Social Interest

On a counseling lecture, we with the instructor discussed the aspect of social interest and community feeling according to Adler. And this idea grabbed my attention since I like every idea related to community service and volunteering, it's my dream job, to leave a fingerprint on the society. As a counselor or a teacher it's  your job to encourage students to be apart of their society, to give and help without return. The socialization process associated with social interest begins in childhood and involves helping children to find a place in society and acquire a sense of belonging, this is a sign of mental health according to Adler. He also said that our happiness and success are largely related to this social connectedness, '' to see with the eyes of another, to hear with ears of another, to feel with the heart of another'' (Ansbacher1979,p. 42). This is really a great pleasure to help others and make the world a better place, you will feel connected to all humanity past, present and future ones. The major psychological problem a lot of people face it, is the feeling of inferiority and the fear of not being accepted by the group, when the sense of belonging isn't fulfilled anxiety is the result. For this we should start at lower ages, encouraging kids to help and give for their society and improving their sense of belonging. 

Webinar: Disrupting poverty

Dealing with poor children is something that every successful teacher must learn about. This webinar which is titled '' Disrupting poverty: five powerful classroom practices'' highlighted several important ways for dealing with poor children. First, Ms. Kathleen Budge and Mr. William Parrett explained about the techniques and steps that teachers teaching students from poor economic status can use to help their students overcome these issues. They included: Cultivating caring relationships, holding high expectations ( this is a must because people assume that individuals in poverty are unmotivated and have a weak work ethics and they're not as smart as people who aren't poor), committing to equity, taking professional accountability for learning, mustering the courage and will to take action. One of the basic needs of students who live in poor conditions is to be given care and attention. This will increase student effort and engagement and improve their academic achievement. Also, they need hope, so it's important for a teacher to give those students hope and let them see their future by asking them about their aspirations, make suggestions based on students interests and strength and tell them you believe on them. Moreover, it's very important to let those students work collaboratively with other ones to avoid letting them feel inferior. That's why, for a teacher to be successful, she needs to take all of these points into consideration and she shouldn't forget that poor children have the right to learn just like other ones.

Reflection on Counseling course

Before I started Teaching diploma, I was always worried and offended about being a teacher, since I hated to be like the teachers who taught me. But when I took counseling course I started loving teaching job and I started looking at it in a different way. With this course I also started believing that teaching job isn't only a teacher standing in classroom center giving information, ideas, knowledge to a students sitting in their chairs listening, following and taking notes, It's a teacher, a counselor who care about his student's life issues, problems, emotions and tried to help them overcome it, It's a teacher with a counselor role who can detect psychological problems and solve it. This let me think how much a teacher have the power to change student's life, inspire them, give them hope, It's really a great job! We discussed Freudian psychoanalytic view ( Id: actions made us happy, Ego: decisions we make, Superego: values and models). We also discussed a very important topic about Ego-defense mechanisms, that are behaviors individuals do unconsciously to protect their ego. As teachers I think we should learn these subjects to be able to interpret student's behavior and detect issues, for improving their education and developing their personalities in a healthy way. Students are born scientists, they love to explore things and learn, but sometimes their life, family issues widely affect them in a negative way  and may lead them to worse places if not treated well.

Lecture reflection

Yesterday in ''Practices'' course, we with the instructor ''Rasha Halat'' discussed a new lesson about Diversity in classroom. Dr. Rasha divided us to groups and every group explained one type of diversity. Beside the importance of this lesson, in this way we improved our skills in presenting and explaining our points of view toward an issue. I found this lesson a need to be understood by teachers. We all as teachers will face different types of students in a classroom, and we should learn how to make students overcome these differences. Socioeconomic status, backgrounds, Interests, age group, learning styles, personal traits, Abilities ( Linguistic, physical and cognitive), religion, political parties, Physical appearance, nationality, cultural background and gender, are all types of diversity in classroom, we discussed what each one of them really means, how they're manifested in the classroom , how they affect learners and how we should deal with them. My group's part was about physical appearance, where students in one class may have different visible aspects or outer appearance, for example; height ( tall and short ones), weight (fat and skinny ones), the presence of acne ( specially teenagers), clothes... Theses differences may affect learners negatively if students with such cases consider themselves different or other students make fun of them, they may hate school and their academic learning decreases. And here comes the teacher's role, where she/he has the power to make students overcome these differences by showing them that differences are ''normal'' and diversity exists and this can be done for example by showing students movies ( show difference in characters), tell stories, posters, activities to encourage students to think about their beliefs and look at the world in a different way. 

I like this topic it's very wide and important specially that these differences are found out side school in student's real life, so dealing with these differences in a healthy way will make students tolerate any type of difference outside the classroom and this is needed these days!

Avocado: The perfect pregnancy food

According to new studies, avocados are a must-eat for pregnant woman. We always here about a food that a pregnant women shouldn't eat like alcohol, caffeine and others, but rarely we here about specific food she should eat. In general, a pregnant woman needs a balanced diet full of needed nutrients for a normal fetus development. Avocados was known as a healthy source of fat, a good source of folate, vitamin B that help prevent birth defects when it's taken during pregnancy, Iron, potassium, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin E,K and the list just keep going. Avocado also showed a beneficial effects for lactating women. So, avocados are a unique source of nutrition for pregnant and lactating women and it should be included in the dietary recommendations for mothers. Maternal intake of nutrients can affect the nutrients composition of breast milk, for example maternal intake of vitamin A, B 6, B 12, as well as Iodine and fatty acids directly influence the composition of breast milk. Studies showed that the imbalance between high level of sodium and low levels of potassium leads to hypertension which is associated with the increase  of the risk for stroke, cardiovascular disease ( lower systolic, diastolic, blood pressure), insulin resistance. Also hypertension is associated with preeclampsia (is a condition in pregnancy characterized by high blood pressure) which are both harmful to fetal death and leads to high congenital malformations and cardiac defects. Potassium intake decrease the gestational hypertension with 200_300 mg which is less than the amount found in one half of a medium sized avocado. Thus, Avocado deserves to be the world's most perfect food! 

Reference: https://www.bellybelly.com.au/pregnancy/avocados-during-pregnancy-huge-benefits/

Maternal smoking during pregnancy

Maternal smoking during pregnancy is a serious social problem that we should all be aware from, because of it’s really damaging effects. Studies, researches that concern the maternal smoking during pregnancy (MSP) showed alarming results of the effects of MSP on fetus during its development on the uterus and even after it’s born. As a fetus of smoking mother have showed effects in infancy, childhood and adolescence. Maternal smoking during pregnancy not only affects the fetus‘s health which is damaging in some cases but also it affects the behavior of the child, as a study showed that ''Children exposed to MSP are more likely to experiment with tobacco by themselves'', also it may lead to learning difficulties such as; Autism. MSP have a direct effects by toxins in utero, and indirect effects that cause the damage in the placental unit. Thickening of the basement membrane, increase of tissue and morphological changes in the placenta, decreased vascularization, these are the most effects of MSP on fetus during the first trimester. MSP is a large modifiable risk of asthma, it leads to aberrant development and premature ageing if the fetal lungs. As an early life influence, maternal smoking during pregnancy leads to preterm birth (birth at the 37^th week), intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) which refers to a condition in which the unborn baby is smaller than it should be because it is not growing at normal rate inside the womb. Also, MSP have a long term effects on lung function, and it increases the risk of infection; respiratory infections as wheezing and asthma. Breast feeding is another influencing factor for early childhood infections, where it is a protective effect on infant wheezing, however, children of mother’s smoking in pregnancy are less likely to breast fed; which again increase the risk for wheezing episode in early life. Breast feeding for less than 3 months increase the risk of asthma at ages of 1,2,4 and 10 years. As a later influence MSP affects the immune system modulation, where the changes in the utero and the external environment reduces the capacity of offspring to protect themselves against environmental stressors. Toxins acts by activating or repressing certain immune regulating genes through epigenetic effects. Finally, every cigarette taken by a pregnant women is doing a damage by a way or another, so stop this crime in your god’s gift, and know that when you’re pregnant you’re not just eating for two you’re breathing for two! Take a decision and quit smoking today. 

Reference: Zacharasiewicz, A.2016 Jul; 2(30): 00042-2016. doi: 10.1183/23120541.0042.2016. 

School's Lunch Time

When talking about food in schools it seams for us something less important, since we care most in academic learning, but lunch time in schools is an educational period same as math or science. Yesterday I watched a video on Facebook about school's lunch time in Japan, and I was surprised that their lunch was not  just about eating! It improves the student's cooperative skills, where at the end of the last session before lunch, students by themselves arrange their tables for lunch, clean them, and put the luncheon mat that they bring it with them. A group of students in each class were responsible in food serving for their friends, they distribute food for others in an organized manner. One students come before eating and after each students have his own lunch, tell his friends about today's food ingredients and the healthy benefits of each type, then all students together start eating with the teacher in group. At the end students also clean their tables and collect plastics, cartoons used for recycling. As you see this simple lunch can enforce many skills in students, starting from cooperative skills and group work, autonomy where they do things by themselves without any help, presenting skills, also students were aware about the importance of food since no one had food leftovers, applied recycling, they also learned to help others, learned equality where all students with no exceptions cleaned stairs, ground  and tables and many other skills that I'm sure it reflects and improves their academic education. 

 

Genius map

One of my best days ever, The Largest One Day Soroban Competition that officially attend Guinness World Records. In this competition there were 2500 genius students of different ages and gender and from different places all over Lebanon, they all learned the abacus technique for math calculations using the '' Soroban'';  an ancient math calculation tool used in Japan for many years. It was held in Forum de beyrouth, and I went there as a volunteer to help in assisting in the opening ceremony, proctoring during the competition, distributing the exams to students where every student has a different exam, making sure that every student is correctly seated by checking his/her ID, correcting about 20 sheets of exams for 30 minutes,  attending the final ceremony for distributing the certificates of appreciation to all volunteers. It was a pleasure to see how hard work really paid off, where attending such a competition was a dream for Mr. Hadi Hamza, the owner of genius map. This gave me a lesson that when you believe in your dreams nothing will stop you from achieving it, at the beginning it was an idea and now more than 2000 students all around Lebanon are learning abacus technique and competing all over the world. When I watched those little students solving large mathematical calculations mentally and using Soroban, I thought  how much this technique gave students strong skills in thinking process, where they can solve problems mentally enforcing their critical thinking. Moreover, it improves the student's memory, imaginative and creative thinking, logical and time management skills. All these abilities and skills will definitely improve the student's academic achievement and this what I like most. It was a long historical and special day of my life, and I was really glad and proud of myself for this achievement, just like scaling new heights and setting new standards for me, specially when I think that I'm now part of the Guinness Book chapters. Special thank to our university that gave me this opportunity, looking forward for new experiences, achievements like this.