Children Full of Life (Documentary)

We also have to learn to take care 

Regarding we have been talking about children development and language learning, I have to share this documentary with you guys. One part of this documentary was presented in the ASOCOPI workshop held last Friday (April 12th) The presenter  used the first part of this documentary with the idea of showing us the importance of Critical Thinking beyond the concept of cognition. Thinking critically for Professor Nancy Carvajal means going beyond than just analysing, enquiring, reflectinjg, observing and reasoning about the learning process. She showed us another way of thinking critically in order to foster our students involment in the process of learning a language, with the idea of making it meaningful to them. 

Everyday we come to our classroom with objectives, activities and processes already set. We as teachers try to involve our students into a process that much of the time is not meaningful to them. Students have to write, listen, talk and read about things that has nothing to do with their real lives. We just don't get to know our students beyond the person that is learning a particular topic in English. We forget about the "humanistic" characteristic of  the learner and then we complain because the students does not seem to be "connected" to the class. Maybe we haven't stopped and asked about the importance and meaningness of the activities implemented in the classroom. Students seem to be more involved in processes that touch their personal lives and why not? If we as humans are classifying things into relevant and irrelevant departing from the concept of significance. We want to learn something that help us understand the world. We have the power of engaging our students into the language tasks that are designed under the real-life basis. Dear colleagues, let's start our path to Critical Thinking.  

Note: I'm in love with a lot of things that have been implemented in Japan about education. It would be nice to start analysing those wonderful projects in that wonderful country. They're an example to follow.