Week Four

Personal

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. Maya Angelou (1993)

The windmill

I feel this quote really sums up my week as I really got to know the fellow Erasmus students better, I don’t just know their names, I now know more about their homes, families and a bit about what makes them who they are, I also know who will go get burgers with me and who likes to drink hot chocolate, I've made some wonderful friends here and as the quote states we have all laughed, cried, worried and eaten dinner together like one huge family. Vossenveld is starting to feel a lot more like home and I can navigate my way around Nijmegen on a bicycle quite well. The building were we have classes (the Pabo) is no longer a daunting space with a maze of rooms. I cannot properly express the joy and relief every morning seeing the windmill when cycling to class, because I know I am nearly at my destination and my legs will get a welcome break.

I am not cut out for this amount of physical activity which is only going to increase as I have to cycle an hour to my placement school. I know it has been said that the Netherlands are flat but I could swear that we are cycling up an incline to get to University.  I feel a lot more confident on my bike, although I have broken the breaks and the lights on it; I think it will be strange returning to Belfast and not being able to cycle everywhere.

Socializing in one of many pubs in Nijmegen

Over the week we have had dinner cooked for us by fellow Erasmus students, baked a lovely chocolate cake, spent many nights playing different card games and enjoyed a few social drink out in the centre of Nijmegen. They have a lot of clubs which stay open until five o’clock in the morning which is a far cry from Belfast when you have to come home at two. All of the places have interesting people who are very excited to chat to you about where you come from and how you have found yourself in the Netherlands. It is wonderful to get the whole group together and go out and dance all night at spinning bars which play music that we all haven’t heard in years (some of us not at all).  I feel that it is good to interact with so many diverse people, learning different card games and getting used to people talking different languages to each other. We are picking up lots of phrases mainly from French and Dutch, some useful and some not so much or so polite.

The GTNCI competence eight suggests that teachers should have a knowledge and understanding of the need to take account of the significant features of pupils’ cultures, languages and faith and to address the implications for learning arising from these. I feel that my time here on Erasmus will develop my skills in this competence, I will be more perceptive to children’s cultures, especially children with English as an additional language I will be more understanding of the difficulties that arise in not knowing the language of a country in great depth. I find myself thinking more before I speak so that people can understand me better; I use more hand gestures to put across my meaning and am more aware of my  pronunciation of some words, I feel this will aid me when teaching phonic work. I will also make a point from now on of improving how I construct sentences and be more aware of my grammar.

Angelou,M.(1993) Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, Random House, New York.

General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland (GTCNI) Teaching: the Reflective Profession, Belfast, GTCNI. (Available through www.gtcni.org.uk)