The central idea that I got from this material is the importance of putting the students at the center; to focus in their learning and in their personal advances and the way they process things. One great inspiration that we talk about in this course is Maria Montessori, who really gave all the importance to the students, and was able to break the traditional education by caring about her students.

I really think that considering our students context and the problems and reality they are facing will help us a lot to understand them and to find the right tolls to reach their best performance, and help them deeply in their learning process.

The text I want to talk about is an article:

Development of Personality and Social Virtues: Relationships in the Educational Context of the Family

Abstract: Multiculturalism has led to rethinking the problem of social consistency, which is the cohesion between the various members of society. Psychological and pedagogic conditions linked to the family context can be studied to address the problem of education. It is conditions within the family – family styles and dynamics – that enable a harmonious development of personality that allows for sociability. There are also family ties, which are a condition to develop what are known as “social” virtues. The purpose of this study is to describe the ties that link family education to the two variables in question: personality development and acquisition of the virtues that promote social consistency. Observations are included that point to the real link that exists between personality and the development of virtues.

Complete article: http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/eded/v17n3/v17n3a03.pdf

I would like to quote one of the questions and comment on it by sharing an experience I had by working in a rural school.

The difficult question of social consistency and the problems that its absence generates could be addressed, not only with the establishment of large social policies, but, above all, facilitating the development of healthy family dynamics that allow the growth of personality and virtues, real condition of social consistency. Healthy family dynamics are those that allow the establishment of stable links and deep among its members.

I really think that it is very important to consider the families of our students and their social and economic context in order to understand them and to provide them with the best tools for their future as professionals. I really think that the families are the first and more important agents in children’s education, but when within the families there are not healthy dynamics and elements that students are supposed to get at home, becomes really a huge challenge for teachers to deal and provide in many of the cases what should be provided at home.

I would like to share here an experience done when teaching in a rural school in small town in Mexico. Some of the problems in that community were an extreme poverty, abusive parents, and most of all parents that didn’t thing that school was an option for their kids because they needed them to help them in the harvest every morning. When a community of professors and educators decided to open the school, this was the major issue to try to convince the parents of the importance of educating their children in order to get better jobs and a better-quality life. It was very hard for these parents to understand, but at the end they saw the huge importance of doing so, and not only they agreed in sending their children to school, but they decided to go every day after work to help to build he school. That was really amazing because after working the whole day in the fields they would go to build their children’s school, and for them this was the best example set to become serious in their studies. This event created a strong sense of belonging and community in the students, and even though the huge problems lived at home and the lack of many important values, after many years we can still see the fruits and the commitment of the children to the school, and not few of them feel to give back what they have received by going back to their school as teachers.

I think that this life example proves that what is written in the article and what we learned in this module is really valid, to consider most of all the students, their realities and all what they are going through and to connect with their family reality, and understand them by not judging it, but giving options to reinforce the missing values in the children.E