Week 12 - Personal and Proffesional development (31/04/12 - 06/05/12)

This weekend Rebecca, Megan and I went for a Chinese with an American student named Pierce. It was really nice to eat out at a restaurant as it is not often we can do this. We also took the bus to Overby the biggest shopping centre in this area. I have booked my flights to return home and cannot believe that the end is near. I definitely feel at home here in Sweden and think I will be really sad to leave this town and all the wonderful people I have became really good friends with here.

Class this week was really interesting as we discussed the importance of creativity in learning and how schools can kill creativity amongst children. Formal tests in Primary education can minimize children’s confidence. Children can be discouraged to take risks and children can develop a fear of being wrong. I think this issue is very relevant and Ulla highlighted the importance of been creative in your teaching approaches. Furthermore, we had another visitor who talked about the early year’s education. She spoke about the importance of Preschool giving an insight into how the Swedish Pre-school came about and who the founders were. The Swedish system is different in comparison to Northern Ireland as children here attend pre-school between the ages of 3 months to 6 years old. Children do not start formal education until the age of 7 and there is a lot of focus on outdoor play and communicating with the children. She said that ‘learning to read and write starts with conversation.’ I am looking forward to visiting a Preschool whilst I’m on teaching practice.

I think long holidays at Stranmillis is something I have taken for granted over the past few years, as here in Sweden they don’t have Easter holidays as such. The lecturer (Ulla) told me that every Sunday is a holiday; luckily we have less class next week and have no class on Megan’s Birthday. I went to a local bakery and ordered a cake for Megan’s birthday, I was surprised when I seen that the cake was yellow with an Easter chick. They told me it’s an Easter birthday so the cake is yellow; it looked and tasted nice and Megan loved it. We spent the day baking buns and food and later had a party in our flat with the rest of the Erasmus group, it was a great night had by all.

I was shocked by the fact that it snowed this week especially after the previous warm weather. It felt strange to look out and see everything covered in white, it almost felt like Christmas again. Hopefully despite being so picturesque this won’t last long and we’ll see the return of some sunshine.

The view from our balcony