Week Twenty

Professional

“Some people live in a dream world and others see the reality. There are also people who realise their dreams.” Desiderius Erasmus

This week was the end of classes for all of us , it was a mix of emotions because not only were we saying goodbye to the pabo and our class groups on a professional level, but we had to finish and had in a lot of work, our final assignment was to present a group project about teaching children different ways to deal with diversity, of course myself Darren and Eimear just used our skills from teaching PDMU for the past two years and came up with some fun and interactive lessons using resources and materials that we had taught before. We listened to the rest of the class and their presentations on the topics and delivered group evaluations, some of the presentations were more interactive than others but it was clear to see that a lot of work had been put into each one.  I liked the idea of learning from each other and using each other’s ideas to aid our own teaching in the future, the best way to learn professional skills is to learn from other professionals and a lot of the classes we took gave us the opportunity to do so and also to pass on our own knowledge to other people.

Before our last tutoring class we had to read a letter which we had written to ourselves at the start of our Erasmus with the goals and expectations for our time in Nijmegen, my letter contained a lot of goals that were both professional and personal, it was nice to see how my feelings had changed from the start of Erasmus to the end and how many goals that I had

achieved.  While reading the letter I saw how much I had learnt and what perceptions that I had about how my time in the Netherlands was going to be, I thought that I was going to injure myself cycling but I became quite a good cyclist. It reminded me of how much I had achieved in classes and on placement, I definitely will have more of an understanding of EAL pupils and have a greater respect for classroom assistants as I saw how much they are needed in a classroom as I saw teachers in a classroom without them.

I feel that the other wonderful people have helped me grow in a professional level, by forming new relationships and allowing myself to see things from a different point of view I can have a more diverse attitude to education and can use what I have learnt from other countries educational systems as an example to improve my own methods. I liked this quote from Carl Rogers as it explains partially what I have learnt ‘In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?’  

Quote found at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/carlrogers202206.html#ApB5mI8Gb4fbhK2H.99