Some reflections

In the beginning of this 2010, I went to spend two months in a small town located in British Columbia, Canada to have my last practical placement.

As you can imagine… that was an intercultural experience… for the kids and for me because I was also living in a different culture, as I am from a Western country was not so different.

In that part of the country, the “Sunshine Coast” there is a lot of European descendants and they live together with First Nations, some of the First Nations lives in one part of the town but some of the children attend the same schools that the Canadian children. They are used to live together and to share the space.

In the class where I was doing my practical placement besides a First Nations girl, there was a boy from India, another from Korea and a girl with autism, they were all included in the normal activity in the class The girl with autism sometimes needed an assistant teacher or just some more space than the rest of the kids. But the kids helped the other kids that found some things more difficult to do it or to understand it.

I think that work together with different nationalities, personalities or different ways of how do the things helps you to grow as a person, to enrich you.

More about the course...

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Second week

First week

I've good impressions about the beginning of the course, first of all the danish students had help us so much with everything that we needed it.

The firsts days in the course helped us to know the school and the city, and also to meet our classmates! :)
We are divided in three groups for our tutor's time and then, we have class all together and also we work in groups work (2, 3, 4 people... it depends of each situation).

My expectations for this course are to know more about Pedagogical Work in Denmark and in other European countries, what are the differences and simmilarities, have the possibility to get to know people from different countries, and improve my English level.

We studied about different modes of study, how we learn in the different countries that we are from, the differences and similarities, the Mediterranean countries are similar between them (Spain, France, Greece), but differents form the Scandinavian countries that are similar between them (Denmark, Finland). In the first group, the student is more passive and also has to pay money to go to the university, in the other hand, in the Scandinavian countries the student is more active in his learning process and get money from the state.

Also, we have been talking about what is a cultural meeting, exploring the differences between cultures, why are countries different, what make us looks different from others, how we have prejudices, prejudgements and preunderstandings. We worked in this in pairs with someone from other country, that make easy to understand that we all have different opinions about the same topic.

The last days, we went to a camp were we could spend more time together to meet each one of us, to have fun together but also to learn more about what is a culture, how can we understand it, live for three days with people from different countries that have different habits and the differences between etnographic and cultural studies, why we use one or another and which are the differences. With a text of a Hmong people living in U.S.A., we looked at the kinds of cultural meetings and how the problems in an intercultural communication can develop different events.

About me...

Hej!

I'm Abigail, or just Abi and I'm from Madrid, the capital of Spain! =)

I'm already a preschool teacher and now I'm currently studying to be ESL teacher, this is my last year of university and I'm spending the first part here in Copenhagen attending the International Course of Pedagogical Work With Children and Young People in a European Perspective at UCC Frøbel.

As far as I know I really like this course, and it is really interesting go to the same class with people from many different countries: France, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Netherlands, Finalnd, Norway, Turkey, Mauritius, Estonia and of course from Spain, with different opinions, background, culture...