After reading the last chapter of my textbooks Sail The 7Cs with Microsoft Education, I learned about the website WE.org, and it is a great website for us as educations to know what we should say to our students and how we should approach specific topics to our students. When exploring the website, I found a page called We Teachers. ( I recommended for future educators to check it out). While exploring this website, I have found and learned new ways to talk to my students. This website is used as a training and educational tool. It is also used to help teachers and give them resources for virtual learning.
I signed up for the website and decided to take a course to see what the website has to offer. On the We Teachers section of the website, I decided to go to the course about bullying to learn new ways to help my students talk about a heavy topic such as bullying. While taking the course I learned how to identify and prevent bullying in my classroom. I wanted to take this course more than any other because bullying is a serious topic that needs to be discussed. If a student is being bullied, it can become disconnected from their education, family, and friends. In the worst-case, students can become suicidal, and no one wants that for a child. No one wants anyone to be bullied, and being a teacher and seeing it in the classroom is devastating. That is why we, as teachers need to be there to prevent it. An taking this course has given me insight and information about how to prevent bullying in my classroom and counsel my students who are being bullied. It has also helped me in dealing with the children who are the bullies and how to discipline them and make sure no bullying goes on in my classroom.
I recommend everyone go on this website, take one of the courses, and leave a comment below about what you learned from your experience.
For this week’s blog post, I decided to discuss another educational tool that I think is useful and use every day. YouTube is a platform that people can post videos about anything and everything. Lately, YouTube has become a career for plenty of people. They get paid for the videos they post based on the views they get. While reading an article, I have learned about Youtube’s transformation and how it was not used as an educational tool, and now it is. That schools use to block the website, and now it is allowed in the classroom teachers.
Teachers are using YouTube as a global educator tool and staying connected with other teachers and students worldwide. I had experienced this firsthand when I was in high school and even college. My teachers and professors have given me youtube videos to watch that have to do with what we are learning. Watching these YouTube videos have actually helped me in school, and I believe it helped my grades. You can search for anything on youtube and will be able to find it. For example, I wanted to find videos to help me study for the praxis 2 exam, and I found many videos that I have watched and learned from. I believe because of the YouTube video, I passed my exams.
While going on YouTube and watching videos, I have found many other educational tools; there are plenty of YouTube channels out there that are about teachers. On the YouTube channels, I watch teachers who document their experience and show the viewers what goes on in the classroom. While watching these videos, I have discovered the type of teacher I want to be and how I want my classroom to be set up. I have also learned how to make a portfolio, lesson plans, and classroom management. I learn all of this in college, but watching youtube videos about it has helped me become a better teacher. I believe that it is such a great tool for teachers to teach their students and teach themselves.
Please leave a comment below and tell me what you think of YouTube as a global educator tool. It is an amazing tool to use, and it has taught me a lot about education and becoming a teacher. It is also a great way to stay connected with other teachers and students around the world.
This week I am watching a show called Aprende a Vivir. Check it out if you would like to watch it! I have watched so far the first two episodes, and I have to say it is excellent. It is school appropriate, but I would not play it for my elementary school kids. I would play it in a 6th-grade Spanish class or a health class. It is only 3 episodes and easy to watch in school. It is a show that teaches about diabetes and how to manage this disease. Even though this is a different language, you can learn a lot about diabetes, a different family, and culture. Also, while watching this show, you see a love story as well. This reminds me of the Spanish soap operas I used to watch with my Abuela.
While watching this show, you can see many Spanish cultures and how they are as a family. They only speak Spanish in the house and say a couple of words in English. You can also tell this is a rigorous family, where the oldest daughter who is in a serious relationship and is going to get married, still lives at home with her parents. It is very family-oriented and sticks to gender roles. The oldest daughter will be a nurse and marries a doctor; the mother stays home, cooks, and takes care of their children while the father works. There is nothing wrong with these gender roles. It plays out as being your typical family we see on Tv. The young boy is very athletic, and his sister goes to all his games and watches them play. You can also tell that the mother is running the household and takes care of everyone. Especially her husband, she will be going to his doctor’s appointments with him to tell the doctors everything they need to know. You can tell this is a typical Spanish family; it looks a lot like how the family is and how I grew up just without everyone speaking Spanish. Only my father and grandparents spoke Spanish.
While watching the episodes, you only saw the family in their kitchen, but it was a typical kitchen that you see in everyone. The mother was home, cooking, and waiting for her family to come home and eat. This is what it is like in my family; my mom will cook, and we will all gather in the kitchen when we get home, and it is time to eat. We know from watching the episodes that the family loves soccer and plays it for fun and watches the games on Tv and when their son plays it. With families in the United States on our, Tv is mostly football and basketball are the sports we watch. I noticed that there staple food they would have and even eat as snacks were rice white or yellow with beans or without, and I liked seeing that because it is a staple food in my house, we always have rice. I thought it was the normal food to have with every meal, but when I started going to friends’ houses for dinner, I realized they did not have it with every meal; they mostly had pasta or potatoes with their dinners. I always thought it was weird until I realized people could be thinking the same thing about my having rice for every meal. Our cultures are different, and what we eat is different, and it does not make sure weird. In this show, you saw that these family’s values were health and their family members’ safety. They put family above everything else. It is nice and refreshing to see in a Tv series because it most Tv shows, we do not see that. The one thing that I thought was very different is the same. His oldest daughter got engaged in front of the whole family and not just them together. I thought it was sweet that the only family got to be involved. We do not see that in our culture anymore, especially the man asking the father permission for his daughter’s hand; I loved watching that part. It means that this young man has respect for his new family.
I highly recommend that everyone check this quick series on youtube, and I have provided the link as well. I believe it is a great mini-series to show in our classroom to learn about health, Spanish, and cultures.
Please let me know what you thought in the comments!
