Risking in the classroom (essay)

Every so often, English teachers feel frustrated due to the methodology they are applying in the classroom. They consider they are not creative, students are boring and nothing comes to their minds in terms of changing the system they are used to practice in the classroom. The thing is that, they have not realized the amount of things they can use in the classroom with the aim of teaching. Through this essay, we will see how useful or beneficial may be for an English teacher the film Modern Times as a tool to teach his/her students in the classroom.

Every teacher must know that teaching has to do with giving students the knowledge they have to acquire. However, this is not just about it. Teachers also are educating students in terms of everything: in terms of life, experiences, facing problems and so on. The film “Mother Times” of Charles Chaplin is an excellent tool teachers can implement in the classroom as a pedagogical instrument.

On the one hand, Professors have the benefits of using the film Modern times for teaching other subjects that seem not to have a close connection with English. This is a good way of educating students. For instance, when seeing the film Modern Times, students are not just being encouraged to learn English as the main subjects, but they, in addition, are complementing English and learning it along with essential themes which in this case would be history.

Besides, I consider that the film “Modern Times” may be a good way of making students put into practice their critical thinking. Teachers could use the movie in order to make pupils analyze what they are seeing and listening to, instead of making them just see it, and then listen to the teacher’s arguments regarding the topics that are being involved.

Teachers, in addition, most of the times have to deal with learners that are not interested in learning the English language and anything at all. Now, we have this film which may be a pleasurable and unusual activity for them. As a result, while seeing a film they would be having a good time and practicing their listening skills without even realizing it. Afterward, the lecturer could make student be aware of what they have learned in terms of history and English as well. Therefore, the students’ perception of English as an important and interesting subject may well change.

On the other hand, teachers may face some problems when using this or other types of films in the classroom. When using a tool, whatever it is, teachers have to encourage students use their imagination. If we want to show them this film in particular, the idea is to make them analyze what they are seeing, plus pupils also have to be creative too because they won’t listen to almost anything. If they do not do that, I think it won’t be a meaningful learning, since they would be acquiring just what the teacher says, which means, the teacher’s beliefs.

Still, if the professor does not have really clear what is going to be taught and just wants to show a film, then it would be kind of a waste of time. I mean, students would be learning, but they could do more than that. In this case, teachers are not risking anything at all, and they are not motivating their students to do something new, something unexpected to them.

Moreover, teachers could show this film, and show the pupils the messages that are reflected in it, and certainly that is good. Nevertheless, they may not be considering the faculty that students have to analyze without much help. The idea is to make students use their brain, use their imagination in order to develop their cognitive processes. It is not just about giving all the knowledge to them, otherwise, I believe that it could be complex for students to perform in other assignments, such as: essays, debates, spontaneous dialogues and so forth. Subsequently, students may feel sort of frustrated and anxious because of their bad performances. At last, they would reject more the subject and the learning process too.

To sum up, English teachers, and other as well, have the opportunity of using these kinds of tools in the classroom to create a more motivating and different class. However, professors must be aware of the pros and cons of it. If they know that, then the things they can get or provoke in their students would be very fascinating. Furthermore, students won’t be the only ones getting knowledge, since their teachers would be learning with the film and with the students’ questions, answers and performances as well. Teachers have to risk, they do not have to be afraid of doing that. If teachers risk in the classroom, the only thing they will obtain with it, is be a better teacher.

:: Modern Times::

Industrialization, along with Modernity, brought to people at that moment deep changes to their life style in general. First of all, people started to work in factories which gave them money to live or to survive in a way. At the same time, people left their houses in the the countryside to live in the city. Furthermore, we can see lot of people that were unemployed because of the machines, which replaced people’s work at the factories. By their own, men were totally unable to feet their family (poverty was at that time a huge issue obviously unsolved as it is nowadays), that provoked that women started to play a role in the stage along with men. Both had to work to bring food home. Moreover, people were entirely aware of the unfairness of politics. So, they wanted to show their feelings and thoughts through strikes making the whole society be involved in it. At the end, all these things made society wake up and start to fight for their rights or for the things they thought they should fight for. this, in a time called the ::Modern Times:: .

Elizabeth's reign

Elizabeth’s reign is still considered very significant for the beliefs she spread to her country at that time. Beliefs that may not be considered normal for the society that had to deal with them because she showed that she was married with the society, she showed that also people in jail could or had the right to fight for their country, although they were not supposed to live or to do things that normal people or the ones that had not problems with the law could do. Also the issue that involved religion was a very controversial one.

To Elizabeth, catholic was not the best option to follow, instead, she preferred to follow the protestant’s ideals because they seemed to be more real or fair for her than in the way that catholic people were. This topic, about religion, was something that turned into a big crisis between England and Spain. The thing is that the last one was very catholic instead of the first one that was against those beliefs as I already said, and obviously they thought that other religions that were not catholic were just disturbing people’s minds and were also breaking what society in general had already organized. So, now we understand the importance of Elizabeth’s reign in terms of opening people’s minds, and making them act or think in the way they preferred to.

...natives&immigrants...

Everybody knows that UK is not a place that was developed by itself, in terms of being one place with his own and unique, ideas, culture, economy and so on. On the contrary, UK was totally influenced by many other countries, people, ideas, thoughts and so forth. The thing is that all those influences played an important role when starting to create one unique culture, which nowadays is known by every single person as United Kingdom. First of all, we have to consider that the natives had their own system, which at that time could represent them. On the other hand we have the immigrants who actually were a big percentage. They had already developed their own way of being, and once getting in touch with the native ones, they could be able to realize that there were lots of things they haven’t seen before. They could appreciate new people, new way of organizing a country, and a new way of talking or communicating as well. In this way, they were forced to mix what they had fossilized with the different things they were seen in the other cultures. This was because just in that way, they could start to create a mixture in order to build a new and powerful culture, in order to continue creating and developing history.

definitions: Culture, civilization and critical thinking.

Culture is about a group of people sharing with each others. It is about things they have in common: their thoughts, their ways of being, their personal characteristics and so forth. Culture is something that is constructed in a mutual way, in order to have a social interaction. And this interaction is what differences us from others.

Civilization can be seen in different perspectives. For instance, on the one hand civilization is a term that nowadays can be known as progress, thanks to the development that societies have adopted through years. Civilization has a close relationship with the big and powerful countries of the world, such as E.E.U.U. which has a big influence in the others that are not as powerful as that one. On the other hand, society is just for a minority ( powerful countries) continuing taking advantage of countries that are powerless and do not have the tools to manage this situation and have to submit to them, although they do not agree with it.

Critical thinking is a characteristic human beings have to analyze, evaluate, observe and reflect whether something that has been say, something that has been done, or something that has been shown in order to comprehend the reason of them. Critical thinking has to do with an empirical act. It is about knowing the reality, but not just in order to understand, since has to do with changing things in order to improve things we as society have done. Critical thinking is actually a process of creating new information, thus, new beliefs, new and revolutionaries’ points of view.

Expectations

Hi everyone!

Well, for this course I’d really like to learn about the society and how this has been changing through years. How people’s mind is affected by the society in general thanks to the things that this delivers every day that we can see in different circumstances such as: in education, life in general, contact that people has with each others and so on. Furthermore, I’d like to learn regarding culture in general among the different topics we can appreciate. This is very important for the reason that we as future teachers must know about everything, not just the English language, we need to know what happened and what is happening with the society and world as well.



Marcela.