Personal & Culture

It is great now to see that winter is coming to an end here in the Netherlands as the weather has definitely improved, the snow is gone, the sun has been shining and temperatures are on the up! This has definitely made the mood of everyone pick up, not that we weren’t in good spirits already. Let’s hope we have seen the end of the snow!

This has been a good week here in Nijmegen for everyone and the Erasmus experience is well and truly underway now. It’s scary to think that some people only have about 2months left but the friendships we have all made will continue after this experience and many of us have spoken about trips during the summer time.

As it was Nicky’s birthday this week it was important that we made it a good one as experiences like this can cause people to miss home, so we made sure we threw a good party in true student style for him! Everyone rallied together to buy a card that everyone signed and a cake to set the night off in style! This was a great night had by all living in Vossenveld!

Ice skating was the highlight of the complete group schedule this week on Saturday morning. Although it was early in the morning after the birthday party, we set off by bike to find the centre and it didn’t take us as long as it normally does to find places here. We skated for nearly two hours. After a few played in the ‘kids’ area for a while with skating frames we set off into the main ice rink which was different to that in Belfast. It was a large ring, with an ice-hockey pitch in the centre and professionals zooming past on the inside. It was funny to see how much some people’s confidence grew by the end of the session and luckily nobody lost balance and fell.

For the first time in a few weeks, we had a group dinner in Pinocchio’s Restaurant on Saturday evening. It was good to have the group together around a table again with the chat flowing and laughs roaring around the room. It was nice to try some pizza in a true Italian restaurant and a relaxing evening was enjoyed by everyone.

Professional Development

On Tuesday our school placement started and I along with Nicky have been placed in School De Luithorst for four weeks. This is a small school with about 2-300 pupils in total. I have been placed with Group8 which is 10-11 year olds. This was a really good experience as it was the first time I have been in primary school setting as a student teacher. I wasn’t expecting it to be that different from schools back home but I was surprised to notice as many differences as I did. I think the main difference was the fact that the children wore their own clothes into school and they were on first name terms with their teacher. The day started well with an introduction about me and the pupils were so enthusiastic to ask questions about me and my life which I do not think would have happened so quickly in a Northern Irish school setting. The teacher was also very keen to have me in the class and she tried her best to explain as much as she could to me about what was going on in the classroom as it was mainly in Dutch.

On the Wednesday morning I had the task of supervising the class alone as the teacher had to give individual children their results for the national test and advice about what school to attend next. I found this challenging because of the communication barrier, I would have instructed the class to be quiet or for pupils to carry out a certain task and they may not have understood what I was saying so this will be an aspect I will try to improve over the coming weeks. Next time I will conduct a small 30minute lesson on Northern Ireland and teach some English and I am very keen to take on this challenge. The school is also having a musical which would be an aspect of school life I would love to get involved in!

Classes continued as usual on Thursday and Friday. Music has to the highlight of my week in University. The class was so active and had everyone involved, using their hands, voice and feet to create the lesson. We found so many ideas that we can take into the classroom on our placement schools using Music. Joanne, a St Mary’s student and myself had to present about the Northern Irish school system which was as interesting for me as it was the group as it made me think about our school system and compare it to others not just the Dutch system.