Self reflaction— “You are better than you thought”
In the proposal development course that started last week, our tutor, Silvia, gave us the first task in week 0: Self and peer assessment exercise. In our previous courses, we often needed to write some reflactions, but I had to said that this exercise gave me a completely different experience and harvest.
In our first course “ways of working” in the MA, it is also the week 0 stage. Our task is to write our own user manual, which is like an initial “self-portrait”, allowing us to quickly understand our team members personality and work habits. But just as people are used to showing the best in front of people they meet for the first time, I have become a “liar”, I beautify myself in this user manual. But in this exercise, I conducted a self-assessment completely honestly, and wrote down my strengths and areas that need to be strengthened. What moved me was that not only many classmates praised my strengths, but also denied something I thought I find difficult. Regarding the direction of my major project, the direction I want to go deeper is about the education of the next generation. Hopefully, this topic also attracted the interest of Zoey and Yidan.
Due to the impact of the pandemic, and the isolation in physical space has made us pay more and more attention to the communication between people. Our group discussed peer support and read related literature a lot in the CU course, but I never felt the power of peer support more than when I saw everyone’s comments (not only for me).
Squad discussion — ”what is the education for？”
In the offline class on Thursday, the whole class was divided into 5 topics to discuss the direction of the project and divergent thinking, the topic is: healthcare, Women’s Rights and Safety, behavior change, Education, Business innovation. Ritika, Sampada, Yaqi, Zoey and me joined the education group. We discussed the direction we want to choose. Each of us has our own direction of interest, which makes our discussion more able to trigger each other’s thinking. My interest in this topic is the mental health problem of high school students.
In China and the world, there is a common phenomenon that the mental health problems of adolescents are becoming more and more serious. The prominent manifestation is the younger age of patients with depression.A good friend of mine who was an English teacher and head teacher in a Chinese high school once told me about a vicious incident that happened there. A student stabbed more than a dozen classmates during the break time because he could not bear the learning pressure, and then jumped from a high building. My friend also said that in the class she tutored, more than 5 students had been suspended due to depression in only two years. This series of real questions aroused my interest and motivation in exploring youth mental health education.
In the discussion between silivia and our group, asked us “ What is education for? ” “Are we training or enriching people’s understanding? ” This triggered my thinking. While we are discussing the mental health education of adolescents, who should be the subject of this education? What information should be educated? Is it early intervention or how to judge whether you have a mental illness in advance?
After class, I asked my friends who are teachers and a graduate student who is studying educational psychology. They gave me a lot of insight, and I summarized the following two key aspects:
- 80% Parents have only parenting experience, not professional and scientific parenting concepts, so parents often have no awareness and solutions for children’s emotional problems.
- When everyone focuses their attention on children, parents and teachers are actually a neglected group in the whole system. Their mental health and stress need to be paid attention to at the same time.
In our group discussion, I was also very touched by the global views of Ritika and Sampada. They hope that their projects are global in view and can bring systemic changes to the Indian education system. This allows me to re-thinking my topic selection. Can I solve the localization problem while the service system can also be applied globally and have a positive impact?
Just as I joked in our group: “This table is all about the future of their countries!”, I am very looking forward to seeing the development and realization of our group’s future major projects.
