Student - Teacher issue......

By: Samantha Quintana M.

Dear Miss Nathaly:

My name is Cristina, I am an English teacher at a boys high school, I should mention that I am 20 years old. So far I have had a great performance with my students, I think they have learned a lot, but recently I have been dealing with a problem.

A week ago a student from third course started to behave in a especial way towards me, on Friday, when I was going home I saw him at the bus station, he was waiting for me, after some short words, he said that he had a crush on me. The next day I talked with the psychologist and we have tried to change his mind and realize that he is just confused, but has not worked at all....what should we do?
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Dear gorgeous Cristina:

According to the event that is happening now with your student, it has been wise from you to talk with the psychologist, what he is feeling now is normal at his age, his emotions and feelings start to mix and they usually have a crush on their favorite teacher.

Something that you can consider would to:

+ Analyze about his family, how he develops with the members of his family maybe you can find an answer there, some kids at that age do not communicate very well with their parents and they start looking for that attention from others.

+ Try not to give too much or less attention than others.

+ Never let him stay in your class after the class was dismissed.

I hope we can start knowing how to handle this; I will be waiting for your message.

I am a really nice young teacher!

Depending on the students' age there are many aspects we can find positive or negative of being a young teacher, but it will always depend on how you manage things life brings to you…..
Like those days when you are standing up in the middle of the class trying to catch students’ attention and no one listens to you because they think you will ignore they are doing a mess.

Some cool things, so COOL!

+ Students feel identified with most of the things you do, the music that you like to listen to, the cartoons o movies that you like or even some activities, as playing in your X-BOX, go to karaoke, eat at FRIDAYS, hang out in the mall or watch the Family Guy cartoon.

+ As a young teacher, some of my colleagues or students find some help in me to solve any problem related to technology. For most people, being a young educator means you can manage any type of information.

Some things are just not cool! Not at all!

+ Students will look at you as a brother and they will try to misbehave in class, trying to convince you to let them do things they are not suppose to do in that moment.

By: Danny Bajaña.

Why is Reading a nightmare for most kids?

Do you read Sunday newspapers? Have you read Pablo Coelho poems? Do you like editorials? From 1 to 5 where are you in the reading-freak-scale?

I love reading. Why? I am not sure, my dad loves it but my mom doesn’t. I don’t even remember my reading at school class. This year I am giving a reading class to 7th graders and I have found that reading is not really hard to teach, but motivate students is.

We don’t have reading habits. But as teachers we are pushed, somehow, to change this. There are many strategies to help out our students; one of them is silent reading.

I don’t think this could work with classes. A lot of concentration is being demanding from students. As English teachers we need to deal with more issues than regular teachers in Spanish. What a bout if they find a new vocabulary?


Lorena Baquerizo G.

Grades, grades!..... What do they say?

Some may say grades need to communicate and show students’ development and effort. Others say teachers should not count on the effort at the moment they assess, only what students are able to do.
Grades need to reflect students ' learning process and assessment as well as the teaching process followed and how effective it was. But there are many other factors that can influence. For example : Students ' anxiety in the moment of doing a test takes a student who had study a lot to fail.
Everything corresponding to behavior and development are two different aspects of education that influence one to each other but are very important at the same time. Have you ever mixed these two aspects when grading, is it all right to do so?

BY: Danny Bajaña (Internationla Education Student)

Grade or not to grade?

15 enriching minutes with Paul Seligson
Full of great advice, viewpoints and recommendations for teachers

The British teacher Paul Seligson who has been TEFLing since 1978 as well as being a MATEFL assessor and LCCI examiner, and freelance trainer came to visit UCG representing Richmond Publishing.

1.- Do you think Behaviour should be included as part of the grade? "If you don’t reward effort and progress in life, why will they make the effort? That’s nonsense. Behaviour and grades go hand in hand. I would give a 10% to attendance and homework. At this point high school students need to be motivated to keep moving forward. Even though no matter how hard they try, if they don’t progress you can’t pass them and if that’s the case you must forewarn them that they are going to fail.

2.- Advice 2: "Moving on to an efficient group management Paul said that we should get rid of the traditional class participation, remarking that the strong ones can’t survive at the expense of the weak ones...He answered that Pair work and group work are the keys with a proper monitoring stage."

3.- What do you think about punishing dishonesty with grades? "For example if you find a student cheating on a test, would you punish him? Paul said: I prefer for a student to copy the answers in the book rather than do nothing. Copying leads to more learning than doing nothing, making clear that our task is to have them realize what they are doing is cheating on themselves, they are not cheating somebody else."

By: Jorge Jimenez (International Education Student)

Christmas Animated Postcards

If you have access to internet, this website http://www.northpole.com/Mailroom/Postcards/PCIntro.html%20 is perfect for you! I know you will find it useful for a writing lesson. Students can email a Christmas animated postcard to their parents or friends, adding their own messages. It is a fun activity, students will enjoy it! I will include this project in my planning for December. But before starting I’ll need to follow SIX STEPS. STEP 1: I will tell my students a little bit about Christmas and talk about the Christmas animated postcard project. STEP 2: I will ask my students to create a web and remind them that in the center of the web they will have to put the name of the person they want to send the postcard. STEP 3: they will write their ideas for the postcard in the web and later create a paragraph with those ideas. STEP 4: I will ask my students to exchange papers to revise their work and I will edit their work. STEP 5: I will ask my students to find out the email address of their father or mother; to send the postcard. (Check with their parents to be sure it's OK.) STEP 6: if your students have access to internet, they will be able to type the letter and send it online. But if your students don’t have access, they can type the letter in Word; you can paste it and send it.

By Maria de Lourdes Lopez Pereira