Closing

In balance, this subject has been very interesting and useful. The way of teaching it in a very collaborative and active way, working in groups and making that groups of peers responsible for the content of their work, learning through discovering, experimenting, listening and exchanging information from our equals, made it dynamic and interesting.

Our group was very hard working and organized (group 7; Hector, Daniel, Alejandro and I), and I think we did a very good job.

School Guidance Plan

This is the third (and most important) project of the subject. As we have been acquiring more and more knowledge about school guidance and counseling along the term, this project consists on developing a real school guidance plan (the document in which the school defines the guidance program it offers).

This project takes a lot of effort and time; although the teacher provided us some real school guidance plans from different high schools and also on Internet there were some, we went to a high school in order to see and understand its school guidance plan from a real resource, and with all this information we elaborated ours the best we could.

 

The presentation we made consisted on presenting our school guidance plan providing  how three real examples were intervened with it, without any special performance, acting, "theatre", or any visual element like that because, although we respect this form of making a presentation, we consider that the content doesn't vary with that, it is simply falsify.

Unfortunately the teacher didn't like our presentation. I believe that although it is true that we do could have done it much better, it wasn't as terrible as he thinks (also our peers from other groups believed it wasn't so bad). The teacher's opinion depressed us and left us with a bad taste in our mouth because everything during the term was going pretty well until this project. At least we have learnt something more about the subject from the project even we didn't it right.

Paretn(s) - Teacher conference

Today class was about a matter that, as teaching, will require our best in the future, but is usually less treated as if it weren't so important (and actually it is); how to run a good parent-teacher conference. This is a meeting between the parents and the teacher to discuss and exchange any information about the children educational, behavioral and personal progress and development, and to try to solve any problem in the most effective and rapid way.

We started showing a video selected by the teacher, where we could see an American perfect run  parent-teacher conference, that gave us some tips about how to do it:

- Welcome the parents.

- Talk about the positive aspects of the student first, then the bad ones. 

-Have material ready to show.

- Improve the success of the student with homework.

- Let the parents know what are exactly the materials their child usually uses.

- Bring a portfolio of the student's work.

- Send home-sheets with questions for the parents.

- Know very well your objectives.

- Prepare students for conference. 

-It is good that parent takes notes.

- State the purpose and the time for the conference.

- Describe the child's progress in major areas and ask how they feel about child's progress.

- Set mutual goals and establish timelines for goals.

- Summarize (thanks for coming, set another meeting day...).

- Evaluate conference: follow up with students and follow up with parents.

We made a last participative activity, which consisted on recreating (with some of the people in the class) some typical and common parent-teacher conference situations, so some roles were: the counselor, divorced parents, a child with an abuse problem, a mother worried about her child... That required some imagination from those actuating.

This class has been very useful in order to teach us how to do a future task in an appropriate way. Also, with the information shown and the last activity we have completely realized about its importance and it's difficulty, something that has encouraged most of us.

The experience of a real counselor

We have in our class a student whose mother has been working as a counselor all her life. Fortunately, she could come to class and give us a speech about this job from her experience. This was the presentation she used:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/odrjij0lc28lzn5/Counselling1.pptx

She talked in a very close and understandable way about some topics such as the last 50 years of education in our country, the present situation in secondary schools of guidance and counselling and what kind of teachers need the society. At the end she answered to some questions we had.

 

Today's class was very useful, it gave us the opportunity to listen to someone's real experiences and know more about a field that is interesting for us but yet a bit unknown, so this lecture has expanded our knowledge about it and the way she did it, showing her love for the job, had encouraged us and had made increase our motivation.

Changing education paradigms

In today's class we saw a video by Sir Kevin Robinson; "Changing education paradigms" in which he criticizes how education is projected today and proposes a change of the paradigms that let creativity of every child flow, not die as it is being currently.

"Alienating millions of kids that don't see any purpose on going to school".

Sir Kevin Robinson is an English writer, educator and lecturer. Doctor in education by London university, he is considered an expert in matters with creativity, education quality, innovation and human resources.

Focused mainly in education as a mean to create a divergent thinking, this video has allowed us to reflect about current education. I agree in the fact that education is at the service of the power, creating "robots" to their models to who has been inculcated the ideology of getting a title before their happiness developing their creativity. I also wonder why children are grouped according to the age.   

 

"Education is the key". "Education is about inspiring one's mind not just filling their head". "There is more than one way to be an educated man". This sentences summarizes the content of this other video played also today in class and of today's class, a very inspiring lesson for us, future teachers that want to fight for a change in education.

Attention to diversity: designing a collaborative activity

This project was based in developing a collaborative activity in order to make the rest of the class understand and learn the topic the teacher gave to each of the groups, based on the common topic "attention to diversity" (the principle which should rule the whole education). Our item was "Support Measures for learners in Early Childhood and School Education", so in order to prepare the one hour session we searched for information on internet, and once we had it, we started thinking how could we presented it to the rest of the class in an active, dynamic and effective way, something that (at least for us) is not easy.

Finally we decided the following procedure: first, we made a very short prezi presentation in order to introduce the topic and later we did a kind of game or quiz. For this "game" we separated the class into two groups, and within this two groups we made groups of three people. It consisted on every three people group of one part of the class making questions to the other groups of the other part of the class (and vice versa), in order to get points answering the questions right (they were helped to do the questions by a sheet we elaborate and gave them with a summary of the topic). The last activity of our lesson consisted on presenting the whole class some cases and ask them, applying what they have learned with the other two activities, how they would treat them. Some of this cases were:

-Maria is 8 years old and has got the Aspergen Sindrome, she has got difficulties making friends.

-Félix parents can not take him to school because they have to work when it starts.

-Mike’s parents have discussions frequently and her sister plays the fagot, so he can not bring his homework on time.

 

I think this project was very interesting. Mainly because it requires from us some imagination for developing our session, something that we will need in our future career and that is not easy (at least for me) so needs practice, and for what is also useful seeing what have occurred to other groups, from which we can learn other methodologies and ideas (the memory game, the "races", the quiz...). I think we did it well and that it was also useful for the rest of our peers.

 

 

 

Group of experts

The aim of this activity was to focus what we have learned in general about school guidance and counselling in the Spanish context. In order to do this, the teacher decided to use a collaborative methodology, through which a group of people learn working together, using a technique named "group of experts". So, following this technique, the class was divided in four groups and in each of them he distributed four papers with the following information:

- Early childhood and School Education
- Higher Education 
- Lifelong Learning Approach
- Adult Education and Training

So, each person of the group is an expert of his/her topic, and has to explain it to the rest of the group, after having decided how meeting with the same experts of the other groups.

A next step in this activity was to look at the information at home again in order to do a kind of exam in class, about the four topics together without any kind of help (asking to the teacher, in groups, looking for information...). Next day we did it; we spent one hour thinking and trying to remember in order to complete successfully the questions, and the other hour of the class we could look or asked for the information to complete the "exam", giving finally the answer sheet to the teacher.

In my opinion the way in which this activity is developed is very dynamic because of the fact of the division of labor, the collaboration and the reciprocity relation in which you depend on the explanation of other classmates and they depend on you. But I think that the fact of making an "exam" was a bit boring and confusing. Any way we have expanded our knowledge about the subject.

Webquest

This first project consisted on, by groups of four people, answer key questions about school guidance and counselling by looking for information in resources (links and videos) that the teacher provided us and others we can look for, in order to present it finally to the rest of the class. This questions were:

• What is school guidance counselling? Are guidance and counselling synonyms? Develop a personal definition.
• What are its functions and its main areas?
• Who receives the school guidance and counselling services?
• What services are provided in the school guidance and counselling programmes?
• Who provides these services?
• When are the school guidance counselling services provided?
• Where are they provided?

This project provide us a first approach to the subject. Although, because is the first thing we have done, we were a bit lost at the beginning, through this introductory questions we introduced ourselves in the subject in an active way, dividing the work among the people in our group, and looking for information in links and videos (which are very useful because you also practice other skills like listening), provided by the teacher, what makes it more accessible as a first activity. We have learned a lot of basic but necessary aspects about the subject in order to lay down a good base for the future work.
  

 

School Guidance and Counselling 2013

My aim in this blog is to share with you my experience in this subject of Magisterio de Primaria; school guidance and counseling, by describing the projects, lectures and activities we have carried out, trying to explain the most remarkable things and what I have learned. I hope you find it interesting and enjoy it.