Don't disturb ! Diversity in process...

The last two sessions we have been working in our groups in order to prepare the work about diversity. Today was the last day for doing it at class, it is almost ready but we have to keep on doing some things. Let’s see how it goes… Hopefully as well as the last one or even better !

Next groupal work: Attention to diversity

Today we have spoken about our next groupal work. This one is about diversity. The concept of diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences.  These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies.  It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. It is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity contained within each individual.

Each group is going to focus his work in a specific group of people who needs diversity and in its measures. For doing it, we are going to think how we will give a class to these kinds of children.

 The groups are the following ones:

1. Special Education Needs provision within Mainstream Education (Students with specific need of ed. support)
2. Separate Special Education Needs provision in Early Childhood and School Education (Students with specific need of ed. support)
3. Support Measures for learners in Early Childhood and School Education (Students in disadvantaged situation)

Exam day ! But do not panic

Today we have done an exam in order to know if we get the knowledge about School Guidance and Counselling; both from the presentations and from the “Group of Experts” activity. But it was a quite peculiar exam because we are going to correct our exam. I think that is a good activity because we have to learn to be critical and how to value an exam. It was also a good activity in order to know what we really know about this topic and what points do we have to reinforce.

Group of experts

Today we have done an activity called “Group of experts”. In this activity we have put ourselves in groups. Each group were experts of one topic and, with some information that the teacher gave us, we had to prepare it to explain it later to others groups. The difference between a presentation and this activity is that after doing this, a person of each group went to another group to explain them the contents that he or she got. By doing this, we made new groups composed by people from all the first groups, so they could share information.

The aim of this activity was to focus in the Spanish context what we have learned in general about School Guidance and Counselling in our previous presentations.

The topics we had to become experts of were the following ones:

            1. Spain: Guidance and Counselling in Early Childhood.

            2. Spain: Guidance and Counselling in Higher Education

            3. Spain: Guidance and Counselling in a Lifelong Learning Approach.

            4. Spain: Support Measures for Learners in Adult Education and Training.

As we have seen, it was a collaborative activity. It was a very good activity because it is a dynamic way of learning new things. I find it also interesting because it is a way of giving responsibility to the student and this make him feels good and important, he feels that he has a role in the class and that he are someone in it even being a student. The responsibility in this case was telling the information of his first group to other people that did not know anything about it.

Presentations are already finished

The last two sessions the rest of the class was presenting their work. They were also good presentations. In going to put them in the part of “Others S.G.&C. presentations” so you can see the different views of our class. Today I have realised that there are not a global view of a concept. Even for a thing that seems to be clear and common for everyone, there are a lot of points of view. As far as I am concerned, this fact is a good education for us. I think this because since we are going to be teachers, we have to be open-minded people to be able to work with other people as a group and, also, to be able to deal with all the different children we will upbring.