Week 1

My knowledge of natural disasters was very limited prior this week’s learning in Sustainable Development. Our lecture reinforced what I already knew about disasters, i.e. types of disasters, what they look like through video footage, the primary effects they can have such as high rate of mortality and mass destruction of land and infrastructure. Middleton (2013, page 367) suggests “natural hazards should be defined and studied both in terms of physical processes involved and the human factors affecting the vulnerability of certain groups of people to disasters”. Thus looking at socioeconomic and political aspects of certain areas, such as government policy and access ,  is essential to understand why an area does not tackle a natural disaster well. This is something I had not recognised previously as a student.

I had the opportunity to further understand how disasters are inherently political by comparing case studies of Japan and Haiti. Both country’s government response to their natural disaster were very different from one another, this is for a number of reasons. With Japan being exceptionally more wealthy than Haiti, the funding  and policy towards preparedness for disaster events was well prioritised. Wealthier countries will tend to have more allies, meaning in the case of a disaster they can rely on international help such as extra resources. Japan being heavily organised for such an event made recovery and mitigation a more fast effective process. Contrary to this, Haiti having levels of corruption in government the response decisions were not all made based on human principles. Their unorganised planning for example slow distribution of supplies and poor search for survivors caused detrimental effects to the country, this also resulted in protests and outbreaks of violent behaviour from the public. Effectively evaluating and analysing these two case study texts allowed me develop my higher-order thinking skills as a student.

The American government’s handling of Hurricane Katrina is a powerful example of how being socioeconomically disadvantaged stimulates a weak recover from natural disasters.  A lack of social capital can hinder the ability to generate both the conditions necessary for mutual support and care and the mechanisms required for communities to exert effective pressure to influence public policy (Nix-Stevenson, 2013). New Orleans is mainly populated by working class African-American people, therefore the people did not have the power to create change and get the help they desperately needed from the government. I found this to be the most interesting part of my learning as even in one of world’s most wealthy and powerful countries, a lack of social justice and political action created ruinous effects on one it own states.

We later discussed the questions of how and why should we teach natural disasters to primary children. Personally I feel growing up disasters were not spoken of much by my teachers, this is most likely due to teachers being uncomfortable talking about the subject, therefore I had the misconception that I could not be affected by one. If I take the attitude as a teacher myself I feel my pupils would have the same misconception. The Grenfell Tower disaster is an example of how important teaching disasters is and shows children that they could potentially be hit with a disaster in the UK. Looking at disasters in this way enhanced my knowledge by recognising that teachers should open about these subjects to children in order to prepare them for real-life situations.

I was able to expand my skills by taking part in a number of disaster-related science experiments. One example activity was using vinegar, fairy liquid, food colouring and bicarbonate soda to represent a volcanic eruption. I could use this activity in a lesson to also allow the pupils’ science investigation skills to develop as well as my own, such as: hypothesising, evaluating and observing.

Week 2  

In the second week of our learning we were given the opportunity to do some micro-teaching. We were required to prepare and give a group presentation to the class on a chosen type of natural disaster. After being given the topic of volcanoes, my group and I came together to  create the structure of our presentation and fairly allocate each person to  a specific research area they would later present.  Leading up to the day of the presentation, we all remained in contact with each other so everyone knew what each individual had worked on and what they had prepared to talk about. This was mainly to see how we could interlink each of our parts so that the presentation was cohesive and would flow better. The role of effective communication played a crucial part in the success of our presentation, a skill which is used extensively in a student’s university career. With having the opportunity to develop this skill I feel much more confident in working as a team and relying on others to produce the same standard of work as I would myself.  My research skills as a student increasingly developed as I investigated topic I had little knowledge about. Furthermore I benefitted from listening to my classmates present on their topics such as floods, typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc, as it helped increase my overall knowledge of natural disasters.

My role in the presentation was to produce and present a lesson plan in which I could introduce the topic of volcanoes to a primary class. Having the opportunity to do this independently (for the first time as a student teacher) really opened my eyes on how much work and planning goes into a lesson. I found this specifically when researching information on a topic that could potentially disturb and frighten pupils such as high death rates of volcanic explosions; I had to find websites, image ands videos that were child-friendly. This developed my evaluation skills as a teacher,  looking for appropriate resources and information is highly important for not only informing the pupils appropriately, but also to protect them.

The aspect of presenting in front of an audience enhanced a variety of my skills. In relation to my skills as a student, group presentations are a brilliant way to build a person’s confidence and speaking skills in front of colleagues. This will not only prepare me for future projects within university but also for future meetings and seminars with other professionals once I am qualified. Being able to communicate efficiently to an audience is one of main success criteria of teachers. By presenting my lesson plan and explaining the instructions I would give to a group of children, further built on my presently skills as a teacher. In addition, watching others present allowed me to develop my observational skills as I saw how each person engaged with the audience, e.g. through their body language, and what technique I thought worked best. I intend to take that knowledge on as a teacher in order to be the best communicator I can be to my pupils.