After a busy two weeks of placement completed we decided it
was time to have a little Erasmus fun at the weekend. To begin with on Friday night Ashleigh and I
met up with the teachers from our placement school for food after which we
attended a gathering that our university had arranged. Attending this gave us the opportunity to get
together with our study buddy Tracy who we had not seen in a while due to
Easter and placement.
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| My invention to protect my cast from the paint |
However, on Saturday this is when Ashleigh and I really let
our hair down as we attended a festival of colour called ‘Holi Gaudy’. The festival
tours Europe and had arrived in our little town of Kreuzlingen so we thought it
would be completely rude if we did not attend!
We went to the festival again with teachers from our placement school –
I wasn’t joking last week when I said how welcoming they are.
As it is a festival of colour this meant that paint was
going to be involved to help create the mass of colour. In order to get the most out of this it was
advised that we should wear white clothes thereby in order to experience the
full effect. As you can see in our
pictures we had a lot of fun and it would be fair to say that our white clothes
were no longer white and our faces were no longer clean when we returned
home! Ashleigh and I thoroughly enjoyed
ourselves and danced the day away. This
has easily become an event that is going to stand out in my memory from the
Erasmus adventure. It is not every day
that you are given the opportunity to attend a paint party.
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| Like something from Avatar |
Monday brought the start of our last week on teaching
placement here in Switzerland. As I
write this blog tomorrow will be my last day in what has been a very enjoyable
experience and one from which I have learnt so much, not only from the teaching
perspective, but on a personal note also.
Being in an international school has been a wonderful opportunity and
one that is very rarely offered, so being to be able to gain this experience is
something I have really appreciated.
Getting a different viewpoint on education away from the Northern
Ireland Curriculum bubble that we seem to have at home has been refreshing and
helped me gain a different view on the education we can offer our
children.
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| Covered in paint!! |
This week we had a meeting with the school director who
introduced us to the programme that the school strictly follows. Firstly, it is interesting to note something
different from home, as not only is he seen as the ‘principal’ of ISKK but also
of two other schools – at home being a director of one school is a challenge
never mind three. ISKK is a school
within the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme that was founded in
Geneva, Switzerland in 1968 as a non-profit educational foundation and is
designed to teach children from aged three to nineteen. The programme is now in place in 146
countries and teaching over one million students. The statement for the IB programme (2014) is
as follows:
“The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring,
knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more
peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. …to understand that other people, with their
differences, can also be right.”
This statement in itself I feel is inspiring to the children
who attend these schools as it demonstrates that while education is seen as an
important factor in their lives the ability to respect others around them is
equally important. This is a quality
that I personally feel is important for children to learn and I have now
witnessed how it is emphasised within this school and how it is notably evident
within the attitudes of the children. The
programme also has well thought and planned standards and practices in place
for the teachers to follow and one element that I noticed to be similar to the
five strands of the Northern Ireland
Curriculum’s Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities is the ‘IB Learner
Profile’. Within this teachers are
encouraged to let the IB learners to strive to be: thinkers; communicators;
reflective; inquirers; caring etc. As
Goethe said:
“Treat people as if they were what they
ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
Tschüss
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