Celebrations!!

Week 9 – Cultural Observations – 24^th April 2011

This week has been an absolutely fantastic week for me. There has been a great focus within my week on celebrations. Not just because we have reached the Easter Holidays Easter but also because I turned twenty-one years old this week in Poland. I was able to spend my birthday with some of my great friends in Poznan. We had a BBQ in the afternoon in some beautiful summer weather and in the evening I went out for dinner with a few friends. I was even given some icecream with 21 candles on it and was sung happy birthday in multiple languages at the same time. I had an absolutely fantastic birthday.

In Poland people do not only celebrate birthdays. If you look at a polish calendar you will see that there is at least one name on every day. These indicate what is called imieniny or ‘name day’. Poles over the age of thirteen usually put more emphasis on their ‘name day’ rather than their birthday. Name day celebrations are very similar to birthday celebrations. Gifts are given and a name day party is very common. Unfortunately Jeff is not a polish name, and it doesn’t have a polish translation so I do not have a name day, but I was able to enjoy my birthday.

In Poland Easter is a very important festival. In such a catholic country this time of year is very important for most polish people, of all ages. The festivities are not just limited to Easter Sunday but occur throughout holy week. Holy week begins with Palm Sunday where people come to church with willow branches or bouquets of dried flowers to represent the iconic palm leaves that are a symbol of this important day. Traditions and celebrations continue all week with many church and mass services. On Easter Sunday baskets of food are taken to the church to be blessed. Easter Sunday is also a great day for families to get together and share a wide variety of tradition polish church. Traditions don’t just end on Easter Sunday but continue on to what is known as Wet Monday. This day got its name as tradition dictates that on this day it is acceptable for people to throw water over each other. I am looking forward to hearing a lot of funny stories and hope to see a lot of wet people tomorrow, let’s hope though that the weather holds up.

The past week has been very relaxing for me as I have had time off school and university and I have been able to enjoy birthday and Easter celebrations but I am looking forward to getting back into a routine and back into my school by the end of the week.

Happy Easter!!

Jeff

Bić albo nie bić

Week 8 – Personal Development – 17^th April 2011

Now that I am in school and teaching a few lessons each week I feel that I am going to be very busy, I don’t mind though, I really enjoy having something to do. This week the sun has come out and some great weather has arrived. I have been playing volleyball outside many times this week and hope to enter a few polish beach volleyball tournaments before I leave. Only a few weeks ago I spoke about how spring had finally arrived but I feel we have hit summer already. As I write this I am relaxing in the local park soaking up some rays and enjoying some mouth watering strawberries with some outdoor volleyball planned for this afternoon! This is the life!



This week has been quite a dramatic week for me. When I say this I am talking about the fact that I had a number of drama classes. In my multicultural class we had a special guest taking us for a lesson entitled drama as a means of multiculturalism. It was very interesting as I got to find out a lot about the Polish, Spanish and Turkish cultures by working with people from those countries. It was also very fun and interactive and was a great environment to address, through drama, some of the problems or benefits of multiculturalism that we have come across since being here.

Hamlet

This week I also joined a drama group for beginners in the Polish language. Our plan is that we will write a script for a modern day ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, translate it into polish and then perform it for our friends here in Poland. We only have 4 weeks so it will definitely be a challenge but it is something I am really looking forward to in the hope that it will really advance my ability to speak the polish language. I have been cast as one of two narrators, the other is a puppet. I call him Hamlet.

This week I also had the opportunity to go to the cinema. It was the first time that I have been since arriving in Poland. We had heard that in Poland international movies were shown in English with Polish subtitles so we thought we would be fine. We went to see the new film ‘The Way Back.’ It is about prisoners escaping from a prison in Syberia and walking to India. Unfortunately a little of the movie was in Polish or in Russian and obviously they did not have English subtitles for this bit. Fortunately it was not enough to ruin the movie for us. And I did learn some new polish words by following along with the subtitles.

This week I am going on a school trip to the dentist with my school which I am extremely excited about and I hope to find out a little more about the polish culture in terms of the Easter celebration.

Ciao,

Jeff

A Busy Week for Mr Jeff

Week 7 – Professional Development – 10^th April 2011

This week for me has been overall, quite hectic. Fortunately after being here over a month a have finally made it into a school. Here in Poland I have been placed in the International School of Poznań and like I said last week it is an IB school, and therefore does not follow the usual polish curriculum. Also all classes are taught in English. I am going into the school all day Mondays and Tuesdays, and then on Wednesday afternoons. As their school begins at eight in the morning I have had to get up at half past six, which I am really not used to. I have really enjoyed working in the school and have already been given responsibility of reading lessons and teaching English as a foreign language as I am a native speaker and plan to take more lessons this week.

Throughout my first week in the school I have made some interesting observations. In the class that I am working, which would be the equivalent of Primary 3 back at home, the children are extremely intelligent. The first lesson that I observed with the class was about which blood vessels and veins carry oxygenated blood, and which carry deoxygenated blood. Obviously this was being taught to their level, but I was really impressed with the complexity of the words that the children were aware of, especially as this was not the childrens’ first language. On top of this some of the children have been given complicated spellings including ‘embarrassment’ or ‘ashamed’ which the children seemed to have little difficulty with. Even the childrens’ ability to cut and stick seems to be more advanced than children of an equivalent age at home in Northern Ireland.

I am not sure if these observations are due to the fact that the school is private and therefore parents have very high expectations from the teachers or if this has something to do with the curriculum taught in IB school. I feel that it is a combination of both. I have been looking into the IB curriculum and I feel it has very interesting values.  There is such a strong emphasis on quality education (valuing their reputation for high standards), participation and international mindedness and you can see these values in action within both the primary school and within the curriculum. (Strategic plan of the IBO). Within the school and curriculum there is also a big focus on children striving to achieve ‘the learner profile’. This profile encourages children to become inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk takers, balanced and reflective. These attributes are on show in every classroom within the school, and are referred to in many class activities which emphasises to me the importance of ‘the learner profile’ in this IBO school. (IB learner profile booklet)

 Also at the school teachers are called by their first name, so I am being referred to as Mr Jeff, a name that I quite like as I feel it is a lot more personal than Mr Scott, which in a primary school I feel is no bad thing!

Until next time,

Mr Jeff!

Strategic plan of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) – 2004
http://www.ibo.org/mission/strategy/documents/sp2004.pdf

IB learner Profile Booklet
http://www.ibo.org/programmes/profile/documents/Learnerprofileguide.pdf

Spring has Arrived!!

Week 6 – Cultural Visits – 2^nd April 2011



Relaxing in the sun



Volleyball in the Park



This week, Poznań has really seen a massive change in the weather, for the better. I feel it is safe to say that spring has finally arrived in Poland and I am loving it. The temperate has risen, the sun is out and the whole city is starting to look that little bit greener. Of course we have jumped at the opportunity to really enjoy the weather. This week we have enjoyed BBQ lunches, visits to the park and a lot of messing around with a volleyball on the grass outside (and it is also becoming less common for me to get funny looks when I am outside in shorts.)

This week I had the opportunity to visit the International School of Poznań. I was given a tour and told a little about the school, the classes and the curriculum. I have been informed that the curriculum used in this school is the IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization) curriculum. This is a curriculum that has been designed in recent years to meet the needs of globally mobile students. I think that being able to observe and teach within this curriculum will be an invaluable experience as today’s society is becoming increasing multicultural every day. I will start in the school on Monday and I am really looking forward to gaining some experiences working with children from an entirely different culture and background.

The Last Supper - Made of salt!

Last weekend a few people from my Polish course set out to Krakow. It took us eight hours to get there but cost the equivalent of about five pounds. I feel this is very good value for public transport, and completely different than what you would expect at home in the UK. When we were in Krakow we had the opportunity to visit the nearby salt mine. It was a fascinating to see some of the sculptures that the miners were able to craft out of just salt. We also visited the Castle and a number of different churches. Some of the architecture in Krakow is incredible. This week I have also had the opportunity of a formal tour of Poznań. It was really good to discover some of the history of the sites that I have already seen around Poznań. We finished the tour by visiting the Church of the Holy Saviour in Poznań. Again it is a wonderful piece of architecture. During my Erasmus I have been really struck by the architecture here in Poland. No matter what city you visit you will see many beautiful buildings which I feel really contributes to the culture in each city but also here in Poland as a whole.

Until next time,

Jeff