Song!

Maybe this it sound a little bit silly for you, but I just heard this song and the first thought that come to my mind was Human Rights (from a different perspective). I was thinking in who can a song show us a reality even when isn't 'a good one', it is still a reality in our society. (an even when I don't really like Christina Aguilera)

Human Rights

My perception about what Human Rights are:

1. If human rights are explicitly taught, students and people will know what their rights are, and will have more changes to defend them
2. Make people responsible citizens who challenges injustices
3. To live peacefully with others
4. Human rights education is a human right itself. Everybody has the right to know their rights to ensure they are known, they must be taught.
5. Teaching human rights is teaching values 
6. Human rights apply to everyday life

I really realized this concept from the debate, this was our topic and the relationship of it with the school and how should be taught in the classroom.

Now, I don't have to much to say about it, I mean, I have to but it is a very complex topic to cover that I will think about even in many years.

Reading Seminar Entry

Education in Finland

The Finland educational system is based on leadership, equity, equitable distribution of resources and encourage the learning process of their students. Furthermore, we can see how Finland is consider as one of the most important exponent of education around the world. Besides, the whole system has policies which are a result of the historical process of the country and his educational system is based in encourage teachers and students to give always their best.
In addition to, they have three main points in the creation of their educational policies:

1. Flexibility and loose standards: the base of their teaching practices in their own previous methods and they innovate the curriculum constantly adapting it to the reality. The system does not follow the typical educational model as, for example, the chilean educational model. 
2. Broad learning combined with creativity: this is mainly refering to the personal development of each student (personality, behavior, creativity, skills, etc) and how teachers combined this with the broad learning to create an effective and meaningful learning process in their students. 
3. Intelligent accountability with trust-based professionalism: teachers are seen as a real ‘base of the educational system’, also they have a kind of power in the learning process and the whole system belief in they teaching practices.

To take into account:

• Governments respect the educational system as a public service. 
• The system encourage teachers and students to try new methods, ideas and development  of their learning proccess inside the schools.
• Children start their compulsery scholarship when they become seven years old
• Classes are smaller than what we see in Chile, they have no more than 30 students per class.
• One important issue is that teachers must have a master degree to be employed permanently, but, the degree is also useful to work in any other area that they wish to work in.
• Pedagogy students are the ones who got the better results from the university entrance examinations (which is the only test in the finland educational system)
• Parents trust teachers as professionals and the ones who knows what is better for their children. The belief is that they are really able to provide the best possible education for their kids.
• Teachers have freedom in the curriculum planning proccess, they ae not focus on annual test or exam, they are focus in the learning, rather than on preparing students for tests.
• The educational development in finland is always changing and adapting to the reality and needs of the students (individual and social)

Journal

Study skills and Professionalism

First of all, you asked us about our previous knowlegde about the unit, I believe that what we worked the most it was speaking skills more than the written skills, at least this is my personal opinion about it. May be it was because of the process of sharing opinions and reflections with the rest of the class from all the readings that we made.

Now, the development of the first unit it was interesting, even when in my opinión the interest in classes is not one of the most strongest points of our generation since the last term. I have to recognize the special interest of teachers at the moment to teach us.

However, we worked with metacognition, self reflection and classroom practice. I think that it was very usefull especially because of the beginning process of Elab. The whole process of understanding of the students and how to deal with them in this new year of ‘practice’ is extremely important and the content it was appropiate. Now, I have to mention that I do not have Elab this semester because I am not doing the Methodology course, so this is a little bit more complicate for me (about the application of what I learned).

Accordingly with this, what I think that I learned? First, the concept of metacognition as ‘thinking about thinking’ and how complex it can be for a person to understand or develop this concept, the relationship of all the learning process with our cognitive system, the importance of the previous knowledge, the differences between rote and meaningful learning, the self-reflection of our own learning process (as students and future teachers) and many others factors that might be relevant in the learning process. And taking to account all this, we eventually need to applied all our knowledge when we should go to a class.

The next point, it might be the planning of activities based on what we talk/share in classes about texts, personal experiences and questions that teachers made us. This was also very productive and I really liked, especially because we needed to consider many aspect to created an especial activity, wich was to be represented in classes. I think that the representations were planning because many of us need to improve or to encouring us to be more espontaniuos when we are in front of people, what it is essentially what we will be doing in a few years.

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