Debates...

A debate is a discussion of a topic with arguments and controversies. The debate’s participants should discuss and argument fundamentally what is their topic about and to reflect on. In our language class we had two topics, thus two debates. Those debates were “Professional Teaching in the School” and “Voluntary Voting and Automatic Registration”. The first of the debates was a very well-prepared discussion. Both groups, pro and against, were well-informed about what their topics. For instance: "the Against” group had a very good presentation and they provided us with a lot of information from important people in education who are not teachers instead of what we thought about them, such as Paulo Freyre, Rousseau, etc. The “Pro” group responded in the way of the values of being a teacher mean. It really was a debate! Before this debate, I clearly had my position and thoughts about this theme, but the information that both groups gave us made me a change. I think this debate had an unbalance perception of the public in terms of the presentation that each group showed, because the first group showed it by a power point as visual facts, therefore, it looked like more interesting to us that the latter presentation, even though their arguments were very strong. For this little but big reason, the “Pro” group needs to improve the use of the technology or another way to show a topic to make it more balance. However, I do not have a winner; because I think what we really need is people care, interesting, with concerns and love in education issues, people who really want to make a change in our society. I love this profession and also the education issues that is the reason to become a teacher. This I would say.

On the other hand, the last debate topic about “Voluntary Voting and Automatic Registration” had a big confusion, as a result of we were the “Pro” group and the other should be the “Against”, but it was not like this. The other groups made a mistake, they thought they belonged to the “Pro” team but they did not. So this debate changed the way as the firsts, both groups got together and the whole class was against us. Having the information and arguments and the possible contra arguments we could have and our classmates did not have, we could not discuss about our topic and thus we did not have a real winner. I feel if we had not had this problem, we had won. We searched a lot of information about our topic, we made very interesting question about democracy and if people are expressed at all; we had almost all possibilities where we could be in disjunctive with the “Against” team. The problem that we had, especially me, is the way how to express the ideas clearly and secure (our pathos and ethos was a weakness) but, as we could not show our arguments we could not show our logos at all. Actually, we need to improve our English skills. However, this is one of our first experiences on debates and it was not bad! Now, we realized how many possibilities we have on presenting topics whatever it is in a debate. It was a very good experience; I think we learn a lot about us, such as, our skills, about the theme, etc.

Design = Complex

Jane Jacobs mentions in her The Death and Life of Great American Cities[1] that money has transformed the way people live and how they see the World is. It is making big problems in our society such as: dividing people into social classes. Have this problem solution? It is very difficult to resolve this kind of problems as a result of money and people’s ways of seeing.
Malcolm Gladwell says to Jane Jacobs’ cities designs in his abstract Design for Working[2]. The way people make the distances between desks with the others and why they always try to be away from others. A good way to design an office is putting the most detachable workers in the center to be in touch with the others and to move around, too. Making the office a kind of neighborhood where people can share and be sociable is the objective.
These sort of design are very useful in our society as in cities as in workplaces. As this design could work in the second case, teachers can use Jacobs’ design in classrooms. Always has it been very important the way classrooms are organized in terms of chairs, tables, boards, and so on. However, there is something more important, the equal opportunities for students whoever they are. Probably, in classrooms, this let them feel more acceptable in our society. What we should be aware of is that we have to be equitable because some students need more attention, a different sort of teaching, or for some is very difficult to learn than others. In every place, such as schools, works, cities, or even countries we live the inequitable of some who thinks, thanks to money, that they have more “power” than us. The world born in classrooms so teachers do teach in an equal way for all.

[1] Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Modern Library. 1993. March 31, 2009
[2] Gladwell, Malcolm. Designs for Working. The New Yorker. Dept. of Human Resources. December 11, 2000.

Discipline Techniques

There are many proficiency that teachers can use in the classrooms to catch the students’ attention and thus students can learn and understand about what is teaching. Discipline techniques concerned about students’ emotions are prefered. For instance: Focusing, Direct Instruction, Monitoring, Modeling, Humanistic I-messages, Positive Discipline, and Environmental Control.[1] These methods represent many classrooms’ aspects referring to students and teachers’ attitudes. What we should be aware of is students' behavior in order to be able to use the best proficiency in the classroom. In fact, there are a lot of techniques that are useful in some many cases, but we can’t use them in every place that we are teaching, because each student is different and therefore each school has a different culture.

Using Assertive Discipline isn’t good for children due to this idea is about authoritarianism. It contradicts to the idea of being worried in what students want. Authoritarianism is a form of government (social control) in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.).[2] Obviously, we can’t either to do what students want but we need to respect their thoughts. So, what’s the best method that we can use in the classroom? We don’t have techniques 100% effectives, most of the time we do need to create new ones depending on our students and contexts.

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[1] Budd Churchward, 11 Techniques for Better Classroom Discipline. Discipline By Design… The Honor Level System. 2009. http://www.honorlevel.com/x47.xml

[2] http://www.wordreference.com/definition/authoritarianism