Week Twelve

Personal

A person needs at intervals to separate from family and companions and go to new places. One must go without familiars in order to be open to influences, to change.  Katharine Butler Hathaway

The last Family meal altogether

This week was a very exciting week personally for me as my mother came to visit, she arrived in Amsterdam on Friday and I spent Saturday with her just walking around and taking in what little sunshine there was. It’s strange to see her after three months, I didn't realise how long it was because I've been having so much fun.
We walked through Vondel park which is huge and just caught up with all the things that had been happening at home that I had missed, it was very hard to leave her on Saturday evening and I did get a tad emotional but I know that I will be back home In just two months and I really should make the most of the time I have left here.

Eimear's present

On Tuesday we celebrated a big event, Eimear’s 21^st birthday, after spending a few days recovering from our celebrations on Saturday night which ended with a dilapidated bike and a few cuts and bruises, we decided to take it easy and throw a party in our kitchen instead, it was great to have everyone together having fun and doing the Erasmus dance.

 On Wednesday we started our new semester which meant new classes to look forward too, we spent the afternoon laying about at the canal topping up on our sunburn and screaming ‘row row row your boat’ at the rowers going past us, we also discovered a petting zoo near to Vossenveld which we shall be visiting more in the coming weeks to feed the ponies.

Slush puppies

I had my first visit to the Nijmegen brewery on Thursday afternoon, it is such a lovely spot and we sat sipping a cold beverage under the shade of a few cherry blossom trees, Darren and I also treated ourselves to a slush puppy and a few new items of summer clothing. Friday was a very sad day for us all as it was the last time we all sat together for a big Erasmus family dinner one of our dear friends is only here for three months and will be leaving us to go back to

Our French friend Dojo 

France, a few of our friends have taken these two weeks we have off classes to go back home and see their families. For the dinner we each cooked a dish typically found in our country and had a giant buffet, then we went around the circle taking about how we first met each other and the fond memories we shall take away with us. I was personally shocked at how quickly these three months have gone by and am dreading the thought of us leaving here to go home, I know that as much as I miss home, I will miss my home here and the family that we have made for ourselves and I know that I would be heartbroken having to leave now when we have so much more left to see and do.

It doesn't matter where you are now; you are nowhere compared to where you can go. Bob Proctor

Week Eleven

Professional

This week I got to spend a morning with the first class, the children were aged four to six, just like the foundation stage back home. The interesting thing is children start school the day after their fourth birthday and stay in the first class until they are six, if they are born before January it counts as one year if they are born after it isn't until September that their first year starts.

Task board

They spend the first 15 minutes of the day playing board games with some of the parents and after that they bring their chair into a circle to begin the day. Each child has their own chair with their name on it. They sing the good morning song and place the day of the week onto the calendar after that they say good morning to one person in the class and the whole class says good morning to them. They use a very similar system to home when choosing tasks for the children to do, they have their own freedom to pick a station to go to by placing a magnet under the task on the chart, they have to use self management skills and also problem solving skills to judge were they can go. There is a visual timetable and everything is labelled in the classroom it helps with the children’s vocabulary and also to tidy up. At the end of the day the children come back into the circle and discuss what they did that day, they also complete self evaluation by colouring in a happy face, normal face or a sad face. The NI Curriculum (2007) suggests that children should be actively involved in planning, reviewing and reflecting what they have done.

Animal table

As they were learning about animals and their babies we had the opportunity to teach them a little bit of English by naming the different animals. It was heartbreaking not to be able to speak to the children and not being able to answer them when they asked me a question, I found it very hard but it was wonderful when they talked to me about what they were doing with such innocence and enthusiasm and using hand gestures so I understood what they wanted to say.

Clock

The three things I will take away and apply to my own teaching is the shoelace diploma which the teacher had, showing the date the child learnt to tie their laces, also the teacher had a big sign which the children turned around when they went to the toilet, so that she could see who was out of the room and others could see when it was okay to go; it encourages children to have choice and exercise autonomy and independence (NI Curriculum 2007).  The last thing I found very interesting was the clock, it showed intervals of time with colours rather than the actual time, I thought this was a wonderful way of introducing children to the concept of time at a young age, judging by the colour they know what time of the day it is and can correspond it to the visual timetable. This will tie in with competence 20 and 21 of the GTCNI professional competences which state that teachers should use a range of effective strategies to motivate and aid pupils in their learning including those with SEN and not learning in their first language.

 

Shoelace diplomas

CCEA (2007) Northern Ireland Curriculum, Belfast, CCEA.
General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland (GTCNI) Teaching: the Reflective Profession, Belfast, GTCNI. (Available through www.gtcni.org.uk)

Week Ten

Cultural

I got to experience something very typically Dutch this week and that was the Dutch children in my class having their cycling exam. Of course the children have been cycling from the age of four and are far more at home on a bike than I will ever be so I decided not to participate and humiliate myself.

cycling exam

The children are also coming to the end of their Jeelo project, this involves them looking after an animal and learning about its life cycle, at the end they must make an interesting Power Point presentation outlining how to care for their animal and also different characteristics. It was an extremely interesting topic to observe in the school, I watched the children care for caterpillars and tadpoles with eagerness and ease. It is a fantastic way to combine a project with ICT as outlined in the NI Curriculum Pupils should be enabled to develop Using ICT skills by engaging in meaningful and purposeful activities, set in a range of contexts. They should use ICT to handle and communicate information, solve problems, pose questions and take risks.

This week was also our Tour to the West as part of our Dutch Culture and Society class. We visited Delft; famous for Delft pottery and also the New Church where King William of Orange is buried. The Nieuwe Kerk is also the home of the royal burial vaults and are not open to the public. We were all asked to visit the tower of the new church and after what seemed like an endless climb with hundreds of spiralled stairs we arrived very dizzy to a heart stopping view of Delft, if you had a fear of heights it was best not to look over the edge; it was a very beautiful view but the tower was very hard to navigate back down again and I suffered the after effects with a throbbing pain in my legs for days afterwards.

Parliament building 

Irish breakfast

On Saturday we travelled to Den Haag the home of the parliament, Queen Beatrix and the soon to be King Willem. We had a tour around the city with a difference, we got envelopes and split into teams, we had to find places using clues, it brought us around the entire city and my feet were very sore afterwards, we saw the working palace of the Queen as well as the new and old parliament buildings, the city has a lot of foreign embassies’ so it was fun to guess the country by the flags. I thought the city was beautiful it’s full of history, monuments, museums and culture. I think it’s true that everywhere in the world you will find an Irish pub, Den Haag had two, we enjoyed a wonderful Irish breakfast (no potato or soda bread though) and then sat out in the sunshine enjoying the sights and sounds of the city.

My favourite part however was seeing the Panorama by Willem Mesdag: firstly you walked along a dark corridor and up a spiralled stair, when you emerged all you could see were bright lights and sand, the panorama is one of Holland’s largest paintings, it encircles a room and is a beautifully detailed painting, there was sand and clogs all around you and it felt as if you were standing under an umbrella at the beach, it was truly something you need to see to understand. "Mesdag Panorama is the most beautiful sensation of my life. It has just one tiny flaw and that is its flawlessness." (Vincent van Gogh, 1881)

Part of the Panorama

CCEA (2007) Northern Ireland Curriculum, Belfast, CCEA.

Week Nine

Personal

If at some point you don’t ask yourself, ‘what have I gotten myself into?’ then you’re not doing it right. Roland Gau

Home comforts

This week was one of the week that I asked myself that same exact question, what had I gotten myself into, with my bike breaking yet again, my lovely purple Amsterdam bag breaking the very same day and just a lot of bad luck in general I found myself missing home more than ever. I missed the familiarity of home and just knowing that when I was having a bad week that I could crawl back into my bed with comfy double duvet and watch the sex and the city box set and just feel sorry for myself. On Erasmus this is simply not the case, and in a way I am glad, you just have to suck it up and get on with life,and of course there are many wonderful people here that will buy you a beer or a piece of chocolate in your time of need, and they will always remind you to ‘stop worrying about the potholes in the road and just celebrate the journey’ Fitzhugh Mullan

Erasmus family

My week was saved however with the arrival of a package from home, with Tayto cheese and onion, tea and a box of crème eggs I felt like the luckiest person in the world, I will never take a crème egg for granted ever again. We also had a wonderful night out with our Erasmus group, some of whom I hadn't really spoken to properly, it really made me appreciate how great the Erasmus program is and how I was so lucky to get to do this, sitting in a kitchen blasting music and talking to everyone made me feel part of something wonderful,

when the night ended I dragged a few people back to make them a good cup of Irish tea and it felt just like I was bringing a little of home here to Nijmegen.

Arnhem

On Thursday we had a trip to the open air museum in Arnhem, I have learnt that before people had fly spray and proper windows, they painted their houses blue to keep the flies away, also they used to sleep in a sitting position rather than lying flat, I observed how to make paper out of cotton fibres and how windmills are used in the Netherlands to manage water. On Friday we had some colleges from a Turkish university come and observe our tutoring class, we compared the different layouts of our classrooms, all of which were very different especially the younger classes compared to the older classes. We discussed why they thought the classrooms where laid out that way and also the positive and negative points, ending the discussion with what we would apply to our own teaching back home.

Sunday lunch

Sunday was a glorious day as we finally saw the sun; I had such a beautiful view of it out of my window so I spent most of Sunday lying on my bed with the curtains and the window wide open soaking up the vitamin D that we Irish people are severely lacking. I hope this means that the summer is here and I can finally cycle (when my bike is fixed) in shorts and t-shirts and without fear of being blown off the bike in the wind. 

Week Eight

Cultural

It’s hard to believe we are already 2/5 through our Erasmus journey, it feels like we've know everyone for a very long time, yet it seems like only yesterday that we arrived in Amsterdam suitcases in tow wondering what the next 5 months had instore.

This week was one of the most exciting weeks for me personally, not only did I teach an art lesson to my class which I loved every minute of, but we got to travel to the city of Berlin. I have wanted to see Berlin for a very long time so the 12 hour bus journey did not deter me, we were all extremely tired when we finally arrived but eager for the two days we had to explore the city. Our bus driver was what can only be described as a complete legend; he explained to us what was happening in English throughout the journey and made it a wonderful experience for us when he didn't really have to do that as it was a Dutch company.

The first day we walked all day in the snow and cold seeing the city up close and personal, we saw the Reichstag, the Brandenburg gate, the holocaust memorial, the museum of natural history and the Berlin wall. The city is very big compared with Belfast, Nijmegen and Amsterdam, the old and new buildings blend together so well to create a beautiful city. I loved the architecture of the Berliner Dom (Berlin cathedral) the copper roof reminded me of the city hall in Belfast, also the statues and wood carvings on the door remind me of some of the churches here in Nijmegen and Eindhoven. There is so much to see in the city and take in, it’s like a cultural paradise there is the parts of the city that you become stunned by it’s beauty yet parts that you become haunted by its past. The city is alive with the history and it embraces this and yet you can see through the various building works and improvements that the city is striving to embrace the future.

On our last day we decided to go to the German historical museum which was very interesting, it was good to be able to compare parts of the German history to both Irish and British history. The museum had a whole floor dedicated to the depression and Nazi Germany and the Second World War as well as a display about the bombing of Dresden and the Berlin wall, the museum itself was in a very pretty building but would need most of a day to walk around and appreciate.

We also got to visit the Atle Nationalgalerie where I got to see one of my favourite paintings by Monet along with a few works of Renoir, I was so happy although the others did not share in my excitement they were nice enough to come along with me. We walked to checkpoint Charlie and ate a Currywurst ,our American friend Beth had been excitedly talking about getting one from we arrived in Germany so I think with such a build up we were bound to be slightly disappointed. We also visited the Jewish museum which was huge, there were parts of it that were very upsetting, reading the stories of some of the people as well as seeing some of the artefacts belonging to the victims. There was so much to see in the museum documenting Jewish history and origins and we just didn't have the time to view everything. The holocaust tower was eerie, you walked in and the door slammed closed behind you, leaving you in the dark and cold, it was a huge empty void and although you were in with other people you still felt utterly alone, it cemented in my mind how horrible the Jews must have felt and it was utterly heartbreaking.

Locks

The one thing I loved about Berlin above all else was the locks that couples and friends had locked around the bridges over the river, it was lovely to see a little part of peoples own personal history left in the city. I will definitely go back someday as there is so much left for me to see there.