A caring teacher touches hearts

I found a video on how a teacher changes his/her students future. I realized that a teacher can change someone's lives to become the opposite to what they are in the past. This video is beautiful, I was touched. ENJOY ! :)
Impact of a Caring Teacher

-Wily

Debate 4!! Round 1*ding! ding!*

The issues of Implementing social cohesion in schools is supposed to fight against extremism but it ended up stigmatizing Asian and Muslim students. According to Preston,  white supremacy or interest of white people came before other like BME people. Schools are powerful tools used to shape up the future country leaders and citizens .

Personally, I have never faced this kind of problem as I do not stay where there are many Caucasian people but from an Asian country. However, I do realise that we look up to the Caucasians in many aspects from lifestyle to technology. I think this might make unaware of our own country's good points but focus on how we can be like the whites.

I do not believe that we should conform to the white people's way of doing things but do things especially regarding racism as my country is a multi-racial country. What I do believe in is that, we should all strive to promote harmony between races.

In real life application, I can safely say that I really have no intention of leaving my country for another  currently and i hope it will be so for the rest of my life.

-Ally-

You can make a change if you think you can!!!!

In response to Debate four about ‘Do schools contribute to social and community cohesion?’, I would say that the answer is yes to community cohesion but it depends on whether schools work towards social cohesion or not.

John Preston mentioned that schools have become the most overburdened institutions of the welfare state because the educators are playing so many roles to educate students even outside of the curriculum. Teachers will have to be responsible for the welfare being of the students as well. I hereby strongly agree to this because teachers are the ones who have more time with students besides family members. During the age of having the ability to learn and understand, the teaching of teachers could strongly impact students’ beliefs. For example, there are many foreign workers working in many countries, if the teachers teach students to be more careful of foreign workers and should stay away from them because they are uneducated, dirty and may create crimes; these students would always have this kind of perception which created community cohesion. Thus, fear, disrespect, anger and other negative emotions would arise from the students if they see a foreign worker. This would even create a stronger community cohesion which is bad for the students and also the foreign workers in that country. Due to this community cohesion, the foreign workers may feel inferior, angry and dissatisfied because they were labelled as bad and problematic people in others’ countries. Who has started to convey these kinds of messages to the public and schools? Could they not be the one who always want to secure the security of the country? These messages are being published in the media about foreign workers fighting with the citizens, foreign snatchers, house broken in by foreigners and etc. Is this how the citizen including the students is to be educated? Could harmony be achieved when there is fear, anger, disrespect of others and disgrace? I would say that there is overgeneralising and bullying of the minority.

In school, we could also see this kind of bullies and overgeneralisation in terms of nationality, race, gender, age and student’s background. There are schools with mixed cultural classroom but only the majority were given equality. Why have these been happening? Shouldn’t there be equality in education? Nietszche’s posits that ‘the ear is an unspoken key to the future of education’ which leads to the questioning of who is listening, to whose policies, and for whose benefit. Most of the cases are to the people behind who has the power and want to control the majority while ignoring the rights of the minority. Namita Chakrabarty stated that happening in schools is however happening to someone through culture. In order to change the above, Royle stated ‘Death, then, is strangely at the heart of life, of writing and of teaching’ (2003, p.51), which means there is a need of death to the historical catalysts and that is the symbol for change. It is to urge for equality and without it the death of social cohesion. I fully agree with the theory of Brecht. I agree with it because it was written as ‘…. Serving the purpose of leading its audience to a juster understanding of the society in which it lived, and so learning in what ways that society was capable of change’ (1972,p.82), whereby I do believed that there is no use to negate the problems from everyone but should let everyone know what the problems are and come out with a set of rules or solutions which is agreed to everyone to achieved harmony, social cohesion. It is due to lack of understanding of others culture, beliefs and their individual perception that one would feel that they are more superior to others. Teachers should highlights more about the strengths of others instead of just letting the students know little of others. Teachers should plan their lesson and manage their classroom well in order to build collaboration, trust and respect among the students. Could teachers do that? Yes, I believe so, as to say again what Royles have mentioned. The teachers should throw away the history of haunting teaching and must be brave, dynamic and pessimistic enough to learn and change to face and solve current classroom problems in order to change the cultural capital of the students. Therefore, the pedagogical used for teaching and the knowledge to be imparted to the students are really important.

- Eagle -

3 Ch33rs 2 T3ach3r$

I came across this link and it had completely made my entire week!


Three Cheers to Teachers

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)


-potatoes-

YOUnique

This is my view about the Debate 4 from the topic “DO SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIAL AND COMMUNITY COHESION?”

From the 8^th edition of Oxford Advanced Dictionary social carries the meaning of connecting activities in which people meet each other for pleasure. On the other hand, cohesion is the act or state of keeping together. Social cohesion means the activities in which people meet each other for pleasure of keeping together. Social cohesion brings positive impact of keeping a group of people close to each other but too close could bring negative impact to multicultural and multiracial world to fall apart. It is believed that schools carry the responsibility to form particular community and social cohesion.

To my understanding from this debate that schools have developed students who criticises their peers and labelling them. “More recently, teachers and pupil in schools have been instructed to monitor (implicitly) Asian and Muslim students (as shown in the ‘Extremism toolkit’ recently issued to schools; DCSF,2008)”. It is unfair to label someone just because of their race or religion although they are somewhat “extremist”. But anger arose from fear. To my point of view, these rules can never abolish social cohesion through labels but it could happen with a helping hand. Help other religions and race to understand and expose them to other people. Show them that the world is harmless and we are all the same.

"Equality cannot be attained without destroying the current regime of cohesion" as stated by John Preston. Therefore, believe that educational equity needs to be allowed all over the world and everybody has to accept other people, respect, understand and contribute in the vast racial or religion community. In this country, the different races respect each other. Celebrate every occasions together, eat together and are neighbours but they do not want to understand each others’ cultural and religion. All the underlying issues are kept shut and sugar coated with goodness. Now that is the problem, not trying to understand each other. That is the reason of anger and debates going on against each other. Now this value of understanding, has to be instilled in school !

The challenges of post-modernisation are indeed, social cohesion. Especially in education, why ? because there is no consideration of various people in the same educational system. In school, we need to break the regimes and mix them up towards different troops of people from different backgrounds. As schools “indeed in classical writings on education, schooling emphasised as being centrally important in promoting the sorts of citizenship which would encourage conservative forms of social integration (Rousseau, 1991).

The government, policy-makers, ministry of education and all else that is involved needs to create a curriculum is schools that caters to every culture & regions needs. Cater to full equity so that everyone can experience the same educational system, can experience multicultural friends and is able to accept and understand each other. We can produce generations with ample amount of knowledge and morality to understand others, not like now where everyone has issues with each other.

Make the world a better place ! And it starts at SCHOOL !

-Wily-

Older siblings have higher IQs..

http://www.livescience.com/1651-study-older-siblings-higher-iqs.html



I read about this from Yahoo and would like to share with all of you here.

- Eagle -

Is there a need to be worried?

This is a response to Debate 4 Do Schools Contribute to Social and Community Cohesion? by John Preston and Namita Chakrabarty.


After reading what Preston and Chakrabarty has to say about social and community cohesion, I learned that social cohesion and community cohesion operate at different levels of aggregation and emerge from quite different historical context (Preston, 2010). And simply getting schools to educate young people towards that is like any other things we have learned so far, not easy. But then again, it is not impossible, especially if some schools are able to produce social cohesion - but these school have comprehensive systems of private schools and have low levels of school segregation.


To start of, I think humans in general have a tendency to have issues with these 5 groups of people. The C.R.A.S.H. The class, the race, the age, the sex/gender, and the handicapped/disabled. My question is quite simple, why? Why must we have issues with these groups of people? My point is, if we have no problems with them, would it be safe to say that social and community cohesion will not be problems that are needed to addressed in the first place? What more, be addressed by schools through education!


I do not have issues with the C.R.A.S.H. but I certainly have my 2 cents toward policy-makers/governments, politicians "the big boys/big brother". BUT! Putting that aside, as an aspiring teacher who wants to make a difference, I understand that I have to fully grasp the concept of the national curriculum, the syllabus, in order to address issues which the government conveniently pushes to schools to address; AND as teachers we are to make sure the school produces students who performs well academically, in their physical education, in their attitudes and encourage them to constantly ask questions to develop the ability to think critically. (Seems like a lot doesn't it?)


I presume once we carefully embed each and every one of the things or concepts we wish to impart to students in the curriculum, be it as our personal objective or the government's objective, it will be all happy-fluffy-bunny living! But, come to think of it, if I have to do ALL of that, it seems to me that in the end of the day, we can only do so much in education and the rest is not in our control.


Like what Preston said, the purposes of schools are responsible for far more than education. Which I personally, feel that it is always about increasing the grades of students year after year. Nothing more, nothing less.


I think that if all schools are able to adopt the system of other successful non-hierarchical organisations (Chakrabarty, 2010), as a result, high functioning schools can foster safe learning environment by developing respect, where it is due, in the positive relationships between staff, between staff and students, and between students. In acknowledging difference and simultaneously fostering equality, these schools develop coherence of policy and workable cohesion in the school community (ibid).


However, personally I think this can only be achieved, or at least in this country, when our government, policy-makers, politicians, and teachers understand the need for this to exist as an integral part of the curriculum and national goal so that we do not have so many issues with almost everyone.


I look forward for a clear indicator/s for my classmates and I to learn how to incorporate ALL things education in our lessons which seems to be allocated insufficient time although on the other hand it is only logical for teachers to educate young people since they spend half or more than half of their days in school.


Currently feeling a little disheartened and lost.
-potatoes-

Time fixed!!

The time has been changed to the local time.

- Eagle -

Get ready and go!!

Responding to our discussion from our tutorial lesson on the October 27^th, I would hereby answer question 2 and 3 as below: -

As from the article, we could clearly see that students from the “video game generation” want to be the leader,  recognised, take control; are perseverance, patience, responsible, motivated, individualised, and independent, risk takers, inquisitive; and like challenges, the feeling of not being discriminated, like various ways of problem solving and can be able to collaborate with others. Therefore, it is vital for teachers to know the characteristics of the students in this “video game generation” before planning their lessons. The conventional ways of teaching methods may not have any impact on these kinds of learners.

I would use methods that will engage all the students to interact in class. The learning theory of “Stimulus-Response’ and the Constructivism theory support that active participants understand better and have longer memory if they have experienced something which is related or relevance to them. I prefer paired learning, group learning, investigations and rote learning. I also would use Eraut (2000) theory to teach. I would not tell them what we are going to learn at the very beginning of the class.

For example, in order to teach singular and plural nouns, firstly, I will give them a few examples. I will show them a few pictures using power points. I choose power point because it can be organised the way I like and I can also attach pictures, audio clips and video clips on it.  This will caters the needs of different kinds of learners as mentioned by Goswami (2004). This will stimulates their sensory perception as stated by (Wood 1998).

Secondly, I will split them into pair or group and give them some time to come out with more singular nouns and write each noun on different pieces of papers. Some students can exchange ideas from what they know and some students could also learn new vocabulary. This activity will also include the characteristics of self-regulation learning. It includes the skill they have - forming information; will – affect towards learning; and self-regulation such as time management and concentration.  I will observe and guide every pair or group of students. This was what Vygotsky and Bruner called scaffold learning. Students learn from peers and teacher.

Thirdly, I will ask them to stick the papers with magnets onto any empty places on the whiteboard but not in order and facing the board. I will then explain to them the rules of changing singular nouns to plural nouns. I will place papers with ‘s’,'es’,'en’,'ee’, ‘ ves’ and ‘ies’ on a few tables at the front. Students will adapt the knowledge by listening and understanding the tasks they are going to do.

Forthly, this is the time for them to compete and use their skill and new information to match the papers from the board with the papers on the table with a time limit. The group which has the most words matched will be the winner and will be rewarded.  I will split them into bigger group with mixed level of competent students. Two members from each group will have to go to the front and the others will assist them in matching the words from the ground. This is where collaboration and challenges take place. The process of stimulus and accommodation will also take place.

Finally, at the end the class, I will assign them homework to look up for more singular and plural nouns for the next lesson. Different games will be given in the next lesson. Spelling will be given in order to let them remember the words.

In the game above, it is clear that learning through school learning will help a student to learn better because of the exposure and collaboration with students with different cultural capital. Learners without concern of any ages could learn and remember better with the early years learning theory which serves their needs. It shows that learning which triggers a few senses would be effective.

-          Eagle -



Game on !

The answers for questions 2 and three in “Evolution in the classroom : What Teachers need to know about the Video Game Generation”.

 If my students are the video game generation, I would use a more computer based learning activities. I will bring them to the computer lab and learn English trough educational computer games. There are many educational computer games in the market nowadays that provides adventurous problem-solving methods. But before that, I will explain to them clearly upon the instruction of the game, the objective of playing the game and the reinforcement they will gain at the end of the class. The games would be played individually and they are in control because from the article, I can conclude that the gamer generations want to be in command of their ‘journey’ and learning is definitely a journey they could be in control of. They too prefer rewards, and at the end of every game, there are rewards so that they not only gain knowledge, but they will also gain self-satisfaction. Other than that, I will provide these students with concrete examples such as videos or experiments so that they can trigger their senses of sight, hearing, and touch to make learning easier for them.

The learning theory of this teaching approaches that I could conclude is the Skinners “Stimulus-Response” theory because it involves triggering senses in learning. Just like the gamers generation, they want to be given a trigger to work on the problem, they will work on how to solve the problem which then lead them to an award after each task. After many trials, they learn unintentionally on the subject or values taught. The knowledge then would not have applied if the students have no skills or intelligence in different scopes. Therefore, Howard Gardner’s “Multiple intelligence” could also be implemented because different people have different abilities and intelligence and the theory shows that everyone has their own intelligence. 


-wily-

Learning through these......

This is a respond to question 2 & 3 of tutorial discussion.

If I know that my students are of the “video game generation”, I would try to motivate them through games. What I mention here is not only about the real video games that we used to play by using computer, games that I actually referring over here is kind like activities. I want them to be more interactive. Besides games, I would like to let them experience it themselves through physical activities. I noticed that some of the student they don't really understand what they doing and what the studying and even why they need to study. However, not every student find reading books is interested, they actually think that what they doing is actually dull. Therefore, I would asking them question or separate them into groups, let them discuss and answer it after my lecture.

Besides,they will actually learn many from group discussion because different people have different view and they came from different background. Then, they will learn how to build up leadership,teamwork and also how to communicate with others. According to the article “Gamers are always competing.Competition is the motivating factor.Competition does not eclipse collaboration.” thus I will put them into groups and let them to challenge with their friends and also to advance their teamwork spirit. I believe that that is the way I trying to teach them. I will say that after every lecture, conclusion is needed. They have to report after discussion, this will helps me to know how much and how in-depth they actually understand for every topic.

I believe that I'm using the Vygotsky's theory because I found that I try to teach them base on social interaction. I let them try to understand it by doing experiment and also discussion with their friends then only I explain or giving them opinion on it. I will also help them when they get confuse on something. This theory also engage in collaborative learning. I believe that by doing these method I trying to teach them, they will learn it and wouldn't feel bored during the class.

-Jelly-