Debates

Participating in a debate was something I always wanted to do.Finally I did. This new experience resulted very helpful and interesting to me and all my classmates. We became real researchers, looking for information on the web and different sources.

The first team that debated talked about "professionals teaching in the schools". In my opinion they did a great job. Both, in favor and against team, were well prepared and they used a lot of information about the topic. What I liked was the presentation of images with photographs or graphics and bibliographical sources. Even though I disagree with professional taking teachers place, the team who won was the one in favor of "professional teaching", because they had stronger and feasible arguments. In my opinion the other team was diffidence in terms of what they said at the end of the debate.

The second team, my team, also did a great job. But, as we know there was a confusion with the favor and against topics and both teams talked about voluntary voting. Luckily, some classmates and the professor acted as if they were against "automatic registration" so that way we could continue our debate. I think we did a great search, we had a lot of information and statistics, but what was against us was the fact we never expect having the same position. Personally, I was very nervous. Obviously the team who won was us, in favor of voluntary voting.

I would like to say that this exercise of debating in class is very good to improve our english. Moreover, we had to search in order to enrich and strenght our arguments and counterarguments showing different opinions and points of view.

Social Nets

Nowadays most of people in Chile are lacking of communication and commitment with others. This situation can be easily found inside hospitals, companies, neighborhoods or everywhere a group of people interact. This situation is produced due to the individualism and independence that has been created in society trough time. Moreover we are worried about our own needs, likes, dislikes, what is convenient for us, not even thinking about our workmate or partner needs. The principal factor of this problem is mainly because the poor social integration taught by our family and teachers in the almost first twenty years of our lives.

Teachers play an important role in giving students the right tools not only to become in good professionals but also in socializing and making social world better. This situation can be accomplished by designing lessons which principal objectives should be integration, sympathy, collaborative work, respect, kindness etc. According to the article of Malcolm Gladwell the Designs for Working, having workers relationships integrated and not separated or cut off is the best way to create social networks and establish a nice environment inside an office. Employees moving around, putting their sits in a certain way, organizing social events are situations we can also apply inside a classroom. Thus, every opportunity our students could have to work together would improve their capacity of socialize and enrich their points of view, opinions and they would also learn from others experiences.

Finally, if we want to create a real impact and change among our students it’s necessary to mix them up. For example, if we group 6 students with equal interests, needs, personalities they are not going to have the opportunity to take advantage of their differences, because they are going to be the same, but if we group different children it would be a different story. As Jane Jacobs says in her article “The death and life of great American cities” “When two or more such hostile islands are juxtaposed the result is called “a balanced neighborhood” (5-7)

Classroom Management: difficult but not impossible

Some people ask themselves, how can teachers calm 40 wild souls? Definitely,it's not simple.

Behaving and acting differently is a need inside the classroom, and according to the article, "A Primer on Classroom Discipline: Principles Old and New" by Thomas R. McDaniel, provides eleven techniques in his article which could guide us in how to react to classroom management.

After reading the article, all the techniques are found to be extremely appropiate and useful. Having students' attention to begin our class, good time management, giving clear instructions, being respectful with your students or reinforcing positive students' attitudes or behaviors are very important techniques that every teacher must apply.

However, every technique is useful, the teacher must not be the boss inside the class but share opionions with the students and ask their points of view. Why is the teacher suposed to act like a boss if we are not dealing with employees? It is true teachers need to establish rules and demonstrate they have authority inside the classroom, but using that authority in a bad way could bring them more than a problem. Always has clarifying classroom rules from the beginning been thought to be very helpful to avoid any type of difficulty in future lessons.