Global Citizenship Blog

     Global Citizenship  by: Ivan Ramirez

                

    This project has been the result of long months of teamwork, it was the perfect opportunity to summarize and highlight the teachings of Professor Sinkoff. In it we address current global issues; Group 1 talked about child poverty, Group 2 talked about climate change, and Group 3 talked about mental health. This project was special to me in the sense that it addresses issues of global interest, and for me it is important that an open and honest dialogue be maintained in schools on these issues if we wish in the future to be able to fix what is presented to us as a current threat. We, future professionals, must know what these problems are, always maintaining an ethical attitude and critical thinking that guides us towards the best solutions to these problems. It was very interesting what my classmates said during their respective presentations. We also had the help of the moderators who made possible an organic interconnection between one group and another.

   There are many great presenters in our class! And I think I can learn a lot from them. Their voices were natural and not stiff and almost everyone seemed calm while doing so. Most of the presentation was fluid and most of the presenters didn't look at their notes many times.  All went well. We did a good job. And yes, we received the information we needed, and everything was explained in clear language. Overall, it was a great opportunity for us to be able to demonstrate to a diverse audience, made up of other teachers and family members, that we could do it. It was also good to have our lovely professor giving her opinion on the presentation right after we finished.

 

Group 1:

     Personally, I think that in general everyone did a very good job presenting their subject. They talked about Child Poverty. I was able to reinforce and learn new things that I didn't know before.  I was able to know some of the statistics related to child poverty, such as that one in six children lives in poverty, some in extreme poverty. A phenomenon that continues to grow as a consequence of the economic and socio-political crises that have been occurring in certain countries of the world. The latest most important crisis, which has put at risk an entire infrastructure achieved over many years to avoid child poverty, is Covid-2019. As a result of this pandemic, millions of children have been deprived of being able to attend school, leaving hundreds of millions of children missing the opportunity to reach their potential in terms of physical and cognitive development, threatening their ability to get good jobs in adulthood. I liked how everyone engaged with their subtopic and the way they were able to keep a fluid and clear voice during their talk, even though they might have been nervous at the time. It was a pleasant and entertaining presentation, for all the information they gave us. xv  

Group 3:

  Group 3 finally did a wonderful job presenting their topic on mental health.  And not because it was the last group, it meant it was less important, on the contrary, mental health is something that should concern us all if we want to improve the general state of well-being in society.  We were presented with the concept of mental health as the condition of psychological and emotional well-being of a person, some examples of common mental disorders that affect a large part of the population were also given, such as anxiety, depression and other varied problems such as eating, personality, psychotic disorders, etc. Some statistics were shown, some of them being that, 1 in 5 U.S adults (47 million) reported having mental illness, also that in 2018, over 48000 Americans died by suicide. They also talked about how the pandemic considerably increased the cases of mental disorders resulting from insecurities and the interruption of a normalcy that made us feel safe.  The presentation also discussed the importance of seeking professional help to treat these disorders.  There are many practices that we can do to avoid, treat or alleviate this type of disorder, examples of which are yoga, meditation and exercise.  

 

  Before finishing I want to congratulate my group (2), that having David Rodriguez as our leader we were able to do a commendable job, as he was all the time making sure all our questions were cleared up and kept an eye on us making sure we were always on task, despite having been all organized remotely through WhatsApp due to Coronavirus. It would be my pleasure to work with this incredible group again.

  

 Thank you all for talking to us and being such fantastic presenters! I know that the future will bring you many opportunities if you continue to cultivate that talent that you have. See you soon in class!