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HIGHWAY TO TEACH VERY YOUNG LEARNERS

Have you ever thought what to be a teacher implies? Have you ever imagined the deep grasp that involves teaching children? By answering these two questions, we would realize that TVYL has been becoming a great deal, and if we decide to go through this road we would find so many interesting reasons in order to keep ourselves on it.

If you have decided to take the challenge to be a TVYL, you must know that you will keep yourself continuously learning even though your job is teaching. In this teaching-learning process you need to be capable to learn as much grasp as possible. The teacher needs to know how to use different strategies for the diversity of behaviors that the children have; you will know how to utilize varied methodologies that are going to be useful in your teaching situations.

In this manner, we decided to use the term highway because TVYL is really a big challenge to accomplished; however, if we take the decision of going through the highway of TVYL, we will be full of satisfaction when our knowledge is transmitted to every single child and when every single child transmits a huge amount of knowledge to us.

The young learner

The children have many specific characteristics that could help the teacher to find weakness and strengths as well as to develop the best atmosphere in the classroom.In our teaching practicum we have noticed a great deal of behaviors that children have, and also different ways in which they can learn appropriately a new language. Besides, children’s behaviors we must take into account the importance that the age of children have so that we might create a bond.

When we are teaching young learners, we can find out that some kids do not like to work in group, but we know it is natural in children with ages from four to six to be quite restless; therefore, we decided to rearrange the desks for every child stays all the time near of one another. In this manner, we could manage an actively either for the whole class, for pairs work or just groups work. We found out pupils were in agreement and happy doing the activity in that way, and we as English language practitioners felt satisfied because we got our pupils to work in groups.

Another behavior which needed special care was that the young learner is not used to following rules. We had to make an extra effort to catch their attention using a wide variety of tools, such as, puppets, flash cards, paper dolls; we were also using a class mascot called Pepita which based on our opinion was a very useful tool in the classroom.

We also have to mention that if you make full use of these tools for sure you will get different results, but they will depend on what you want is that the pupil speaks, or if what you want is to develop listening abilities on the children you can tell them a short tale that catch their attention at that very moment.

Since our point of view being a young language learner must be a hilarious experience so that the pupil’s attitude will be available for the learning experience.

Class management and atmosphere

A positive atmosphere can make a classroom a more pleasant place to be and a more effective motivating place to learn. It can have positive results on the achievement of students. We can cover the walls of the classroom with positive messages: posters with motivational pictures and words; inspirational quotations from great people; positive paintings, drawings, prose, poems, or things done by the students. Furthermore, we, as practitioners, have to treat them as individuals according to academic needs and skills, each one needs to feel confident, if not they will not learn. Moreover, we have to encourage the students with positive feedback whenever possible; they like to work in groups, play games or sing songs, so we can take advantage of this.

As practitioners we are learning how to do things and improve what we know like the attitudes which can be learned and worked on. For example, helping the children to feel secure; knowing what we are doing, respecting our pupils and establish routines to build up familiarity and security. In my case, I have to improve things like my body language and tone of voice. I have 41 students, and sometimes it is hard for me to control them. But, they like to play games; thus, I take advantage of that and I teach them by playing.

One of the disadvantages I have is the arranging the desks because I teach only one hour on Wednesday and one on Friday. For that reason, I cannot change them because moving desks during a lesson is very noisy and a time- consuming activity.However, the teacher always tries new techniques like work in pars, in groups or alone. Particularly five and six year olds are often happiest working alone, and are not yet willing to cooperate and share. But, my pupils are different; they enjoy working together.

My short-term objective is providing daily opportunities for students to collaborate with others about an issue, such as naming classroom objects. I will reach this objective by teaching the students essential vocabulary. My long-term objective is furthering work on initiatives to grow the students' self-esteem to encourage ongoing success. I will accomplish this by working on consistently giving positive reinforcement, which has been shown to lead students to feel loved. Praising specific achievements, showing sincerity and quickly reinforcing good results are ways to give positive reinforcement. I know it will be hard, but I will do my best effort.


BY R. JEANMILLETTE FERNANDEZ
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How can you adapt your own style of teaching to accommodate to the needs and motivations of young learners? There are some features that are proper characteristics of young language learners. Mostly, these characteristics are very important because the teacher must always have them in mind in order to manage the classroom and the pupils in a more effective manner.

Here I will list those peculiar characteristics of young learners:-Children tend to be keen: This is an important tool that we can use when we are teaching because we are aware of the potential that a pupil has when we want to develop an activity.-Children like to experiment: This characteristic is important because the children explores his o her environment just by touching, watching and tasting.-Children want to have fun: Let say that fun is an effective way to get the knowledge to the children. By having fun the pupils will involve themselves in classroom games, activities and tasks.-Children cannot concentrate for long: This could seem a disadvantage for the teacher but it is not. We have focused our attention in preparing short activities so that the child is concentrated during the teacher performs the class.

Since the fact that I am an ELT practitioner, I know that there are many things to change if I want to enhance some skills that teachers have been developing throughout the years. I would like to say that the first matter I have to change is that I would like to create a better rapport with the children; doing this is not difficult for me, but I really wish to find an exact way in which the kid could really feel confident participating on activities and tasks developed in class.

LONG AND SHORT TERM GOALS
In this part of the activity I will explain the most important aims that I have established since the beginning of my teaching English practicum.

Thus, the most important short-term goal is to be a facilitator in order to create a strong bound between the grasp and the children. It also involves the creation of an adequate atmosphere without forgetting to put in practice techniques and methodologies that will let the student easily learn the language at issue. Another short-term goal is to make the difference between a traditional teacher and an enabler; in this way, I want to know about the subject matter, methodologies and how to deal with people in the most effective manner.

Besides, I would like to create the conditions which enable the student to learn by themselves and that the teacher suitably acts as a guide, a counselor and a source of information when it is needed by the pupil.

Well, how do I plan to reach this aims? I could say that the first step I did was when I started my teaching practicum, and now that it is almost finished I may say that I met too many attitudes and abilities. I would have never imagined creating rapport with children or creating a nice classroom atmosphere, but in my practicum I even learned how to group the whole class according to the activity that I was attempting to perform.

It is said that the more somebody practices the more somebody learns, so taking this into account will encourage our self to learn in order to become professional teachers of English.


BY: ANGEL NACXIT GÓMEZ CAMPOS
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 Our personality is already formed, but there are abilities and attitudes which can be learnt and worked on. As a teacher of young children it helps a lot if we have a sense of humor, suitable and patient. If we are silent reserved type, we have to work on those attitudes because our personalities can influence in children’s learning.

All of us may not be brilliant teacher like some children wish, but we can try to learn some important abilities like playing the guitar, singing songs and drawing activities.

In all my teaching practice I have seen how some children like to learn playing, so they learn when they play, but I have also seen some children who do not feel capable. Confidence is not only an attitude but ability. It is essential if we want our pupils to get the maximum overcome of the lesson.

LONG AND SHORT TERM GOALS
One of my long term goals as a practitioner is to work with children’s abilities because it is something that is going to help me to achieve other goals such as how to get along with children or how to arrange children’s desks in order to learn grouping. I know it is common in that level, so I have to teach them the importance of working and share whit their classmates.


BY: JOSÉ FLORENTINO LOPEZ FLORES

Listening, Oral Work, Reading and Writing

The four macro skills are listening; speaking, reading and writing and, the challenges of teaching them are many. For example, teaching English as a foreign language to six year old children is difficult because they do not understand what we are teaching or saying.

Listening

Listening is the language skill which learners usually find the easiest. The teacher plays an important role; the challenge for these is that the teacher must help pupils prepare for the listening task well before they hear the text itself. First of all, the teacher must ensure that the pupils understand the language they need to complete the task and are fully aware of exactly what is expected of them. During the listening, the pupils should be able to concentrate on understanding the message, so make sure they are not trying to read, draw and write at the same time. Always give a second chance to listen to the text to provide a new opportunity to those who were not able to do the task. We tried lots of activities to teach listening to our pupils; for example mime stories and drawing. It was really nice because students paid attention and participated a lot. We make just necessary changes in these activities because it is difficult to make all students concentrate on what in in front of them and create a peaceful atmosphere with 40 students. Another activity that may work in our teaching context islisten and color; we think that is a good activity for children, for they like to do it. Unfortunately, we could not try in classes because of the time. On the contrary, listen for the mistake is a difficult activity for young learners; that is why, we could not try it.

Speaking

Speaking is the second macro skill. It is perhaps the most demanding skill for the teacher to teach because students are afraid of committing mistakes, so they do not talk too much; if they talk, they do it in their mother tongue.  We used lots of activities such as songs and poems. Pupils learnt a song and sang it. We used this as listening and speaking activity because they learn to speak by listening. This helps pupils to master the sounds, rhythms, and intonation of the English language through simple reproduction. The games and pair work activities; on the other hand, encourage the pupils to begin to manipulate the language by presenting them with a certain amount of choice. Another activity that may work in our teaching context is having a mascot. This could help because children like to interact, ask question and play; nevertheless, it is an activity we could try. On the other hand, an activity we think cannot be useful for teaching English to children is role plays. For doing this activity, students must have vocabulary that beginners do not have; they are not ready for doing this, and if they feel nervous, they would not learn.

Reading

Reading just as listening is the main source of language when pupils start to learn a new language. It is kind of difficult to teach because students get bored quickly.In order to make reading an interesting challenge as opposed to a tedious chore, it is important that pupils do not labor over every word, whether they are scanning the text for general meaning or for picking out specific information. We have to keep in mind lot of thing when we are teaching English as a foreign language specially for teaching children; one of the things is choose texts consider not only their difficulty level, but also their interest or their humor so that children will want to read for the same reasons they read in their own language: to be entertained or to find out something they do not already know. We used reading a story from a book; this activity helped us a lot because it was new for them to read an English book, and they enjoy it.For children not to get bored quickly, we gave them little book with wonderful stories. Besides, we tried reading a class story; it was difficult because we had too many students; however, it worked. They participated, and some of them were performing the things their classmates were saying.Furthermore, we have more activities we could not use but it may work such as reading texts based on the child’s language. We think it may work because children like to give their opinion. As with listening activities, it is important to spend time preparing for the task by using the illustrations or the texts they could read and,we did it just silent reading because we think reading aloud inhibits most pupils and forces them to concentrate on what they are saying as opposed to what they are reading and the meaning is very often lost. This could happen when the pupil who is reading makes a mistake and all his or her classmates start laughing and bothering.

Writing

Writing was the most difficult part for our pupils; even though, they progress from writing isolated words and phrases, to short paragraphs about themselves or about very familiar topics (family, home, hobbies, friends, food, etc.). Since many pupils at this level are not yet capable either linguistically or intellectually of creating a piece of written text from scratch, it is important that time is spent building up the language they will need and providing a model on which they can then base their own efforts. We could not try many writing activities; we just tried matching. Even though it worked; it was difficult to explain what the pupils were supposed to do. Although dictation is a good activity and may work with our pupils, we could not try it because of the level of our children. One of the activities we think may not work is dialogues because our pupils´ vocabulary is limitated.

When things go wrong in class

One of the most difficult things I faced in my teaching practicum is the lack of discipline I mean that in many schools students are allowed to wander in and out of the classroom, arriving late or skipping classes. The criteria for marking should take attendance and punctuality into account, to the same extent that these matters are important in the job world that students plan to enter one day. Even though it was difficult I tried to do my best, I ask the teacher for help because there were to girls (that were studying psychology at the University of El Salvador) that were just listening the classes, and all the students wanted to talk with them. At the end, the teacher changed the days for them to go just to her classes. Since that day the class never went out of control; but there were always external disturbance. Kindergarten classrooms are so close to ten and eleven´s classrooms and, it was a mess when they had no classes; our pupils sometimes wanted to do the same like to go outside the classroom or buy something to eat. Besides, the street is next to the kindergarten´s classroom when ambulance passed the pupils always got up to take a look of what was happening. One of the tips I used the most was teaching the words of the things that were happening outside; for example; when an alarm was activated I taught the word alarm, and I gave them some examples sometimes related with the topic we were studying.

One of the problems I had I lack of motivation. Most of them were really interested in learning a new language; however four of them were not. Actually, they don't see the point in learning another different language. And this is obvious, if the students speak Spanish, and they don't have English speaking people as neighbors, big chances are that they won't feel motivated to study it. In fact, I could not do anything for the four students; I just let them learn whatever they wanted.

Furthermore, behavior is a big problem because students get bored if the activity takes too long and, it brings distractions and causes a messy class. I just tried to control their behavior in other ways of releasing energy like activities or games.

Another difficult thing that happened to me the first day was that the teacher did not tell me I was going to teach two hours, and I prepared things just for one hour. At the beginning I did know what to do, but I had read the book “teaching English to children” and, I remembered lots of activities. We played a game, sang a song and made draws.

As practitioners we faced many problems because it was our first time but it was really wonderful to learn how to teach and treat children. It is difficult to plan everything and the go to teach.

BY R. JEANMILLETTE FERNANDEZ

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Throughout my teaching practicum I had to face new situations. In some moments at my practicum time I did not know what to do or how to react when there was a disturbance in the classroom. I had to deal with children’s behaviors such as boredom, stress and lack of participation in the activities. There were many situations like those in the teaching practicum, but with the help of the tutor and based on the prior observation, I could easily solve some of the problems that may occur in the classroom.

First I like to mention internal and external disturbances as the main problem I had to face because nobody could control disturbances even more if they are external. In those moments I tried to catch children’s attention using different strategies. I use some tools that immediately get the children back to the class. I also had some problems when doing an activity and it took too much time or maybe it was quite difficult to accomplish. In these moments I quickly had to move to another activity, or I tried to explain it with understandable words.

So many times I had to know how to control the classroom because the children easily get distracted when they see almost every sort of things. This characteristic is useful in the teaching environment, so we can use it as a tool. We have already learned how to create a variety of teaching aids that have become an really important part if what we need is to teach young language learners.

In all ways I would find situations that will help me in one or another manner. The main thing is that I learned how to deal with them, and now I am confident enough. Maybe in the future I will have to face many other problems in the classroom, but with this practicum I will be more confident when I take risks. I will do a nice job.

BY ANGEL NACXIT GÓMEZ CAMPOS

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It is very important to be ready when the things go wrong. We all know that young children are wonderfully spontaneous and sometimes they do and say whatever comes to their minds.

Young children are not angels and we are not gifted teacher; we also need to know that when they are interested in something they are going to do it or they will show it.

I remember when I had my second practice and the class went out of control. The teacher was not there and some pupils began to through garbage to one another and the other children did the same. I tried to stop them but they did not listen to me, so I did not find anything to do. I went to ask the teacher for help.

In that time then the teacher got into the classroom all the young children sat in their desk and the teacher began to tell a story and I learned a new way to get the control of the class. It was a difficult experience for me because I have never had many young children as pupils.

BY JOSÉ FLORENTINO LOPEZ FLORES

The tools of the trade

Compare traditional teaching and 21st century teaching.

There is a wide variety of salient traits that aretaking place in the 21st century between every single English language teaching practiotioner. Here we have some important traits that we think they are to be esentials to be aware of the differences they have.  

Traditional Teachers: 

Lecture all day long

Prevent change

Be the sage on the stage

Teach to the test

Be able to chew gum all day and tell my students they can't

Retire next year and it just doesn't matter anymore 

Sit in the teacher loung and complain

Teach one year 25 times

I want a computer just to report grades

Keep my mouth shut and wait to become an administrator

Cover rather than uncover material and use chalk

Quit learning

21st Century Teachers 

Collaborative work will be just as important as individual work

PBL ( project based learning) won't just be an acronym

Edit, remix, and share media with my students

Learn from my students

Expect change

Create my own personal learning network

Add students on my space in Facebook ( humm i personally don't agree with this)

Encourage appropriate online interaction

I won't fear technology , I ll embrace it

Create positive learning environments

When it comes to our personal policy on technology, we don't have a problem with the new digital era, but we feel that when it drives all of our attention away from the real problems we face in our day to day lives, then technology can be hazardous to our well-being. The use of electronic devices can't take away the power of a teacher educating a student one on one. We think that if you take the personal human interaction from the students, then you lose the ability to teach and communicate the importance of self awareness of and to others, being able to overcome error on your own, and encourage inner motivation in ones self.

 

Self-assesment and evaluation of our own learning in this course

Teaching English to young children is difficult because we have to follow some rules or methodologies to make learning happen. In this course, I learnt too much things like preparing classes for children. Even though I do not want to be a teacher, I really enjoyed taking this subject.

Some things were so difficult for me because I do not have enough experience with young children. For example: The students sometimes misbehave and we have to understand them because they are children, and they get bored quickly. Though I understood them, I did not what to do.

One of the things I really enjoyed the most was that the children were enthusiastic, and ifthey did not understand, they asked many questions in order to have an idea of what they were doing.In fact, I tried explained the activity in an easy way for the children to understand. Then I asked them some questions to check if they understood.Moreover, the students were more motivated I used drawings, pictures or puppets because they understood better all the words.
One of the things I did not know until taking this subject was using phrases like “that is excellent, you are so smart” because children feel motivated to answer. Also, the arrangement of desks was so important in every activity I carried out with them; I made them to work individual or in groups, and both of them worked; nevertheless it depended on the activity.
Besides, it is so important to have a good rapport with children because they feel comfortable going to the school.

 
BY R. JEANMILLETTE FERNANDEZ
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I think this teaching experience was wonderful, amazing and marvelous. Since it was my first teaching practice, I am so grateful because I realize that my knowledge has increase talking about my teaching skills. Now I know how to deal with children. This training was very important because it let us know about the very young learner, their attitudes and behaviors. The big question is how we are going to put the learned grasp in practice. TVYL is a big deal. I was so glad doing my practicum. I made a wide use of teaching aids, and if everyone wants to succeed, I would recommend the usage of these sorts of materials. I could say that I reached the short-term goals that I established since the very beginning of my teaching practicum. Now I am ready to face new challenges and to get more knowledge every single day.In order to improve this teacher training course I would recommend the usage of more media materials which will help the practitioner to have a different approach to the subject matter. We know the teacher’s roll is to be a facilitator ofthe information because there are many topics that are kind of difficult to investigate. In the other hand I would say that I am really pleased with the job I did because I have learned how to deal with children, how to get on well with them, how to deal the hundreds of behaviors and attitudes they have.

BY ANGEL NACXIT GÓMEZ CAMPOS
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We already know that is hard to teach young learners because they have a special way to learn. If we are going to teach English in kindergarten level, we should know some tips and some ways which will help us in order to improve our teaching skills.I can say in this course I have learned how I can work with young learners; for example now I know what to do if I want to get alone with the children. I learned how to create a pretty environment to learning takes place. I performed useful games and activities which children enjoy as they learn these skills.I have learned helpful ideas for ways to organize my lesson and practicum. I fell satisfied because my teaching practicum was well. I know my students were learning and developing their skills in a good and funny way.I think before doing the teaching English practicum the teacher’s should train better the students because the young learners have special ways to learn, and if someone is not ready to face the situation, the practicum would become a mess.

 
BY JOSÉ FLORENTINO LOPEZ FLORES

Guide about the movie ''beyond the blackboard''

1) Discuss Stacey’s first week at the school. How were The School with No Name and its students different from what she expected? What was her reaction to these differences?
  R/ Stacey was scared at the beginning. She thought she made a mistake with the address because for her it was not a school the place she went. She did not have any idea of what to do or how to start creating a good environment. Stacey’s first week was difficult; she expected to be the teacher in a normal or traditional school. But she got frustrated when she went to the school and discovered it was a weird place that it did not have all the requirements with almost no supplies and little support from school board officials and reluctant parents The placed did not have a good atmosphere; there were no things that the students made pasted on the wall, and there was too much noise. Even if the desks were old and almost useless, the arrangement was not the best option because it did not help the students to participate. Even though the students did not get along well, and they did not show respect one another, the arrangement could have worked creating a good atmosphere.

2) In the beginning of the film, Stacey said “school was a safe place with a glimpse of who I wanted to be.” How did her determination change the environment of the shelter school and her students?
  R/ “No one can change us; we change ourselves because of the things we are going through.” Stacey’s students went through difficult things; no one took care of them. That’s why; they did not have a good behavior because they felt that if the show weakness, they will be hurt. Her determination was the clue to succeed in creating a good environment because she showed interest in her students. They began to trust in someone, and to feel the school like a real home. Stacey needed to make the school a safe place.

3)  Stacey tried to relate to her new students by showing them a photo album of her family and talking about her life. The kids could not relate to her pictures and experiences. Why not?
  R/ They could not relate to her pictures and experiences because they had not lived in the same way as she has. Some of the students did not have a real home to live in; thus, they felt she has been living almost like a princess with car, house and a beautiful family. Students’ life is completely different from the pictures that Stacey showed them.

4)   Discuss some of the life circumstances of the students. What types of adversities did they face physically and emotionally? How did their poverty make learning more difficult?
  R/ Students’ life is difficult because they do not have a real, lovely and sweet home. Some of them have parents who smoke, drink alcohol or use drugs; consequently, they do not treat their children in a good way. In this society, poverty makes life harder; people suffer discrimination; mistreatment and oppression. Learning is even more difficult if students do not have the tools like internet access or library. In poor schools, it is difficult to make learning to happen not only for the problems they have at the school but also for the problems they have at home.

5)   The classroom initially came with almost no supplies and little support from school board officials and reluctant parents. Despite these challenges, Stacey Bess was able to create a warm, safe place for the children to learn. In addition, she was able to earn the support and respect of parents and administrators.
  R/ At the beginning, Stacey was worry because she did not have any idea of how to create a good rapport with her students. Moreover, the classroom was not a safe place, but she really wanted to be different from the others teachers that worked there before. Even though it was a difficult situation her determination helped her to earn the support and respect of students, parents and administrators.

6) Resourcefulness is the ability to find a way to solve problems in a difficult situation. What creative solutions did Stacey find to transform The School with No Name? How did she overcome the lack of supplies, environmental distractions and other issues?
  R/ Stacey knew that she needs to get the parent's confidence so that children continue studying with their parents support. She created the environment by painting the room, creating the adecuate atmosphere for children learning.

7)  Poverty impacts people of all ages, races and backgrounds. The reasons for people being at the shelter are as different as each individual. What are some of the reasons for characters in the film coming to the shelter?
R/ Most of people who stayed at the shelter were suffering poverty, and they lacked opportunities of working themselves out. Some of them with social problems, and witout any opportunitie of get out of that situation.

8)  The previous teacher placed “shame names” on the board and played movies all day to keep the kids occupied. The students and parents were initially wary of Stacey because they thought she would be the same as her predecessor. What actions did she take to earn their trust? How did trust play a role in the school’s success?

 R/ Stacey started to work hard with her students despite of poverty impact that there was in the school. Stacey made some important changes at the school; for example, Stacey talked to children’s parents to avoid that children were missing classes. She talked with her students and she made the students understand that school is a place to learn. They have to learn how to respect the school. The teacher shows always a respectful attitude also students began trusting on her.

9)  Stacey talked to the children about respect. They began to share their experiences of when they encountered a lack of respect – from police, from a parent or from another person. The classroom could only be a safe, calm and quiet place to learn if everyone showed respect for each other.

R/ When Stacey arrived to the school, she found a lack of respect in all her students and the students’ parents, so she began working in some moral values like tolerance, patience, and respect. She tried to commit every person with these kinds of important values.  

10)  Discuss how respect or a lack of respect was shown in the film. Why is respect important in a school setting?

R/ In the first class Stacey had to deal with the manner in which students dealt with it. She tried working with the students, but they do not really like to work with her, so she utilizes some activities they had never done before. There was a lack of respect from part of some parents who got in the classroom and just take the kind without any permission of the teacher.

Stacey talked to the children about how to be respectful and she emphasized the importance of showing respect to each other. She taught the pupils by doing the things by herself.

11)  Stacey encourages the students to think of words to put on the board to describe their feelings. By giving these feelings names, the children were able to express themselves more clearly. What vocabulary words were used? Why were these words so important to the children?

R/ She encourage their students to learn a few good adjectives such as kind, tolerant, sweet , punctual, hard-working, comfortable, sympathetic, helpful, friendly and some others. All these adjectives before mentioned were important when making children’s behaviors change so that they would be better persons.

12)  Describe Stacey Bess.

R/ Stacey Bess is a person who wants to work every well. She is funny, friendly and assertive, so the students pay her attention because she found the way to work with children’s parents and also the students. She is punctual, warm, brave, and tolerant. She could deal with various problems, but what was really outstanding is that she behaves as a humanistic teacher. 

13)  What struck you about the movie?

R/ One of things that stroked me about the movie was that Stacey was brave and smart to keep on giving the classes at school, in spite of physical and emotional adversities that she found there. Furthermore Stacey Bess knew how to create a warm and safe environment in order to every children learn. She searched different was to solve difficult situations that she had to face.

14)  COOL-SCHOOL MODEL: What’s in a name? Why do you think the school did not have a name? Would the school have had an easier transition to success if it did have a name? What would you name the school? Imagine if you could build your own school. Build a model of your school using colors or markers. Now name your school! Explain your reasons to do so!!

R/ I guess the school did not have a name because it was a new program which let helpless children without home continue studying in an informal way. I am sure that if the school had had a name, it might have had success, because the name is something important for everything. I think that when something does not have a name means that it does not matter. I would name the school ‘’Stacey Bess school.’’ Mrs. Trumble built a room which was not suitable to develop any class, but Stacey transformed that empty room to a real school.  

15)  A MENTOR IN MY LIFE: In the film, Danny is encouraged by Stacey to be the best person he can be. She helps him to be a leader. In addition, she plans to hold him accountable to continued learning, by giving him a booklist each year until he is eighteen. Stacey served as a mentor to Danny and he in turn mentored his classmates. Create the shape of the country you would like to visit in the future and describe someone who has been a mentor to you. You can use pictures from magazines, drawings and photos, and markers or Paints to add color and detail.

R/ I think everyone needs to take a living model. When I was a kid I wanted to be like my father because I believe my father was a great person, but with the pass of the time my father becomes into another person. He was not the person he used to be anymore. I felt frustrated, so I looked for another person as a model. The teacher from my school has some characteristic that I was looking for because she was a humanistic, intelligent, honest, kind, funny, happy and beautiful person. All these characteristics named were not enough for me.