Week 13

Personal Development

This was our last week of school and university classes, and so an end to the Erasmus experience for most of our friends. Looking back at previous blogs, it seems like no length of time has passed since the first weekend we spent as a group at Ishøj. I must be getting old, as I find myself saying, ‘time flies’ and ‘where has this week gone?’ a little too often!

Our last week in school has been my favourite! We got to know the pupils a lot better as they became more confident with practising their English and more familiar with us being in class. I even got invited onto the playground to skip (ten years since the last time I skipped, I was relieved I had not forgotten everything). For our last day, we had organised some food for the class which included cake and good old effortless Top Hats (definitely a lot more delicious and enticing outside of Northern Ireland - who knew 14 year olds could be so excited about eating Top Hats?!?) and the teacher gave them a little more time at break to say goodbye and chat to us. It was hard to say goodbye and I would have liked to spend more time in school as I really enjoyed the atmosphere and how welcoming the school felt.

Yesterday was our last day of classes at university. Even though we had a lot of evaluations to do, I really loved reminiscing about all the memories I have from the past 3 months. All 32 of us went out for dinner in the evening time to celebrate together and say our final goodbyes. Seeing the weather was so great yesterday (20°C!), we then went to Nyhavn after to sit beside the water for a while. The evening was the perfect way to spend time with the entire group for one last occassion. It didn’t hit me that I wasn’t going to see some people again until it was time to say goodbye. It was certainly sad, yet I am filled with a lot of relief that I have accomplished so much. It also has given me the motivation I need for the next stage of my trip here – individual assignments! Plus Facebook is a great invention.

Cultural Development

I have been reminded to appreciate living in such a beautiful place - something that I seem to have forgotten over the past few weeks due to daily life and routine. After our last day at school, Greg, Julia, Christina and I took a picnic to Frederiksberg Park. It was so nice to relax in the sun and stunning surroundings. I loved watching everybody else enjoy their afternoon in the park – lots of students were ‘studying’ together; people were walking their dogs; young families were playing on the lawns; and the ‘keep fit brigade’ were making me feel bad, making running look effortless. There are so many parks and lawns to enjoy in Copenhagen, also known as ‘Green Copenhagen,’ and it is obvious the Danes love making use of their well kept facilities to relax. This is something I admire and I really hope the good weather continues so that more time can be spent outside enjoying the city.

On Friday a few of our class went to Tivoli. Founded by Georg Carstensen in 1843, the park opens every summer as well as having special events at Halloween and Christmas. Being one of the world’s oldest amusement parks and the idea behind Walt Disney’s Disneyland, I could not wait to see what all the fuss was about once it opened for its summer season last weekend. So, after paying a ‘Copenhagenous’ (copious) amount of money to get in, we wandered around the park taking everything in. We spent around 4 hours going on the rides, shopping, having tea and coffee in one of the many cafés and restaurants, and of course taking lots of pictures. The design and detail put into the park is amazing and everything is so colourful – no wonder it attracts over 4 million people a year!

After dark, the park got even prettier, with all the lamps and lanterns. The hotel, Nimb which is attached to Tivoli looked like something out of a children’s story book. After dinner, we went to Fredagsrock (Friday Rock). Each week a band plays at the main stage in Tivoli, and this week it was the Danish rock band, The Blue Van. Even though it had started raining, the atmosphere was great and I hope to go back before we leave to come home.

Professional Development

During our last week in school, we participated in more lessons and got involved in more aspects of school life, since the project work had finished. It was great to be able to take part in classes, especially ones related to our subject. On Monday, I was in two different science lessons with grade 6. The class were lovely and made me feel very welcome. After a short introduction as to whom I was, we set about doing an experiment on fitness levels. The pupils loved the active class in which they jumped up and down a step for 5 minutes, and one they will definitely not forget! We also had more time in English lessons, and it was so good to see how greatly the pupils’ levels of English had improved over the past few weeks. I have learnt a lot about school life in Denmark and I will definitely be bringing this back to Northern Ireland; for example, due to the fact that a lot of classes weren’t in English, I have been able to observe the body language of both teachers and pupils, and how we, as teachers, can use our body language in a more positive and beneficial way. The experience has been really worthwhile and unforgettable.

On Monday, my placement group presented our comparisons between the education system in Denmark and our home countries. The presentation was a great way of summing up our findings from the Folkskole and we were able to categorise our own viewpoints in a more constructive way. Each group who presented got the opportunity to take and ask questions from the rest of the class, and I found this very helpful as it made the presentations more interactive and relevant.

We completed our lessons in university on Thursday through various methods of evaluation. As a teacher, I was able to think about all the activities, resources, literature and people that I have come into contact with and how advantageous they have been. We used post it notes with lots of things we had learned and stuck them onto the outlines of ourselves which we first prepared 12 weeks ago at the weekend away. I did not comprehend how much information I had actually learnt until we were told to write a letter to ourselves. The reason behind doing this was that our tutor is going to post our letter to us in one year’s time, to remind us of all the things that we have taken from our trip. There was a section on the letter about plans we would like to make in the future, and it was helpful to be able to think about what we have learnt in Denmark and how this will impact our teaching in the future. Making an action plan seems like the best way of making our new found experiences relevant and worthwhile.

Before and after...