I found teaching placement interesting this week as I got the opportunity to observe class progress meetings. All the teachers that teach a specific class will gather and talk about the class and compare how the child is doing in one class in comparison to the other. Most of the meetings where in Dutch but they held one in English for my benefit. It was interesting watching the teachers work together and share ideas. I think meetings like this would be valuable for every school.
This week was the last class of the ‘Re-thinking education’ module. Our first task was to make a presentation on the re-former school that we had visited in week two. In my case, this was a Freinet School. The other groups had the opportunity to tell the group about their visits to other reformer schools. Having read about the other re-former Schools, I found it fascinating hearing the presentations and seeing the photos of what they are actually like. It was especially worthwhile hearing each groups opinion on the schools. I have learnt a lot from visiting the re-former schools, for example Experienced Based Learning (EBL), creativity and innovation are central to my lesson planning since starting the re-thinking education module. The entire module has opened my eyes and made me think of education in a different light. It has given me a lot of innovative ideas to bring home to classrooms in Northern Ireland.
Our second task was to design our ‘Ideal School’. Our group meet up on numerous occasions to discuss the main aspects that we wished to include in our ideal school. I found it interesting that each person in our group represented a different country with different educational systems and yet the group’s vision on our ‘Ideal school’ was very similar. We decided that our school would be centred on learning through discovery and experience based learning. We wanted our school to have a good sense of community with the younger and older students working together so they can learn from each other. Each class would be mixed age and ability, with a maximum of 20 people per class. We decided that we didn’t want our school to have an excess of rules and so we introduced one simple rule of ‘Respect the People and Respect the Environment’
I was pleased with the outcome of our ‘ideal School’. We spent the whole day sticking, painting, glueing and cutting materials to build our ‘ideal school’. The experience was fun and it brought all our new ideas about education together.
Our 'Ideal School'
Jonny came to visit this weekend, so I decided it would be interesting to explore a few towns in the Netherlands. We choose three cities; Delft, Hague and Amsterdam. Delft is a small city located in the west of the Netherlands about halfway between Rotterdam and The Hague. It is known to be one of the prettiest cities in Holland. Delft is probably best known for the blue and white porcelain and pottery that originates from the area known as Delftware. Dutch royal family also lives in Delft.
Delft
Hague is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Located in the west of the Netherlands, The Hague is the seat of the Dutch government and parliament, the Supreme Court, and the Council of State, but the city is not the capital of the Netherlands which constitutionally is Amsterdam. All foreign embassies in the Netherlands and 150 international organisations are located in the city, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which makes Hague one of the major cities hosting the United Nations, along with New York, Vienna and Geneva.
Hague
Amsterdam
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