The teachers’ strike

The teachers have carried out a month of strike since they called to undefined strike the last October. But why are they on strike? Many people ask themselves.
Teachers are on strike because the government refuses to pay the historical debt. This historical debt initiated in 1981 when the state transfers the schools education to the municipalities a year after that the military regime announced an especial bone to compensate teachers for the low salaries, and that will be paid in 4 installments the subsequent years.
According to the teachers the debt reaches nine thousand million dollars and the government does not recognize the debt because it says that they are no public workers anymore after they are depending on the municipalities.

I believe this is a complicated situation which the government has to analyze deeply, but I disagree with the long strike because many students have lost weeks of knowledge, they need to be educated and students need to know that when we want to achieve something, going on strike or making hunger strike is not the way. I am going to be a teacher, I am not going to teach English only, but I am going to teach how to be a person, therefore I propose that teachers should fight maybe for higher salaries but not making strikes and they should forget the historical debt.

The last microteachings, November 17th, 2009.

These were finally the last microteaching of Mr. Litman’s subject. At first it was complicated start the presentations because my classmates could not play the projector to she their PowerPoint but finally Alex did it.

Juan Pablo Solorzano dealt with the topic subcultures also known as urban tribes. This was a very good topic for us as future teachers due to we have to be aware of our students’ styles, thoughts and interests to do a meaningful teaching strategy at school. Juan Pablo’s PowerPoint was also another positive aspect of his presentation, because of their images, music and colors.
The problem was that he did not have the intention to do a microlesson therefore we did not have the opportunity to speak; he just did a simple presentation. Juan Pablo also did not relate as he should the topic with the pedagogical relevance, so I would say that he did do what was required.

Daniela Wilson did a very short presentation, also a presentation because the teacher talking time was too much and lasts no more than ten minutes. She talked about adolescent pregnancy or teenage pregnancy, how teacher should face this situation at school, this was the positive part but she asked us very general questions, when nobody spoke, she did not ask directly and did not wait for answers. Also I think that she gave us unnecessary information but very good tips.

Lessons, November 3rd, 2009.

At the beginning I thought that these two new presentations would be the last one, but no, this time presented my two classmates Francisca Heredia and Teresa Buch the last one presented the topic friendship, the topic that liked the most of those two..

Francisca Heredia had a weir beginning, I do not know why, but my classmates who were seated close to me and I, looked each other to see if someone understood something but nobody understood anything, I could not understand what she was saying, because I thing the nerves betrayed her and she really got confused. Another negative issue was that we spoke maybe one of us two words, nothing else. The teacher talking time took too much time, she asked us very general questions and she did not wait for answer, Francisca answer herself.

Teresa Buch chose the topic friendship, a topic someone can think “boring”, “childish”, but no, she presented the topic in a very interesting way, with a beautiful PowerPoint with very nice colors and attractive pictures. The topic was really touching for me, I got very moved and I believe this topic is crucial at schools because the relationship between children and teenagers are like air, if they have bad relationship with their partners they can gain terrible illness like depression, therefore we can advise them. I would say that the weakness in this microlesson was the low tone of Teresa’s voice.

Lessons, October 27th, 2009.

This day presented two of my classmates, Juan Gonzalez y Mauricio Lillo, in my opinion both microlessons were good an originals. Let’s see what were the characteristics of their presentations.

Mauricio Lillo was the first classmate who presented the microlesson. He talked about “diversity” and he related the topic to the schools. Mauricio Lillo looked very confident and he behaved as a teacher. The first thing I liked about his presentation was that he could choose the right information. I also thought how lovely was his microteaching due to his explanations and the videos he chose to show us. Mauricio as in my presentation gave very good tips to follow in our future career as teachers.

Juanito Gonzalez is the classmate who was closer to the teacher requirements, for the reason that he really did a microlesson; he divided us in just a few seconds and he did a debate, the debate was good because Juanito made talk everybody and he manage us a his students. I think that the weakest thing of Juanito’s presentation was the PowerPoint and more organization in he debate, because sometimes a persons spoke more that he/she should and that makes that his presentation lasted almost half an hour.

Lessons, October 6th, 2009.

This day the teacher began the class talking about the blogs and he gave us the date we have to send him our blogs. We had two presentations, the first one by Yara Faunez and the other by Eduardo Maldonado. Both presentations were short in the minutes that had to be, but one was better than the other.

Yara Faunez did the microteaching about body language and in spite of it was a topic that we already manage and know, it was a microlesson and not a presentation. We could think that if we know about this topic it will be boring for us to listen to her, but her microlesson had nothing to do with that. She presented the three stages with confidence and eye contact. She kept us entertained. The only negative thing I would say about her is that she did not show too much body language.

Eduardo Maldonado’s microlesson was about “Less words and more action”. I think that Eduardo at the beginning of her presentation got confused about what he had to say and I did not understand very much because his explanations were not clear. As the time gone by, Eduardo, I think felt more confident and could take the bull by the horns and manage us as students very well. Eduardo moved around the classroom, he presented a nice video that unfortunately was in Spanish. Something that I did not like was the topic and that Eduardo read a lot from the power point.

A beautiful mind, the film.

A beautiful mind is a movie based on a true story, the story of John Nash a man who lived a complicated life since he was a child until years ago, but he could overcome thanks to his wife Alice.
John Nash is performed by the actor Russell Crowe and the story begins when john is at the university. When john was graduated he elaborated a theory that changed his life and the life of the economy. Then the movie shows the relationship that Mr. Nash has with the government for secret issues due to the bad relations EEUU had with the Russia. In those time john was also working at the university where he met to his future wife Alice, a student of him. When he is thirty he realizes that he has schizophrenia, illness that makes him loose his job at the university, but years later return much better and continue working with his researches. Finally he is shown old and getting the Novel Price in 1994.
Personally I do not like the actor Russell Crowe but I think that his performance was excellent, I suppose that the real john Nash is feeling very happy for how he has been shown in this film. I think that the love Nash feels for his wife is very passionated that inspire me to be like him or that someone loves me like john loves his wife. I would like to add that I was very impressed with the capacity he has to observe, like when he observed the pigeons eating at the university.

Presentations, September 29th

Today we had two presentations again, one by Francisca Nuñez and other by Nadia Palma, one was very good and the other was really confused, then we go to the lab to work in our blogs.

Nadia Palma in my opinion, got confused about the presentationn because she did a common presentation, she did not discriminate between a microlesson and a presentation. She had terrible errors in the PowerPoint and her tone of voice was very low. The topic of her presentation was “Behind a social network service”, that I think it was an interesting topic but she did not know how to carry it out. Nadia had in her PowerPoint a lot of information and the teacher talking time was too much.

On the other hand, Francisca Nuñez showed us confidence in herself, she looked very confidence on what she was saying and everything was very clear. Her topic was very suitable to us as teachers, due to games are a very good tool to teach anything, especially English. The PowerPoint had very nice colors and she gave us some keys only to detect what she was trying to tell us. The student talking time was precise, and she did a very interesting and funny game that was "WHO WANTS TO BE MILLIONAIRE"