UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO AT HUMACAO ENGLISH DEPARTMENT EDPE 4006 Practice Teaching Eliezer Morales Ruiz.

. Reflection: SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION My students and the school community had a compromise with social transformation throughout the entire semester. Awareness for the Cancer illness was carried throughout the semester since one student of the school was fighting with that illness. Unfortunately, the student passed away the month of February, after fighting with the illness for more than a year. Permission was given to the students to attend the funeral at noon by the school director, the day the body was at the funerary. So, inside the classroom, the students were encouraged to social transformation in several activities and assessments. For example, the students saw the example of hero that was willing to help others in the epic poem from Beowulf. The poem presents a hero that traveled to another city to have the approval of the king to kill a monster that was tormenting the city. Also, I explained the students that literature is one amazing tool to promote social transformation. The purpose of many writers is to write things to make people conscious about things or raise awareness about a problem or issue of the society. Another way the students embraced social transformation was by raising awareness about the event of the Holocaust, with the play The Diary of Anne Frank. This play narrated an excerpt of the Diary of the Anne Frank. Anne Frank a young Jewish girl that suffered the persecution of the Nazis on Europe, 1933. By being conscious about the Holocaust, we are remembering the tortured and murders of the Jewish people by the Nazis. We must never forget events like this in the history of mankind in order to never repeat them again. My students got Dr. Anbal Muoz

also the opportunity to go a field trip to see the play live. It was an amazing experience for them as they were to reflect more about the life Anne Frank and the suffering of the Jews. Besides raising awareness about the events in history, my students also had the opportunity to raise awareness for the problems of today. By writing essays of the topics of their choice, the students were able to bring discussion of some issues that concern our society to the classroom. The students had to do an oral report about their essays, and thats when they brought topics like: water pollution, smoking in public, consumerism, different types of religion and many other topics. In their essays, the student showed their consciousness about the problem of the actuality and possible solutions for them. Also at the end of each report, their peers had the opportunity to ask questions and reflect on the issues that were presented. Overall, the students had the opportunity to engage in social transformation on every topic. The last topic of the semester was Folk tales. The students read the folk tale Aunty Misery by Judith Ortiz Cofer, a Puerto Rican writer. The students learned that if they are generous with other people like La Tia Miseria, they may have their wishes come true. The main character of the story was granted a wish for her kindness and hospitality with a traveler that needed shelter for one day. Also in my desire to embrace social transformation, I decided to add a part to my special project by helping the elder that lives next to the school with an overgrown vegetation problem. I made de moves that were needed in the city hall to have the service of removing the vegetation that is invading also the school property. This semester was full of experiences that provided the students the time to reflect in our society and how we can make it better.