reflection

Reflection is an essential element in being a student teacher, but when you think about it it is an essential element in life.  We reflect on choices everyday.  We question what has gone before and how things now would be different if before was altered.  We don't always learn from reflection and can often make the same or similar mistakes repetitively but what we do do is acknowledge this.  

Professional reflection is more than that.  This is something that I am learning more about everyday.  The multi-faceted nature of professional reflection provides explanation and aids understanding.  It can provide a basis for future decisions and a stepping stone to gaps in our knowledge.

All reflections are a learning tool and all learning tools are essential.

I'm still at the very beginning of my journey towards being a teacher.  Already I feel I have learned a great deal and with this knowledge has come the understanding that I have so much more still to learn.  The thing that gives me the most happiness is the fledgeling confidence that I am starting to develop, this is building alongside my knowledge.  I always try to be aware of the skill of those around me and try to learn as much as I can from them.  The capacity of the human mind always amazes me, even though I know I will never fully comprehend the scale of that capacity.  

The rise, fall and rise of the fairytale?

Classic fairy tales have always had a part in my life, I love myths and legends and I am also a Disney devotee and can never resist sharing one of the classics with my children.  Tonight we watched Coraline and it got me thinking; do we share the enthusiasm for the genre that we have always believed?  Or, perhaps, the happily ever after that we love so much has been extending to the happily-the-whole-way-through-with-only-a-few-little-bumps-along-the-way.


Parents, as adults, often see elements of a film that children do not, why else would dreamworks be so successful?  The jokes that are double entendres added for adult entertainment and deliberately pitched to go above the radar of their young audiences provide some light relief for those who are more reluctant to watch children's movies.


Recently the animation short The Sandman was shown to a group of us in a university input.  We were asked if we would use this animation with a primary seven class and most of us thought we would not.  The animation had seemed to be too frightening for the age of the pupils.


The settings of animations has a huge impact on our perception and perhaps my desire for bright and colourful scenes is more to do with personal preference than my desire for the happy, happy everything is rosy.  As we are all aware just because everything is bright, colourful and outwardly happy does not mean it is a good thing.


The question is should children be exposed to less of the happily-the-whole-way-through-with-only-a-few-little-bumps-along-the-way or have we just forgotten to recognise the scary elements of the films that we watched as children?


Think Snow White - dysfunctional family, rejected by her murdering step mother.


Sleeping Beauty - arranged marriage, sent away to grow up, hunted down by a wicked fairy who wants to kill her


Cinderella - again dysfunctional family, suffers mental abuse by step mother and bullying from stepsisters, treated like a slave, only escape is marriage


Pinocchio - where do I start?


You get the picture.  Should we wrap our children in cotton wool (or bubble wrap) to protect them not only from real life but from the stories that we grew up hearing?  Has political correctness made us wary of fairy tales or, maybe, we are all so traumatised from these tales in childhood that we wouldn't dream of inflicting this on our little darlings?


There is also the view point that children see and experience too much negativity already in life so it is understandable that adults would want to protect their charges from being exposed to any more.  This can be a double edged idea.  Surely exposure prevents a child from believing that life is a walk in the park?


I know which I believe.  I also know that I am going to continue not to worry when sharing fairy tales with my children after all they are children and I believe that fairy tales are a part of childhood.

Empty minds? Always bad?

Dearest facebook can you please release your grip on me for the next week, I really must work hard and write some essays. I will be ever so grateful and promise to devote lots of time to you once they have been handed in...

I posted this to my status this morning.  Has it helped?  Not a great deal but everytime I visit my profile I do get a pang of guilt and log off.  The trouble is I don't tend to visit my actual profile page very often and the live feeds on my home page make it impossible for my guilt to be invoked forcing me to abandon the facebook bandwagon.

If I am completely truthful I should write one of these for nearly every single thing I use on the internet from Twitter to blogs to emails, even the google wave and farm have been benefiting from my procrastination surrounding my assignments!

This tangent time led me to the blog of Alastair Creelman and his post on being bored.  It made me think, we do spend so much time doing and not doing but do we ever have empty time?  Time to just sit and daydream?  I know that I have lots of time that I would class as empty time but I am also aware of the fact that I do not appreciate it enough.  

Now for the link to my studies, and there is one, when do we give children this time?   Do we teach them how to switch off and do nothing?  Should we?  Surely it is essential for their creative development not to mention their personal development.  Being able to have bored time, would that give children the skills to deal with stress now and in the future?

Back to Uni

Well the holidays are officially over and I have returned to uni life.  Despite the fact that I have two assignments due next wek I have had a complete break from doing any real or purposeful work for the entire time I have been off.  It's not exactly a great thing to admit, that I have done no work, but I needed a break with a complete switch off.  Sometimes we all need to switch off and, hopefully, I will be completely re-focused once the flow returns...


So, about that...  Any ideas on how to get the old brain back on track?  One bonus is that for a change I remember that the year has changed and I haven't, yet, written 2009  (cue memory laspe!)


It is easy to think about the things I really enjoy working on but what is not so easy are the things I really need to think about in order to think about them.