NUACHTÁN PREPA CELTA | June 2021
Prepa Celta News
From Claudia Molleda’s desk | Prepa Celta’s Principal
June is a closing month for Prepa Celta, it allows us to make a retrospective of everything we have experienced throughout a school year, of everything that we managed to overcome, but that being part of our day to day, we usually do not appreciate.
With June comes the graduation of the 12th grade students, it is always a complex moment because it is about closing a cycle that lasted a few years, which at the same time makes us proud, because to see the students leave towards what they have longed for so much, it is the best gift they can give us. We wish them much success in this new stage of their lives!
In June we also have the final exams, we hope it will be a light process and that everyone manages to pass so that their rest in the summer is as long as possible, since, when we return, we have a new challenge that will test our resilience, to return to see us in the classroom.
I share with you, as every month, work that our students and teachers are doing.
Middle Years Programme
Alicia Silva | MYP Coordinator
Our 10th graders present their perspectives and learnings to us during the Personal Project. We are delighted to hear that another generation is about to complete its Middle Years Programme.
Andrés Angulo
‘One of my biggest challenges during the Personal Project was presenting in public, but I enjoyed learning about music and finally learning the benefits of playing a musical instrument such as: improves cognitive abilities to process information, which increases volume and activity of the corpus callosum (bridge between the two hemispheres of the brain where information is transmitted) and many other benefits. I learned to systematically evaluate fonts with the OPVL’.
Product: Online conference regarding music and the impact on the brain
Dariana Robles
‘I loved working on my product, and it was easy compared to writing the reflection criteria which cost me more. I believe that through this Project I develop my skills of reflection and inquiry’.
Product: Book about the impact of social networks on adolescents’ self-esteem and how it affects their self-concept
Arturo Aguilar
‘My learnings about Research Methods, goal systematization. They allowed me to be an informed and educated student, inquirer, and thinker. Coming to enjoy my inquiry process for the elaboration of my essay a lot’.
Product: Essay in which a brief historical chronology is narrated in which historical themes are related to the corresponding anthropology.
Rogerio Silva
‘Due to the type of product that I developed, it was very difficult for me to be in a team and deal with my colleagues since I depended on the progress of others to advance myself. But writing a song, putting it to music, recording, editing it, and the research carried out was something that I enjoyed in my Project. I feel like I improved my stress and pressure management, as well as my leadership to guide my bandmates’.
Product: create a song that expresses your point of view of confinement.
Social studies and sustainable development
Daniel Salazar Ramos | Social Studies Professor
The main objective of teaching social studies in high school, with a methodology such as that of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme, is primarily that students learn, on one hand, to ask themselves pertinent and well-founded questions to understand the world around them and of which they are part, in a globalized context and from different perspectives. On the other hand, a deep critical understanding of the human being and their societies is not enough: it is necessary to transform these realities with knowledge, that is, to focus inquiry and reflection towards action. In this sense, the subject of Introduction to the social studies is oriented to the different theoretical perspectives to help them to generate a more complex thought, to be able to improve the world, from the individual and the group.
Let’s think about a contemporary problem, for example: various media throughout the world in recent days have reported the anomalous growth of forest fires at this time of year, which is why various means of communication throughout the world – such as Scientific American, the Guardian, Noticias Telemundo, Al Jazeera, among others— have chosen to stop talking about the climate crisis in favor of a term much more specific to what we are experiencing, a climate emergency. “To preserve a habitable planet, humanity must act immediately. If the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not reduced, the heat, storms, wildfires and ice melting of 2020 will be routine and could render a significant part of the Earth uninhabitable (Scientific American, 2021). How do social studies help us to think then about the urgent sustainable development that we need?
That is why the exploration that we will have in the next and last period focuses on the UN’s sustainable development goals, for which we define the following inquiry statement:
“A true model of sustainable and equitable development ensures the rights of all people, as well as the sustainability of the communities considering their global interactions”.
By emphasizing concepts such as rights, sustainability and equity, students will be able to observe that sustainable development is linked, not only with ecological sustainability, but with the well-being of communities and their rights, without them we cannot imagine a possible future, starting with basic rights like access to water, for example. The methodology of the social studies can help us not only understand how we got here, but also how we can continue to think of solutions to this great problem that we all share, from a sustainable development perspective.
Assignments in the CP
From Claudia Molleda’s desk | CP Coordinator
Reflection is essential in any situation of the human being, since it allows us to explore into our thoughts and seek solutions to doubts that arise in our journey through life. The Personal and Professional Skills course seeks to discover and enhance -precisely- skills that students will carry with them for the rest of their lives and that will allow them to face the world with much more tools.
Next, I present Valentina Chávez Cuevas’ project, revised by Professor Juan Carlos Cruz Aguilar, «Existir en las redes sociales”.
https://read.bookcreator.com/u1xkkEyzMwMHYp6lEq2x4XHRdjN2/QEcTtEwdQxSXfnxxL_ETVg
Delimited topic: If you do not show, post, or share, you do not exist.
Problem Statement: We live in a kind of global screen, where everyone wants to be visible at any cost. In other words: if you do not show yourself, you do not exist. This causes that, due to the urgency of becoming part of a digital community, we lose important personal facets. With a single photo or comment, you become part of that community, but that does not mean that you are being and existing as you really are.
Reflective inquiry: Wanting to participate within digital platforms, does it make us eager for attention and an alternative existence, losing our facets in the process?
Arguments and rationale.
Guy Debord, an important revolutionary philosopher and filmmaker, used to say, «Everything that is directly lived, moves away today in a representation» (Navarro, 2014, p.2) in his mythical book ‘The society of the spectacle’. In other words, what is lived in the flesh is no longer even a life or existence, it is really just a montage.
Passing this idea on to the world today and not from 1967 to 1968, a year full of uprisings and revolutions, Debord would be writhing in his grave seeing that this is how life is now. That we are some within the digital media and others outside of them. Many people live a life very differently from the one they show on social networks, for example, it is not normal to see the personal and private suffering of people -even though some of them escape out there- which makes us the protagonists of an idealistic and perfect world. Now we prefer and decide to hide parts of our life to build ourselves a much more… correct, friendly, funny, “perfect” image.
It is as if now, to be able to belong to the digital community, as a requirement you have to do and stop showing certain things, lose parts of your individuality, but create others that do not go with you.
It is the way in which we relate to each other through the images that are constructed from the mainstream media and not through living experience, we accept an artificial and directed construction of the meaning of the world as if it were our natural environment (Navarro, 2014, p .6).
We accept an artificial construction. By creating an account of yours anywhere you are giving yourself permission to change certain things about yourself, many times reaching physical levels. When we create an account somewhere, we immediately finally exist, that’s how it started. Twenty years ago, adults started having email, mainly for professional purposes, Facebook arrived, and the sensation was to create an account for you. Although at that time it was something unnecessary, it was becoming life. If you didn’t have Facebook, you didn’t find out about anything, you didn’t talk to anyone, nobody knew you, but it wasn’t necessary. Nine years ago, all that changed, for the new generations, those who are now around 16 and 23 years old, if you did not have a cell phone, you were automatically a social reject. And if you had a cell phone but no active social network, it was weird. This social pressure has prompted us to create a second life within a robotic world and nothing original, because now fear and pain is being who you really are.
- Without social networks, you do not exist.
Pressures are frequent, both from friends and from work, there is a certain degree of exclusion, because through these means many things are shared from which you are left out. These things are already something that you cannot miss, whether it was a simple post, a photo or an image, now everything matters, everything is part of now and for some reason people have decided to share it with the world. From this derive many more things, privacy, security, cyber-bullying and others, but it is the presence that causes all that, the presence and the activity is what transforms our worlds in a digitized era (Makarov, 2018). You must be there because «it is normal» and because by not doing it «you are nobody.»
Personally, I feel that what at least everything I argued, is true because I was part of that generation that received and receives rejection if you do not stay connected. Truly, it is a lot of social pressure that we go through both within social networks and outside. That has forced us to hide certain parts of ourselves, which also includes how we develop in the real world. And it is already difficult to talk about something or have a good conversation if you did not know behind the scenes before. If before there were divided groups, now it is much worse. If before it was difficult to trust someone, now it is even more complicated. Existing and living was much simpler, less addictive, you did it without a device.
Makarov, A. (2018, May 17). Millenials sin redes sociales: “He perdido contacto con la sociedad de mi edad.” Xataka.com; Xataka. https://www.xataka.com/servicios/millenials-sin-redes-sociales-he-perdido-contacto-con-la-sociedad-de-mi-edad
Navarro, L. (2014, November 29). Volver a tierra: Guy Debord y la crítica de la sociedad del espectáculo. ElDiario.es. https://www.eldiario.es/interferencias/guy-debord-espectaculo_132_4489342.html
Be a reader
Jessica Paola Hernández Llamas | Librarian and Cultural Management teacher
On April 2nd, the International Children’s Book Day was celebrated and on April 23, the World Book Day. These were special dates for all the children and young readers of our school, as well as for the librarians, who during those dates carried out activities to promote reading and the value of the physical book, but also those who acquire the word in stories.
At Prepa Celta there was a talk and presentation of the poetry book, entitled «Mundano» by Regina Roze, edited by Revarena ediciones (2020). We had the presence of the author and the editorial director Alejandro del Castillo, who shared with the community of students and teachers of the section their favorite books, their way to reading and writing, their creative process, their questions about the profession of being a writer and responded to questions made by the community. All this raised a closeness to reading and the writing process from the voice experience of its authors and, in this case, also from the perspective of editing a book.
This is how these important commemorative dates of the book worldwide remind us of the value of the book, reading and being a reader, because we are the ones who exercise that open flight to other spaces and worlds, to the inner world that inhabits us and permeates in the world of the other.
Let us remember that the World Book and Copyright Day is a celebration that comes from the opinion of UNESCO to honor, since 1995, the great writers such as Cervantes or Shakespeare, to affirm the importance of the book, to value all the efforts to promote reading and make the world a great society of readers.
If your eyes have reached this point, I would like to ask you, do you consider reading important for children or young people or for yourself? Is there a book that has marked something in you?
Dates to remember
• JUNE 7th to 11th – Final Exams – Tutoring
• JUNE 14th to 18th – Final Exams
• JUNE 21st to 23rd – Exams (second terms)
• JUNE 25th – Academic Ceremony for 12th grade | 12:00h