Reflection of first EDUC 5202 class meeting – Journal #1

I just started my Master’s in International and Comparative Education (will reflect on that separately in another blog post) and to be honest I’m thrilled by how interesting my courses are promising to be.

In my Social Foundations of Education class, our professor, Dr. José Cossa asked us to write journal entries that serve the purpose of reflecting on each of our class meetings; this will be my first post in that series.

I arrived about 15 minutes early for class and the professor was already there, and since we had met before at one of the CLT events, we were catching up a little and spoke for some time about Mozambique and the medical precautions one must take before going to the southern countries of Africa, or any other tropical region for that matter. I found that very interesting, and frankly educational due to the facts I was not aware of.

When the class started the professor began to speak to us about his background, which he managed to weave in a socio-historical outline of Africa and more specifically Mozambique. The seamless transitions between that brief socio-historical background and his own, was intriguing. Since I am a big fan of History and had minored in it during my undergraduate studies, needless to say, that wealth of historical information spoke to the Historian in me. Besides, the information was mostly about the history of how Africa came to be and how Mozambique is the only Portuguese-speaking country in southern Africa, which is an area I had not studied or read about at length and therefore I found it pretty beneficial.

When my classmates began their introductions, I was happy to learn that I have a lot in common with many of them, as well as differences, which would make our in-class discussions (a central element in our course) interesting and dynamic.

I also found out that none of my classmates are teachers, which I did not expect in a graduate class in an International and Comparative Education Masters. In reality, I didn’t get the chance to find out or know more about why they are taking this particular Masters or why they decided to pursue a Masters in Education. I would have liked to know what drives them about Education, what their passions and interests are in the field of Education.

I was also happy to know that most of my classmates are fans of reading like me. I am currently reading Paulo Coelho’s latest book Adultery and I am not finding it interesting, in fact, I am having strong views about not liking it. The funny thing is one of my classmates loves this book and thinks it’s one of Coelho’s best works, so this should be an interesting conversation (when we do get the chance to have it). The professor hasn’t read the book yet and said he doesn’t know yet whether he sides with me or with my classmate who loves the book. So it would be interesting to see how this Adultery-related dichotomy in our class will evolve.

Another one of my classmates shares my passion for travel, adventure, rock climbing, diving, hiking and dancing. These are the things I am most interested in, at least these few years, and I am excited about the conversations and experience-sharing we will hopefully have throughout the course of the semester. The thing about traveling is it’s contagious; the more you travel the more you want to travel again. I find really valuable life experiences and learning opportunities in travel and adventure, much like education.

Tomorrow will be my second class so I will post that reflection in a few days! So, until then!