Promising Practicing

I truly enjoyed the key note address giving by Robert Brooks, that essentially was about how people become more resilient when having a positive impact on others. He spoke about his time at a dealing with mentally disable kids and how he could create that positive impact that drove him to be resilient. He did say that he had not so good days, allowing us to relate to him. One of his main points was that building meaningful relationship with kids could lead us to have a positive impact. He said that we must me charismatic adults, those who people can gathered strength from. I enjoyed that a lot it made me think about the impact I’m going to have on my future students. It made me think of those adults that played this role in my life. They did this by being empathetic. He did state something that made me think of Kahne and Westheimer, he stated that we should provide an opportunity to make people feel like they are making an impact. This sounds a bit like charity not so much change. So, is being a charismatic adult just charity or is it change? Can it have that strong of an impact that can lead to change in a young person? I think it could go both way depending on how the adult goes about it.  I would like to think I am going to be those charismatic adults that create a strong impact by providing a shift in the mentality of those I work with. Another thing he brought up was taking time to research the demographics and cultures of the students you are working with. To embrace the different cultures rather than shutting them down. This related to Rodriguez when he felt that he had to hide his culture to assimilate the culture of power. He wanted us to chllange that culture of power that Deplit explains.     

I went to my first workshop that had to do with mentoring. How building the meaningful relationship could have an impact that could last a life time to the students. One of the presenters was a young lady that was part of the mentoring program. She had mentor and I could tell that she this did help her. Gave her guidance.

The second workshop I went to was how mindfulness and meditation could create a resilient environment. This was my favorite part of the whole day. I was looking forward to this workshop and it did not disappoint. The professor that gave the workshop talked about how she would make her fifth graders meditate and the positive impact that it has. She went over the 5 yamas and 5 niyamas. It was a beautiful presentation. I am into this kind of stuff and seeing that there is a possibility to apply this to what I am pursuing was an eye-opening experience. I’ve read different articles that showed that mediation in a classroom can have a positive impact, but hearing it from someone else made it real. In this article many postive impacts are backed up with concrete research. I look forward to applying this as a future educatior. I loved the mini meditation we had last class!