Having started to reflect and write about education by a blog called "Educar con co-razón", it may not be so strange that I consider St. Valentine's Day as a great opportunity to talk about our 'heart' connecting 'affect' and 'intellect' as that blog intends.
For many people, perhaps for most, that day is not a holiday for lovers but a commercial one to make people spend money on cards and gifts. However, as we see it, this festivity could be an excellent opportunity to develop several key competences in a lovely way: communicative, social, cultural and autonomy.
First, It's an opportunity to make our students aware of how in English-speaking countries, this is a day to tell all the people you love, not just your boy/girlfriend, but also your relatives and friends, how much you care for them. In addition, it's a great opportunity to read poetry, to learn about rhyme, to write some and listen to outstanding songs; is there any other topic that has inspired so many good poems and ballads? And are not literature and music two of the greatest arts? Futhermore, it's a great opportunity to let our pupils show their creativity and autonomy to design a card and write a love message, a haiku or another type of poems. Finally, it's an excellent opportunity to show our pupils that, in a world biased by money, corruption and competition, we need at least a day to express our best and most human feeling: LOVE.
And most of them do an extraordinary
lovely job!
