M5 - School Experience - MY PERSONAL REFLECTIONS, „GAINS“

While teaching and the stay at Hertug Hans Skole I got so many reflections, interesting information from teachers (not only Tanja and Morten, but also the others in the teachers´ room), it was really valuable 3-week-stay for me.

Some of the ideas?

• helping pupils - some tips how to help and work with students more sufficiently
  

For example with using red/green brick (instead raising arms pupils turn a brick with the red part on the top - they can continue working, before the teacher come to them - they don´t lose time while raising hand and waiting)

And using white-boards - a laminated peace of paper for each pupil - when I ask a question, all of them write their answer on the white-board and then their raise it at the same time. Therefore I have much better feedback then if I choose only one pupil to answer. It can be used in math for counting, but also for vocabulary in English for example...

• teaching of Music
  

Using of warm-up activities, as I mentioned before, but aslo I brought some concrete inspirations for activities - for example samba rhythms...

• the 3-weeks on Hertug Hans Skole enriched me personally

As I said, it was my first real practice at lower secondary school. And I enjoyed it very much. I really liked the creative way of working with children, differenciated teaching, their critical way of thinking, feedback...And I also liked their individuality. Some people would maybe say - Danish pupils don´t have enought discipline - they wear, what they want, they can have a lollipop, MP3 player in the lesson; they are too individual... But I can´t agree that they don´t have a discipline. I found their WORKING-DISCIPLINE better then of Czech pupils. (We wrote our final seminary paper on this topic with my Czech colleagues from the CR - Míša and Vašek...). The Danish pupils are just unique and if you work with their uniqueness, you can be enriched a lot...

AND THE CONCLUSION?

I will miss it very much. I felt really good at the school, get to know many teachers nad found that there is a lot what to work on, what to improve to become a good teacher - but that it is worth...

Before going to Denmark I was decided to finish my teacher studies in Czech Republicand then quit this field of profession...to find a job in private sector, some office or maximally private language or music school. Because the situation at Czech lower secondary schools is rather complicated...
The Czech system is changing - but slowly...Most of the schools around my home town are unfortunately old-fashioned and not really much young teachers go to teach there, because teachers are underestimated in the CR... Therefore the change in Czech school system will take a quite a long time... There is also not much cooperation amongst teachers, so if a new young modern teacher comes, he/she can be considered a bit as a "black sheep"...And if the pupils are not used to individual work and self-responsibility, then it is more difficult...

To be honest, I started to thing about becoming teacher in Denmark.

There is much bigger possibility to teach the way I like, more space for the social message (I chose teacher´s job not because of Engish and not because of Music - but because of working with young people, the social message behind that. But for sure - both English and Music are quite good subjects for that.;) And in Denmark primary and lower secondary education is more focused on that, than on encyclopaedical knowledge of pupils. )

Schools are also very varied in Denmark – so maybe you can find a good school, with approach which you prefer. But sure, schools are different, there are worse schools, worse classes, more behavioral and discipline problems...And I am sure I got to the better schools, teachers, classes; so I have more optimistic point of view than the average reality is. But one thing is - they are here!

I know that there are a lot of obstacles and difficulties which I have to consider. But still - it is an idea in my mind. No promise, no rash decisions, but the future is open...