My point of view

Hello, my name is Héctor López García, and I would like to tell you my personal experience from my first course of degree in Magiterio for the subject of 'School Guidance and Counseling'.

This is my working group of class...

...and we have developed most of the works together
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School guidance plan

Our last and, what I think was one of the most difficult project, was to create, develop and present to the rest of the class a personal ‘School Guidance Plan’.


In the groups as always, we could search for information, which for example the teacher gave us by Moodle or just telling where to look for real plans.



We mixed lots of real SGP’s and went to High Schools as ours was not fot a Elementary but for a High School, so they explained us a little how do these plan work and how do they apply to the entire institution and follow its development. it was interesting because, in my case, I went to my own High School, in which I was for 4 years until start baccalaureate, and found very interesting and difficult their job most in this branch.

I think that one of the most difficult moment was when we had to coordinate between the diffierent parts of the plan, because there were objectives which didn't fit very well.


We had some problems while the development because of the widenes of the work, but at the end, we started to develop it…

 We decided to make the presentation as what it is, without making any theatre, because we wanted to expose the real aims of our school guidance plan, without misunderstandings.

So we just simply divided the parts to talk in the class, by providing the necessary information in each slide in order to not get very bored during the presentation and they could follow the fluent information.

 Despite the final conclusion of the teacher, I am very proud of our work. And I know the knowledge I have aquired not only in this project, but also in the subject.
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Parents-teacher conference

In a class, before starting our last project, we dedicate two hours to the conferences between parents and teachers, in order to know all the things that we should and shouldn’t do, say, propone, give, and so on, because we are supposed to become teachers someday, and we will be doing this at any moment.

But, at the very first, what exactly a parent-teacher conference is?


Well, a parents-teacher conference is, as its own name indicates, when the student’s parents meet with the teacher or tutor of this, so they exchange opinions, ideas, views and also discuss the student’s academic achievement and all this involves, as for example the study habits, the performance and behavior in class, how is he or she doing at home…

In order to continue with the topic, we saw a video in which a mother-teacher conference was taking place. We start by enumerating what did they do and then to analyze it, if is positive or not and why do we consider so as an important thing to do in a conference.

After this firs video, we saw another one (this took place in Spain) and was the clear example of how a parent-teacher conference should not be. We did more or less the same things as we did to the previous video and said why is not an appropriate conference, saying also the things we would do to improve this situation.

To continue once the videos were finished, was enumerating the things that a good conference should have:

  •  Welcome the parent. If possible, going to the entry and in a friendly way (smiling…)
  • Talk about the achievements of the students, preferably start with the good ones and then the bad ones
  • Have on hand the materials and all the necessary things we would like to show to the parents
  • Improve the success of the student with homework
  • Let the parents know what the materials their child usually uses are
  • Bring a portfolio of the student’s work and achievement
  • Know the objectives you have so you can transmit them to the parents
  • State the purpose of the conference and the time for when it is going to take place
  • Describe the child's progress in major areas, and ask how they feel and perceive his or her progress from home
  • Set mutual goals by putting in common
  • Summarize the whole conference, by thanking for coming for example
  • Set communication for future conferences or the contact between the institution and the family
  • Evaluate conference, if the doubts and objectives have been solved successfully

We performed some situations in the class by our-selves acting as if we were parents, students, teachers and counselors, with a problem which has to be solved.




Applying the points we considered necessary to make a good conference, we tried to make it as good as we could.

The last part of the class, although a little strange for me, showed us how important is to know transmitting information.

Very useful for our future profession.
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Experiences from the real world, provided by a real counselor


This course, we have had the opportunity to attend to a counseling speech, because of one mate whose mother is a real counselor, who has lots of years of experience in this field.
She complemented her explanation with the help of a PowerPoint presentation:
Talking about her own experience, which covers more than 50 years of personal work, she gave us reasons to understand the why and the necessity of good and vocational teachers in this career, because is up to us the correct development of the children who are taught by us and, therefore, the future of the society would, in some way, depend on us.

She told us real cases in which she felt completely powerless, full and helpless. But knowing that is you who people with problems come to solve them, makes you try but all the resources as possible, stay strong and continue helping and searching for new ways of solving things appropriately.

I especially liked this class because, consisting in a complete class like if it was a counseling one, we had the time to make this speech and the questions we wanted to ask her.

I consider that has helped me more than I thought it was going to, because when teacher come and say the why should we be good teacher, normally they don’t expose you real cases, but this, this was completely different, and very encouraging.


I liked it too much.
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Changing paradigms

Today, the class has been guided to the speech of the famous writer, educator and lecturer Sir. Ken Robinson, who thinks that school kills creativity, and that’s why his proposal argues the change of the paradigm in education, which from his point of view, will let creativity awake from the inside of the children:
This video I think that has made me think about what was before also my thoughts but reinforced by the speech: The educational system is being controlled by interests.


Not only creativity is being abolished, but also the education quality and equality. The selection of the called ‘most intelligent’ don’t let those who don’t pass the tests imposed be analyzed and create a program by which these problems could be transformed into improvement ones.


That’s why, I think that Sir Ken Robinson has this conception of the school, and more now, that one of the main purposes of the society and then, the educational system, is educating in order to be what is considered productive, the artistic and creatively part is absolutely unnecessary.


The new concept of education should let children, considering their age and a set of variables and factors chose between different options, in which they were able to develop their talents, that lots of times, because the problems Sir Ken argues, don’t come into light because there are no possibilities of this to occur.



From my point of view, this was interesting because has discovered us a new author or thinker who is very influent in the education nowadays, and most of all, because as I have studied arts, I take this debate as something personal, because from the inside, I know how important is that you have the opportunity to make what makes you really happy and develop a personal self-image, more at these age where children are not secure and still don’t know what do they want to study for their future and only focuses on the present, but, how are they going to know what do they like if we don’t show them all the possible ways?


This video has shown me that people like Sir Ken Robinson, are still defending the possibility to choose instead of others doing it for you.
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Attention to diversity: Designing a collaborative activity

This activity consisted in making a class of one-hour-long in which we (the original groups we created at the very first of the class) had to develop a theme about 'Attention to diversity'.

 Ours was the 'Support Measures for learners in Early Childhood and School Education' topic, and we had the support of the teacher and the different resources with which we could count of, like Ethernet for example as one of the most important in the research of information.

Once the information was all relater, developed and learnt by all the components of the group, we decided this time to make a PowerPoint presentation instead of a 'Prezi', just to change the main dynamic of the class.

We wanted to make first this presentation because we consider necessary an introduction to the theme instead of starting directly with the activity, because in most cases people can’t follow the information in a fluent way if this has not being explained before. The class run the following procedure:

  • At first the presentation by dividing the theme into four different parts which were what we had to present, each of us. But all of us knew the whole theme.
  • The second activity was more dynamic, mostly fot the rest of the class. We developed an activity in which our mates should were given a number and by this number they positioned in groups. Then, having these two groups, we divided them again into two bigger groups consisting in all the little ones. The idea here was that, if they have attended to our explanation of how the different measures are distributed in school, they had to create in common three questions about the topic, and ask one group to another making an eliminatory of those who don’t know what or how to answer.
  • And finally, our last activity was to, once the quiz finished, expose some cases and ask to our mate which type of measures they would use to solve the different problems presented by applying the knowledge that should have been acquired during the presentation. A positive point in this last part is that we didn’t consider it as a competition, so they don’t feel the pressure of being better than the others and so simply try to solve the cases considering always as the most important point the well-being of the children.
These was some of the cases we used:

‘Marisa is 8 years old and she has got the “Aspergen Sindrome”, she has got difficulties making friends’

‘Mike’s parents have discussions frequently and her sister plays the fagot, so he cannot bring his homework on time’

‘Felix parents cannot take him to the school because they have to work when it starts’

This activity has been very interesting for me because gave me the opportunity to think and develop a set of information transmission and activities in order to made my mates comprehend the difficulty of the educational world and what it involves.
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Group of experts

I think that the maino bjective of this activity was to develop a set of topics in common in order to the undestanding of the theme but appreciete how important this is to our future work as teachers, because we will have to develop activities with people we don't know and maybe we don't like too much.

 This is called 'Cooperative learning', where we learn ones to each other, sharing information and helping so we all can arrieve to the final copnsclusion by the methodology we consider interesting.


The procedure followed the next course: We were divided into groups, so the mates we were with were not selected by us, and that liked me, because sometimes I consider necessary to develop activities with people not chosen by you. Then we were given four topics to develop to the whole class:
  •      Guidance and Counseling in Early Childhood
  •      Guidance and Counseling in Higher Education
  •      Guidance and Counseling in a Lifelong Learning Approach
  •      Support Measures for Learners in Adult Education and Training

All of them, although it does not appear, were focused in Spain.

And ours was the firt one, 'Guidance and Counseling in Early Childhood'.

We were also divided in parts of content of the topic, and remove by creating new groups formed by the other mate who had the same parts. Put it in common an again go back to the initial group, so each of us, having read and understand his or her part can share to the rest of the group the information so all the members have the same knowledge about the topic and can develop it in the ‘exam’ we had to do in order to see if the ideas have been acquired.

But not all the information was given and developed in class. We also had to search for more information at home complementing the given one, supposing that this would give us more security about the topic and its late presentation to the mates.


This activity I think was a bit confusing because was a little non-controlled, so everyone tried to develop his or her topic basin only in the papers give and then to the complement information at home. I liked also the part of working in groups and mixing all the members of the class, because we can see different opinions about what did they think to their papers. But finally, the little decontrol of the beginning turned to an organized activity in which each knew what did we had to do.
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WebQuest

The very first project of this activity was to search and arrive to a developed definition of what a 'Counselor' and 'School Guidance and Counseling' are. In order to do so, Miguel, our teacher, let us decide the members of the group we liked and provided some resources and ways of information which we founded very interesting and useful, where included a definition of Web-Quest and some more information with videos and images:


In my group, we were four people, and we divided the presentation in seven different points according to the information we founded thanks to the resources provided and founded by us:

  •       Who receives these services and people to make it possible
  •       What services are provided in these programs
  •       Who provides these services
  •       When are provided these services
  •       Where are them provided
The points of the presentation were mainly the same but more divided in what we considered more important to be explained, that’s why there were so differentiated parts.

We decided to explain our information by having all the same things to say, and as we were four and there were seven points, one of us said a longer introduction.

In order to make the presentation, we used a different and completely new program showed by the teacher called ‘Prezi’, instead of the usual Power Point.




The main conclusion I arrived when finished this project was that my knowledge, not only related with what the subject was, but also how Schools and High Schools should work and do work for the helping process to all the students, not only those who require it urgently.

The fact that we had to work in groups and with no supervision of the teacher except when we had a doubt made me feel more self-sufficient, as I expect it was to my group and class mates.
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