of FCE. She has written EFL course books and supplementary materials and is currently working freelance as an ELT writer and consultant. Mary Spratt is a co-author of a course published by Cambridge University Press, "The TKT Course" which is a teacher trainning course for teachers and and trainee teachers preparing for the Cambridge ESOL "Teaching Knowledge Test",

This test is about teaching English to speakers of other languages, it aims to increase teacher's confidence and enhace job prospects by focusing on the core teaching knowledge needed by teachers of primary, secondary or adult learnes, anywhere in the world.

The main aspects that TKT seeks to evaluate and aid are:
different methodologies for teaching
the 'language of teaching'
the ways in which resources can be used
the key aspects of lesson planning
classroom management methods for different needs.

I decided to choose this topic because taking the TKT test would help future teachers in order to obtain better work opportunities. On the other hand, getting extra knowledge about student's motivation and the diverse methodologies we are able to employ in the classroom, are very important to improve our teaching performance. And finally Mary is an inspiration for many English teachers by the view point of her vast experience and the commitment she has shown trhough her work.

During the second day of the the seminar Mary Spratt made us the following question:

What does a teacher need to know to be a good teacher?

Many answers were given but at the end we got to the conclusion that being a good teacher is to combine the received knowledge such as the general principles of teaching and learning and the mamagement of resources and learning, as well as the understanding of the facts and concepts of a subject disicipline (phonology, lexis, grammar, discourse) and how we represent the subject matter to make it more comprehensible to students (language learning strategies and language teaching strategies) with the previous experimential knowledge, it means what we have learnt from doing. We evaluate both through practice, but at the same time we need to reflect on what we have done in the classroom. Being aware about the knowledge we have, about our experience and how we reflect on our practice will make us professional competent.

As a conclusion I can say that methodology is an essential part of teaching and teaching knowledge, in addition is the embodiment of collective experience and research findings. On the other hand, we can only evaluate it in context and taking into account the teacher's responsivenss to an awareness of students and their needs.

Tuesday, November 11th

This presentation was carried out by Rodrigo Ortiz.

He chose to talk about course books; its advantages and disadvantages. Rodrigo prepared a good presentation and demanded a lot of classmates' participation. Good job.

In my opinion I think course books are useful as a tool or as a complement because sometimes the course book that can be chosen do not really represents the reality of students and some teachers may use it as a Bible, which is not good. On the other hand, course books are good to provide structure and to transmit values, children are very keen on working with course books, is something that makes them enthusiastic about, course books also can transmit responsibility.

Tuesday, November 4th.

Before the presentation professor Litman once again pointed out which are the ingredients of a presentation, which are:

-fluent speech.

-interesting, relevant and coherent topic.

-good organization; beginning, development, close.

-outstanding English.

-interaction.

-communicative skills.

-assertiveness

-current topic.

Later my friend Nicole started her presentation about

"Dealing with the end's of the year stress"

Nicole focused on explaining how to cope with tearcher's and student's stress.

At the end she made the following question: In what way does the end of the year's stress affect your classroom and how can you cope with it?

I consider this was a very good question to make because almost everyone in this class is finishing his/her teaching practice and stress is an important factor to take into consideration when the end of the academic year is arriving. In my situation, students are pretty tired and do not want to work in any subject. They look unmotivated and getting their attention is really hard. What I do is to prepare more active lessons, which require more group participation and I make more fun games. At the moment is working.

Nicole made a good presentation, she was nervous but I know she devoted many hours to prepare it. She manage the topic and the whole class was engaged.

The second presentation of the day was carried out by Katherine. She introduced her topic with the following statement "femicide is not fashionable" which it was a very good starting. Katherine talked about how Fes advertisement is encouraging femicides through a very shocking campaing.

In terms of her presentation, she did a very good job. Her presentation had clear organization stages and she managed the topic very well.

As a conclusion I consider that this kind of ads are giving a contradicting message; for some people it can be a way to create an awareness but for some other the massage can be wrong delayed, becuase someone may understand that you may be killing, hitting or commiting femicide against your partner you still will look fashionable. Or your partner is hitting you but hey, you still look fashionable.

Tuesday, October 14th.

Professor Litman suggested to do research about two topics, which were:

-Educacion2020:

As I mentioned in some past entry, educacion2020 is a national movement which seeks to recruit people from any occupation in order to commit an educational shift. The main objective is to increase in a 20% the poorest student's quality of education.

To achieve this purpose educacion2020 drives the following proposals:

-more and better kinder gardens.

-meaningful change for the teaching statute.

-unequivocal and transparent teaching evaluation.

-advanced and decent early retirement for many teachers.

-high quality tranining and certification for all teachers that have potential.

-inmediate selection process for a post held for life headmasters from state schools who still are in the educational system.

-pedagogic carrers closing which give academic qualifications to non-qualified people.

-intensive usage of educational televison and new technologies in the classroom.

-number of students reduction where is necessary.

-bilingual teachers immigration.

-schoolarships and high remuneration.

-servicio-país in loss-making schools.

The second topic to research about was:

Estatuto Docente: Una treagedia peor que el transantiago.

This is the name of an article pusblished on Saturday, August 23rd in Revista Qué Pasa. The writer is Mario Waissbluth, who is professor at Universidad de Chile. He also has done many revisions about education investigations before publishing this analysis.

Our reality is harsh- my reality- I decided to study in a private University which at that moment demanded no more than 550 points, avarage that decreased throughout years. On the other hand, my career is not accredited, is under accreditation process.

I am not criticizing the University I chose to study in. In fact, it was my decision but as a future English teacher I may not have all competences, knowledge and skills that are needed to take part in the all-embracing learning process of a child, however acquiring those skills, competences and subject matter knowledge depend mainly on me, on the amount of time and effort that I devote to improve and to beat my own lack of substantial knowledge. In addition, this is the reason why I decided to prepare a group debate about the teaching trainning about our country and how different is from best rating ones.

I consider that what Waissbluth and educacion2020 set out is clearly hard to achieve but at the same time, is the only solution for the education that our children are getting and students in a teaching formation process are also obtaining.

As a result, and as Waissbluth mentions, the teaching statute must be modified in order to overcome the inequalities of our educational system.

If you are interested on reading the complete article go to the following link:

http://www.mariowaissbluth.com/secciones/articulos/pdf/estatuto_docente.pdf

And if you want to make a deep analysis of teaching statute you can visit:

http://subvenciones.mineduc.cl/seccion/documento/2D2002040416132811094.pdf

Tuesday, October 7th.

During the same class Daniela Bilbao also carried out her individual presentation. She chose Smartboards as her topic.

Daniela talked about the advantages and disadvantages of using a smart board, as well as the fact that in Chile just a few schools are implementing it. Daniela mentioned that in one school in Santiago they had incorporated smarts board for every lesson. At the beginning teachers only prepared power point presentations instead of employing the whole tools that smart boards have, but after trainning teachers were able to manage smart boars very well.

Daniela's presentation was very precise and interesting. Eventhough she got nervous at the beginning she knew the topic very well and made a good presentation.

I have to mention that smart boards are really helpful to the learning process of a child. Some months ago I was watching a news report about smart boards in an specific school in Santiago. The fact that caught my attention was that this school were using smart boards during English lessons; students could get a more interactive learning, which means, doing puzzles, practicing phonetics, and plenty of interactive games.

Tuesday, October 7th

It was my turn to present. I chose gender bias at schools as way to introduce an inclusive language in our classrooms because this specific gender association much of the times may be unconscious.

“Gender bias is difficult to detect because it affects girls and boys in different ways. In school, it is the boys who may be expected to “act out” and rebel at school work, while the girls are expected to be docile, conforming and willing to work hard" (Sadker 1994)

Susan Hoy Crawford propose to introduce an inclusive vocabulary. Some specific changes that can be made in our English classroom can be replace by some words and job titles like:

mankind; humanity, humankind, human civilization.
man-made: synthetic, manufactured, artificial,imitation.

businessman: executive, wholesaler, business person.
cameraman: camera operator, technician
congressman: member of Congress, representative.
craftsman: carpenter, artisan, skilled craftworker
landlord: land owner, property manager.

Eventhough I got nervous at the beginning I consider that I made a good presentation. It may seem that this topic is not too relevant or current but the society we live in is highly characterizided by man dominance since job positions and payment, health fiance and recently homicides commited towards girlfrieds and wives are part of our society. A way to introduce a more equal community it can be by simply taking the lead in a non-biased language.

Individual Presentations

DIEGO'S PRESENTATION

Diego's presentation was the first, my friend decided to present us how to talk about alcohol and drugs with students. As a teacher is very difficult to introduce the topic to students and for the same reason is very important to know how to react and what to do.

Diego also gave us a practical handout which sums up how to talk about drugs and alcohol, from which I highlight the following:
-Talking with teens about drugs and alcohol abuse may reduce their enthusiasm on trying them at young age. If teens and children realize about the side effects of mixing alcohol with drugs and the specific effect each drug that could be consumed by friends may cause them. Communication is the main key to understand children's decisions and how to act properly to help them if they are consuming too much alcohol or if they are doing drugs.

Diego's presentation was brief but very clear, he gave us very important tips.

At the end of his presentation he showed us a very impressive video about drug consumig. The video was an advertisement to prevent young people. I consider the video was excellent.

EDUARDO'S PRESENTATION

The second individual presentation was in charge of Eduardo. He chose "suicide and depression in teenagers". Eduardo focused on how important is to identify the symptoms that may cause depression and commiting suicide. I consider that my friend made a very good presentation and I remembered about a teen who commited suicide some years ago in the north part of our country because she was victim of bullying at her school. I consider it was regrettable and teachers have to be commited in order to identify these symptoms and then help teens and children.

Monday, September 29th

RECUPERATIVE CLASS

During this class each of us shared our future plans. Eventhough just a few of us attended the class, its advantage was the environment given to share our thoughts and intentions, its drawback was that not every classmate were there to talk about the topic.

It was surprising the different expactations that my classmates have; some of them would like to work in cruise which might be very demanding as well as exciting, Claudio also said that he is thinking on studying abroad to pursue a postdegree, specifically in Australia, expectation that I also share. I have to mention that on Wednesday the 2nd, a group of classmates and I went to Expo Australia carried out in Sheraton Hotel. It was really crowded but we could talk with some representatives of many Australian Universities, they gave us useful information about postdegrees we are interested in.

Anothe topic that Mr. Litman mention was educacion2020, which is a movement created to make an educational revolution, in other terms, the aim of educacion2020 is to commit the Chilean society to increase the poorer student's education. Every person that wants to cooperate with this cause only has to register in its webpage: http://www.educacion2020.cl/

PROJECT ZERO:

During Tuesday, September 22nd. Daniela, Katherine and Nadia prepared a debate about Project Zero. They prepared the given information in advance. Although, no clear definition was given to the rest of the class. One of the girls pointed out that it was really hard to find information; every publication was made under Harvard's researchers and there is not any document to download (fact I realized myself now that I investigated about it)

"Project Zero's mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels".

Project Zero encourages arts activities within schools, it does not only promote the implementation od arts educations in formal and non-formal settings, but also improves the quality of edcuation, appreciating the role of arts and creativity in school environment as a tool for promoting ethical values. Additionally and accordingly to classroom observations, interviews and analysis of materials, the participants of this programme showed higher levess of class engagement, such as the level of attentiveness, participation and student interaction.

helpful link: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/

Tuesday, September 9th class

PREU- UNIVERSITARIOS IN CHILE:

This debate was presented by Claudio, Paula and Marlene. They made a good factual presentation. Eventhough, the made many basic mistakes in terms of organization and language usage. Overall they prepared a good debate; we were really into the topic and we supported it or went against it.

I believe Pre-Universitarios are a good option to reinforce the contents that will be evaluated in PSU although, attending a Pre-Universitario will not guarantee a succesful performance besides the cost of it is another important issue when deciding if it is a good decision attending one. I also consider that Pre-Universitarios are not the only way to reinforce contents, these days students that get access to internet can take online facsimiles and several newspapers freely provide them too. I also consider that Public, subsidized and private schools should provide free pre-universitary trainning programmes to its students.

_____________________________________________________________

During the September 2nd class; Diego, Felipe and I carried out our debate. The topic had the following introductory question: Can anyone be a teacher? We started comparing two different realities where teachers are highly rewarded in terms of prestige and income. In contrast, Chile only have "Red Maestros de Maestros" to support teacher trainning and in Subsector Inglés they do not present any proposal to aid and guide English begginer teachers.

In terms of self-appraisal I consider that all mistakes made on the power point were my risponsibility because I prepared it, it was my fault also the information given, which was very long. I made the research about Finland and South Korea as well as Red Maestros de Maestros. Overall, we made a good debate, our classmates were able to reflect on the topic.

August 26th class

During this class Mr. Litman told us to take this test, he said it would be useful to identify our characteristics in classroom context.

I was really surprised when I saw my result but while reading I realized how accurately described some of my qualities. Regardless I would like to know which artisan I am.

Artisans are described as optimistc, realistic and focused on the here and now, but related to teaching I consider that an artisan is able to combine diverse methodologies and approaches in order to fullfil his/her students needs and learning styles. An artisan can also be an amusing teacher, someone students like to play and laugh with but even if I like to make my students laugh I also encourage them to learn and to perform any given task.

Tuesday, August 19th class

CURFEW FOR STUDENTS.

If you do not know what a curfew means, the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary provides the following definitions:

1.- A law which says that people must not go outside after a particular time at night until the morning; the time after which nobody must go outside.

2.- A time when children must be home in the evening.

This debate was in charge of Marlene R, Clara and Claudia C.

They gave interesting information as well as important facts about why adolescent curfews are gaining popularity among parents. Overall, they made a reasonable presentation.

In Chile curfews for teenagers are not legally aproved or are not part of the complete family routine. In some cities like Baltimore teen curfews are typical; kids under 17 must be off the streets after midnight on Friday and Saturday and during week nights they have to be indoors by 11 pm. Many parents took this decision to protect their children from drug-related fights. In addition, there was a curfew study in the United States Mayors.org done in 347 communities with populations of at least 30,000 people in 1997. The 80% of the communities imposed a nighttime curfew on teenagers, and 26% also implemented a daytime curfew. These curfews were applied to decrease crime, reduce juvenile victimization, increase parental involvement, and to allow police officers the ability to stop people involved in suspicious activities.

I consider the topic is very engaging because it made think about if it is beneficial for teens or not. First of all I believe that under some extreme circumstances teen curfews can provide a good method to prevent teens envolvement from drug-related events. It might happen that a teen is not participating in drug dealing or is not doing drugs but sometimes inocent people get hurt on drug-related events. On the other hand, I do not consider that a teenager must be late at night by his/ her self, and when I say late I mean 11 pm or earlier depending on the age. If there is no one who can pick him/her up from a party, mall, sports activity, or any other kind of activity teens like to do during their spare time, they should follow a conscious curfew provided by his/her family, caretaker or school in order to realize that is applied for his/her own safety.

I also consider that it is important to consider a cultural shift; from the family, school through the whole community because community involvement is the key to solve juvenile crime or drug dealing, etc. Curfews can be applied as a tool to fight against these facts that damage our society and younger generations.