Week 5 - Professional

Our school...

As week 5 began here in the Netherlands, the mere aspect of starting school placement was upon us. To be honest I was nervous about the school because mainly of the language barrier between us and the children/teachers. Monday was our first day and due to our school being in Gendt, we had to get up at 6am and leave Vossenveld at 6.50am. To say the least I was not a happy guy at that time of the morning as I was steadily becoming used to the sleep in’s every day. Although, we all do cycle as a group in the morning to the train station which makes it a little better as we can all talk to each other and try to wake up a little – especially if it’s bitterly cold! Anyway, we got bus 33 to Gendt at 7.38 and we arrived at our school, Vonkenmorgen. The name of the school, as we found out later is a name that was an object or part of the old mills that used to function in The Netherlands. 

The school Souzy and I attend has groups 5 to 8 in it and the class that we have is Group 8b which contains 11 to 12 year olds. We met our class that morning and our teacher and everyone was so welcoming and eager to find out about us and where we were from. Even better our teacher is awesome at English and a few children are fluent which helps considerably! This is further highlighted when some children who are poor at English can ask the better speakers to translate for them! Plus they also used Google translate to ask us questions as they really were intrigued about us. We got to see around the school and the different rooms and it was clear the school was quite new and had plenty of resources.

Our classroom

It also was good to make comparisons with our Primary Schools back home. First thing I noticed was that no one called the teacher Mrs or Miss… we were all called by first names. Secondly, a huge difference was when the lunch bell rang the children just hopped onto their bikes and left to go home for lunch. This apparently is normal in the Netherlands – I still am not used to the school becoming a ‘ghost town’ at lunch. Furthermore, their lunch break lasts an hour and 15 minutes! However, the teacher explained we could also use this time if we had some work to do which helps the time fly by!

Cookstown main street... With no bikes!

The next day at school was even better than the first. The children were becoming used to our accents (which was a great surprise with mine!) and we were becoming used to some of the Dutch words. All the lessons are taught in Dutch so it does be hard and tiring trying to work out what the teacher is saying and what tasks the children have to do. We also got to teach the children about our homes on Tuesday, talking about the landscapes for example, the loughs, the mountains etc. The children found this fascinating! Especially at the fact that the picture of Cookstown and Belfast they seen no one using bikes! We also got to see that depending on their ability the children were moved to different seats for the different subjects, so this was one comparison that I could see from back home. This corresponds with what the National Education Association states:

“Practice allows teachers to tailor the pace and content of instruction much better to students' needs and, thus, improve student achievement.” NEA (2005)

Finally, the children seem to get a lot of time to be creative and express themselves, as they have art each day in the afternoon and then free time to go outside and play; in which I was dragged into playing football haha but I thoroughly enjoyed bonding with the children.  This relates to our Curriculum as Art lets them develop in numerous ways:

“Visual education should be planned to allow for the different ways pupils think, learn and develop.” CCEA Northern Ireland Curriculum (2007)

So teaching this week really was a blast and even though I do not look forward to the early mornings every week, the thought of attending the school is making it worthwhile! The other down side is the cost of travelling which is not fair when really we could be doing without it… but we have no other choice but to pay it so we can attend our placement. Again though I love my school, my mentor teacher and my children and I furthermore love on a Wednesday morning when I can have the day off, sleep in and recover from the previous days of work haha

Just remember...

P.s. Top tip for this week… If you’re nervous, it does not mean it’s a bad thing. You are nervous because you are starting something completely new and you are about to embark on a whole new adventure no matter what the outcome is. So just keep calm, keep smiling and keep your head high.

“If I'm nervous, it means I had to work hard to get there, whether it's playing in a tournament or speaking at an event. So I try to stop and be proud of getting to live in that moment.” Maria Sharapova

References:

CCEA Northern Ireland Curriculum (2007).  The Arts. Available: http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/microsite/the_arts// Last Accessed: 09/03/13

National Education Association (2005). Research Spotlight on Academic Ability Grouping. Available: http://www.nea.org/tools/16899.htm. Last Accessed: 09/03/13

Sharapova (2009). Brainy Quotes. Available: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mariashara433701.html#zOP6Cc6DFtQ63zL2.99. Last Accessed: 09/03/13