Mariana Aguilar Rivera

GRADE 7 AND 8 MYP HUMANITIES AND 7B ADVISORY TEACHER

Who I am as a teacher:

• My biggest focus is on building a community with students, establishing trust and a warm environment in which they can feel safe discussing difficult topics.
• I strongly believe that children are capable of understanding a lot more than we give them credit for.
• School should be fun, but to ensure that it is fun and educational, I like to use whatever materials I can, from travel videos to zombies.
• I see myself as a facilitator and use projects to teach skills and concepts.
• Students come in with knowledge, they are not empty vessels, so my job is to help them build on what they already know.
• History is not static. It is a social science, which means that as technology advances and research yields more voices from the past, our ability to understand also grows.  Continuous discussion and research of history broaden the scope of information available so that we may reach new conclusions and find new solutions. This approach allows history to be inclusive in terms of the representation of populations that have always existed but have not always been studied or considered due to outdated ideas and approaches. A broader and finer approach to research also allows us to find solutions to problems we experience in the present.