CHARMING HADERSLEV

As I wrote at the beginning of this stay on my web log “I am happy to study in this charming town called Haderslev”, I have been persuaded about this during the whole 3 months. Haderslev IS charming and I got to like this small town so much! And I already know that I will miss this town in the future…as I wrote several times, I have always been attracted to smaller and small town and also villages:-) And which places I love here most?

Number one! Haderslev small lake! I was running around this lake so many times, because I couldn´t take my eyes off it. And what’s more when the weather was sunny, I very often went there and was reading a book there, observed that rich bird paradise or just relaxed.

Number two! Haderslev centre! Two historical roads and that’s it!:-) Small shops and delicate smell of parched almonds everywhere..hmmm

Number three! Haderslev big lake!

Number four! The view above the golf playground!

Number five! Haderslev deer park-the best place for relaxing!

Number six! The northern part of Haderslev-the very top place!:-)

Number seven! Haderslev fjord coast, the part behind the dockyard on the way to Starrup.

Number eight! Of course our huge spacious cosy flat- it won’t be easy to go back to the dorm…:-) Number nine! Seacost not far from Haderslev!

I will never forget these places!

DYBBOL: GERMAN x DANISH 1864

When I heard that we are going to Dybbol, to be honest I had no idea where this small town is situated..:) But because I have always been attracted to small towns more than big cities, I was really curious what surprise is waiting for us there! And it was SURPRISE!! I must say that it was the best museum of history I have ever visited in my whole life. As I said before, if the history was taught at schools in this way, I would love history!:-) Unfortunately my memories on our grammar history lessons with our retired teacher are like this: sleepiness, sending messages on small pieces of papers with my classmates and just doing stuff like in this way:-) so the consequences? I had very bad knowledge of history, because it was just extremely boring for me, learning millions of facts by heart,..the situation changed at my university, because we had for a change brilliant history teachers, so I was trying to do my best for the exams, but it was very hard with such an insufficient knowledge I had from grammar school, but anyway the situation was getting better:-) Ok, I have digressed a little to explain the situation so far, so let me now recap how does it work in Dybbol:

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  One guide for several hours
  
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  Several short movies about the most important battle in the Danish-German war of 1864


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  Imitations of the war places even of houses and soldiers
  
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  You can try lots of things there-lying in soldiers´ sleeping places, cooking pancakes right according to soldiers´ way, making a bullet from tin and keep it:-)


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  Considerable involving the visitors into the narrating, not only listening to sb. lecture! Reading from one soldier’s diary!

Thank you for this great experience!

ME AND VAŠEK AS THE TEACHERS!!!

First lesson I was a little bit nervous, but it was getting better and better and we really enjoyed the teaching, especially the sport class 7.I. I would like to mention this class, because we had also lot of fun together:-) This sport class consists of 17 boys and the only 1 girl and they were really active, talkative and friendly and happy when they could perform and show somehow so we prepared lots of games for them where they could move a lot and also we had presentation about the Czech Republic and tried to compare everything with Denmark, with their opinions, so we think they really liked it:-)We taught this class for 3 times and I am sure we will miss them..The other classes were also nice, actually all the Danish pupils we were observing seemed to us as very nice, the Czech ones can be very often very naughty!!:-)In the end I would like to say that these weeks were really enriching for me, opened my eyes and I think that I will certainly use my positive Danish experience in my future, if I am a teacher:-) And one more thing, thanks to our nice coordinator Hanne, who always had time for us and answered millions of our questions patiently:-), we understood Danish way of teaching and thinking much better! So thank you, Hanne.

MY SECOND TRIP TO ARØ, 17th APRIL

I was really looking forward to this Friday trip, because I could visit this lovely small island called Aro once again, but this time also with all my Erasmus friends and our JetteJ Bus, 7-minute ferry and you are there! I don’t know how to express that special atmosphere on this island, I always feel like in another world there, peace, silence, nice small houses, cottages, houses with their thatched roofs like from fairytales, birds, cows, and so on..:-) This time we also visited a small village and had a picnic there. It was so nice to see everybody after such a long time!

3 WEEKS AT HJORTEBROSKOLEN-PRACTICES

These weeks abounded with NEW things for me, we could observe DIFFERENT WAY OF ORGANISATION, MOTIVATION and also DISCIPLINE and TEACHING at this Danish school compared with the Czech type of Elementary school.

So to summarize my observation at this Danish school I used the following points:

1. FREE CURRICULUM, teachers are free in their methods, there are less rules for both pupils and teachers, creating special rules in the classes together with the main class teacher, only if they want:-)

2. 1st-7th classes have NO MARKS, just written evaluation twice a year
8th and 9th classes have marks twice a year + school report also twice a year

3. MEETINGS WITH PARENTS 3 times a year, BIG COOPERATION with PARENTS, close contact! The first meeting at the beginning of the school year concerns common goals, special programme,..all the parents are there. Then 2nd and 3rd meeting with parents is individual, because it concerns their children’s results. Also children can participate these meetings, everything depends on individual teacher, parent, child,..There are also special TRANSLATORS for meetings with parents, because lots of pupils are immigrants, so for better communication with parents.

4. school leaving examination- new system for Danish schools, not very popular (for me a little bit without the sense). On 1.May the government sends special instructions to every schools, where it is decided which class will do the final examination from BIOLOGY or GEOGRAPHY. The government also decides on this day from which subject of the following ones will the class do also the final exam: Oral German, Written English, Religion, Civics, or History. (Poor pupils, because they can be interested a lot in for example biology, but because of the government decision they will have to do the exam from geography..the reason of this new curriculum is that this is considered to be a cheaper system.) And there are the compulsory subjects for finals exam for everybody also: Danish essay, reading, spelling, grammar, Math.
MATH is considered together with DANISH LANGUAGE as the most important subject in Denmark. It is because of the tradition. So it means that math teachers are the most important teachers in every class right next to the class teacher. Interesting tradition:-)

5. LEARNING FOR LIFE!!! I would like to have this in the Czech Republic so much and be sure that if I am teacher I will teach according to this idea, because the pupils should see the sense of their learning process. I would say that Danish pupils have less theory, so what they learn, they can use better in the real life.
6. TEACHING RESPONSIBILITY FOR PUPILS THEMSELVES- pupils can go out during the breaks, they can also go out of the class for a while, there are always several pupils who take care of the little ones in the playground during the breaks, in the morning you can see two special pupils with reflexive vests who control the zebra crossing when the pupils are coming to school-WHAT A GREAT IDEA!:-)

7. LESSONS WITH A SPECIFIC REGARD ON ENGLISH LESSONS- the biggest focus is on SPEAKING, while in our country it is on grammar and vocabulary and Czech pupils are then afraid of speaking and making faults..the lessons are more relaxed, pupils have more time for everything, no stress, they can also have MP3 player if they want, and caps also, very free style of fashion, they don’t have to wear slippers, just everything they want. They can also eat during the lessons, no problem:-) I like this free atmosphere very much, I must say:-)

8. TEACHERS AS A PARTNERS, not as sb, who should be the pupils be afraid of. (In the Czech republic new generations of teachers are taught to be like partners too:-) Danish pupils call their teacher by his or her name!! Nice.

OLD BOOKS for languages…It happened in this area that there are almost no money for new books these years, so the teachers have to make up the programme without the books or with very old ones. This is one of few things where the Czech are ahead, because it is common that all the pupils have very nice, good and new exercise books for the languages. But we could see at this school that there are lots of NOTEBOOKS for pupils so teachers can use special English websites for the lesson.

I must say that we could see a big difference between Danish pupils and Czech ones concerning English. Danish pupils can speak MUCH better; it was evident, while the Czech pupils are better in written English, I think.

EASTER HOLIDAY (4th till 13th April)+NEXT WEEKEND

I really enjoyed this holiday. At the beginning we went to visit our Czech friend Magda to the north of Denmark, to Viborg , the lake area where we stayed for two days and could see how another Erasmus students live. On the way back we went to Silkeborg to see the famous Tollund Man (c. 350 B.C), the best preserved body from prehistoric times!!! He looked so satisfied with closed eyes, although he had a hangman’s rope around his neck..

Few days later a special “parcel from the Czech Republic” came-my parents with 2 friends of theirs. They travelled a lot around Denmark and we spent at least the evenings together, because during the days we were working with Vašek on our school assignments from our Czech university…teachers really didn´t save us:-(
We celebrated Easter Monday according to our Czech tradition, because my father brought that special willow bunch for gentle “beating” girls and women that is used so that we would be healthy during the whole year and wouldn’t get “dry”. Eliška is also gonna be healthy, because my father and Vašek also brought this Czech tradition to her house:-) Happy Easter!

This period was full of visitors, because after few days our Czech friend Magda from Viborg came to visit us for 2 days and right after she left, 3 hours later, my German friend from Hamburg came also for 2 days, so it was so nice:-). We went to the deer park that is around the Haderslev big lake, I can really recommend this park to everybody, best place for relaxing time here!

JETTE´S STORYTELLING

During this cinema lesson, Jette, our coordinator, familiarized us with the development of Danish cinematography, from silent movies, black and white movies towards special kind of movies based on so called DOGME 95, that is characterised with the following things: all the things are in natural environment, no studios, natural light, natural sound, natural props, clothes belong to actors, no extra light, handheld camera and so on and so forth.
We also came to know that for Nordisk Film there is a special symbol since 1906-POLAR BEER.
In my opinion this was an enriching time and we gained lots of good recommendations for movies, that’s always good to have:-) And what’s more, we could also observe the development of Danish mentality and culture thanks to this lesson and I regard this as very important when we are living here for these months.

MODULE 3-CITIZENSHIP AND GLOBALISATION

This module was very enriching for me, because it was very closely connected with my studies in the Czech Republic-civics, but predominately it was because of our really good teachers and they gave me lots of inducements for thinking about.
For example how is the world changing concerning the cultural aspects, way of thinking and how it can follow with the next generations? What is the democracy about and where are the limits of personal freedom in relation to the others? Where everywhere can we find the the themes concerning democracy, citizenship, in which movies, books, songs..?
Here is for example a piece of Barack Obama´s inaugural speech concerning the citizenship:

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

MODULE1-COMPARATIVE STUDIES

I have already written a few posts about some parts of this module, like LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY, INTERNETIONAL FOOD COOKING OR DANISH LESSONS, so I would like to complete my ideas about this module now.
I think that thanks to this module we learned a lot about Danish mentality, their traditions, Danish system of education and because we also had several presentations about our countries, we could compare our views of the world and so understand lots of differences in this way and enrich ourselves in many aspects. This is probably the main goal of our LIVING AND LEARNING TOGETHER.
I also must say that this module (part concerning the educational system) helped me a lot when I was on my practices, because then I could much more understand why do the Danes do the things at school like this and this:-) The differences are a lot connected with Danish way of thinking, of course.

This module also covered HISTORY and these were one of the most interesting history lessons I have ever had! Our teacher involved the history facts even from our countries, so it wasn’t only about Denmark and we could see how the historical events were interconnected and to see different points of view on history. That was very contributive for me.

One part of this module was also ICT that I regard as very fruitful, because till this time I have never been thinking about creating some web log or web album, because I am not interested in computers. But now I can see what a great idea it is! When you are abroad and write your web log, you have nice memory about your stay for the future and the others can observe it, so they can better imagine what is going on there:-) And to be honest when I was writing my web log, I always felt somehow happy, because I was thinking about all the events more than usually. I also read somewhere a long time ago that according to some researches, people who write their diaries are happier than those who don’t, so maybe it is true:-)
I think I wouldn’t use web log for my normal life, but I think that it is very good idea when you are abroad or just when you do something interesting, make trips and so. And I think that web logs could be also used for some subjects, for communication with students or for creating some special idea as I could see during English lesson at the university, where it was used for analysis of a piece of literature. Why not:-)

AABENRAA-PART II-24th March

We visited Aabenraa for the second time and we had an interesting time there again. We were singing morning songs and found out that for Danish people morning song are very important as for the whole Nordic mentality, because they wish to have nice weather and see the Sun.
Then our drama teacher explained the special rules of using masks to us and I must say it surprised me a little bit, for example did you know that when performing with masks, they shouldn’t touch each other?? Interesting:-)
Another part was about our performances, to be exact-first we were supposed to feel like embryos while using masks. And my feelings? I felt a little bit strange, suddenly like another person, but also somehow protected and saved, because of the mask..to express my feelings I had to use my body language more than usually and I must say that I enjoyed it a lot:-)
Then we were supposed to make a short performance (using masks and special white whole-body costumes) that would fit nice into a special piece of music.