Debates... 2.0

I would say the debates were really good. In the first group I realised they were well organized and structured. They prepared their arguments and they showed them clearly. In the second group, even though, there was a misunderstanding about the topic, we could debate anyway. If the teacher wouldn't have thought in that solution, maybe we will have to re-schedule the debate which wouldn't have been good for all of us.
I realised some persons said their arguments by heart, which is not good because if they forgot a word, they forgot the whole sentence. Besides, we know when people speak by heart and it isn't the idea of a debate, is it?

It is difficult to say who the winners were, because we all defended our position. On the other hand, it is also hard to defend an idea when you do not agree with that. If you like what your are defending, you will feel passion for this, but if you do not agree with the topic, you still have something that drives you to the other position and this does not help at all.

It was a nice experience, I enjoyed it even though I do not really like to debate. I feel it helped us to get closer to our classmates and helped us to improve team work.

debates...

I would say the debates were really good. In the first group I realised they were well organized and structured. They prepared their arguments and they showed them clearly. In the second group, eventhoug there was a misunderstanding about the topic, we could debate anayway. If the teacher wouldn't have thought in that solution, maybe we will have to re-schedule the debate which wouldn't have been good for all of us.
I realised some persons said their arguments from heart, which is not good because if they forgot a word, they forgot the whole sentence. Besides, we know when people speak from heart and it isn't the idea of a debate, is it?

It is difficult to say who the winners were, because we all defended our position. On the other hand, it is also hard to defend an idea when you do not agree with that. If you like what your are defending, you will feel pasion for this, but if you do not agree with the topic, you still have something that drives you to the other position and this does not help at all.

It was a nice experince, I enjoyed it eventhough I do not really like to debate. I feel it helped us to get closer to our classmates and helped us to improve team work.

Promoting conscience.

Through the time, our country has built thousands of schools. These schools may be similar to others or very different to others ones. These differences can be appreciated in more than one sense. There are differences in terms of construction, sources, teachers, students, etc.
There are some schools which are called “the best ones”, in which we can find many sources, good buildings, good relationships between students and teachers, etc. The problem comes up in the schools that lack of all of these characteristics. There are schools in which teachers do not even have a marker to write in the whiteboard! This can not be happens if, on the other side, we have schools that do not even think about a problem like this.
During my experience in classrooms I have recognise a situation that Jane Jacobs in her article “the death and life of great American cities” describes as ´Low-income project that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than slums were supposed to replace´(1). I have observed how our governors have destroyed the education in the sense that they only have built buildings but not people. I saw how students use their schools to promote vandalism, disrespect and drugs.
What I would apply in classrooms is to create conscience about what a school, a neighbourhood and public places mean. I am exhausted from seeing how students do not realise what they have because nobody tells them what they have and for how it is it useful. What I want to do in classrooms is to promote respect with each other, with places and with the atmosphere that surrounds to every student. Doing this, the student’s behaviour could change and we would not see again a badly usage of what they have.

Techniques' comments

The article “Techniques for Better Classroom Discipline” by Thomas R.McDaniel, Phi Delta Capan, provides us many tips which are vital for our teaching development. Also, it gives us some tips that I disagree with. The text is about eleven topics that have direct relationship with the work we will develop inside of classrooms. The first topic that it talks about is “focusing”. I do agree with the tips it gives me because I think it is so important to establish the silence in the classroom. If students are talking, is not possible that a teacher talk because students may think that teacher does not have any problem with their behaviour. Another theme is named “Low-profile intervention”. “If she sees a student talking or off task, she simply drops the youngster’s name into her dialogue in a natural way. “And you see, David, we carry the one to the tens column.” David hears his name and is drawn back on task. The rest of the class doesn’t seem to notice.” This exercise is not corrrect in the sense that if a teacher says the name of one of his students, the whole class will notice it, not just the named student. For instances, this exercise could work, but if a teacher do this repeatedly with the same child, he/she may feel affected by the teacher.