Week 18: Personal Blog: 14.06.13 - 21.06.13

The final blog!  I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes as I write this blog however, “Everything has to come to an end, sometime” (Baum, 1985).

This week I had to say goodbye to my class in ISOP. I had just begun to feel really settled in the school and I've made friends with many of the staff at the school. I will really miss the staff, who have been so friendly and welcoming to me and have helped me to gain so much more knowledge about multiculturalism in education. Due to my good relationship with the teachers, I hope to keep in contact with the school so I can conduct some research about multicultural teaching for my dissertation. I will also keep my ears open about any teaching positions which might open up in a couple of years time.

This week, Stary Renek was alive with music and market stalls, due to the annual summer festival. The annual festival lasts two weeks at the end of June and includes many concerts and events and it has created a brilliant atmosphere in Poznan’s town centre. 

As part of the festival, on Friday thousands of people attended Noc Kupały, an event which was set to attempt to break the Guinness world record for releasing lanterns into the sky. I later found out that this lantern festival was not without its controversy, as last year a lantern had fallen and damaged a tram. Not to mention the fact that people, despite many attempts, could not successfully release the lanterns! However, we enjoyed watching them try!

Noc Kupały

Saying goodbye to our friend Jiří from Czech Republic

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Poznan and have met so many fantastic people. I have already spoken to some of my friends about travelling together over the summer or next year. Regardless of this, it is still very difficult to say goodbye. On the one hand I am eager to get home. However on the other, I know when I get home I will want to be back. Thankfully I have already made plans to meet a group of Erasmus students this summer for a reunion party in August!

Enjoying 

I have learnt so much from my time in Poznan, about teaching, culture, language and myself. I will never forget how wonderful Poznan is and I am sure I will be back! Thank you ESN, to everyone I have met here, to everyone at home who encouraged me to do this, and last but not least, thank you Poznan. 

“There’s a trick to the 'graceful exit.' It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.” (Goodman, 2013)

With that all said, I hope that the end of Erasmus will be the beginning of a happy new chapter in my life.

References:
Baum, L,F. (1985) 'The Marvelous Land of Oz' Puffin Classics.
Goodman, E. (2013) available at: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/endings accessed on 22.06.13

Week 17: Personal Blog: 7.06.13 - 14.06.13

My Penultimate Blog: Where has the time gone?

My journey

This week was the final week for most of my classes. I presented my last performance in acting craft in Polish theatre class and watched the other students perform their journeys. We also got to talk about our stories after, which for me was the most interesting, as we got to hear the explanation behind their physical movement journeys.  Some people had been very creative and their stories reflected their emotions which was very fascinating.

 I also gave a presentation on ‘Education and Multiculturalism’ in Social Capital class this week. This assignment has given me an opportunity to really research the topic of Multicultural Education, especially giving me an insight in relation to the criticisms the topic has received.  I think that this assignment will really help me to begin my research for next year’s dissertation on Multiculturalism in Education.

For our last class the professor from 'Critical thinking Through Educational Designing' class

Some of us at Professor Dylak's house

kindly invited us to his home for the last class, which was a very nice way to end the semester. In general, I found this class very out of the ordinary, as we had several different teachers throughout the course who all taught in very different ways, however I think it was a very effective way to teach this subject as it definitely developed my ability to think critically, something which often I find hard, like many teachers.

However, the main event for me this week was when I unexpectedly received a prize for the ‘Let it happen in Poznan’ blog writing competition (Study in Poznan, 2013). I never usually enter these types of competitions, however the ESN president, Natalia, had encouraged me to enter and I thought about the phrase ""Forget regret, or life is yours to miss" (Larson, 1997) so I entered. 

I was invited to Poznan’s town hall to receive my prize.  The people I met to collect the prize talked to me about the relationship between Ireland and Poland, especially after Euro 2012
and how attitudes towards Poland are changing. Poznan called the Irish supporters 'Kings of the craic' and, from what I've heard from friends who went to Poznan for it, they definitely had some craic!

 I received spa vouchers, vouchers for restaurants, a certificate, which will be added to my CV and  a double room in a four star hotel. 

At last!

After much consideration, I decided to book Lutfullah and myself into the hotel over the weekend for a much needed break! After being so busy trying to get assignments finished, I finally got a chance to relax in a very luxurious hotel, which also provided a free buffet breakfast and had a sauna! One word - Heaven! 

Room service!

Even though the week has been so enjoyable, reality has begun to hit me. I have one more week of Erasmus left, and then I’m leaving Poznan.

References:

Larson, J. (1997) "Rent" It Books

Study in Poznan (2013) available at: http://www.poznan.pl/mim/studia/en/news/results-of-the-blog-contest-iii-edition,61935.html accessed on: 15/06/13

Week 16: Cultural Blog: 31.06.13 - 7.06.13

Irish Birthday Brunch
(Complete with home-made Irish soad bread)

This week I’ve been doing a lot of essays and finishing off my coursework for classes, so apart from celebrating Lutfullah’s birthday on Thursday, I haven’t been out much.

Next week I have to hand in my ‘Poland for Beginners’ essay which is a comparison against Northern Ireland and Poland’s primary education systems. During my research for this paper, I found out a lot about the transformation the Polish education system has undergone.

Working hard.. or hardly working?

Under communism, Poland’s educational system focused on finding young people jobs. The system was made up of a strict tracking system which sent the academically weaker 50% of the country’s students into basic vocational schools, directly after Primary school (Pearson foundation, 2013). After the reform, since 1999, Poland’s education system has undergone major changes and restructuring, aiming to improve the general standard of education in society, raise educational opportunities for society, and improve the quality and equity of the education system (The World Bank, 2013). In addition to radical structural changes to the educational system in Poland, schools were asked to construct their own curricula, within a broad framework.  The modification of the curricula was intended to not only alter the content of Primary education but, arguably more importantly, change the philosophy of teachers in Poland and improve the professional customs of schools.

Poland’s educational transformation has been commended for achieving “impressive achievements in a short time” (The World Bank, 2013), and over the past couple of years has been considered to be 9^th in the world in overall reading scores according to PISA, making Poland the only transition country to go from being below the OECD average to above average. However, I found that Poland's educational reforms are not over. The structure of the Early years Primary school will be changed again as from the beginning of the school year 2014/2015; the age for compulsory education will drop from the age of seven to the age of six.

 As I am very proud of the Northern Ireland’s innovative approach to teaching, especially in relation to the early years part of the curriculum, I discussed in my paper how Poland could learn from Northern Ireland, how to implement these new educational changes for early years teaching.

However, as I delved deeper into this subject of educational systems learning from one another, I realised a very obvious issue that I had not truly considered before. 

I had been busy writing about how great the N.I’s curriculum was, when I realised something crucial. No matter how much we teach children how to accept people who are different and live together in our shared community, as long as our education system remains segregated, it seems pointless. Derek Wheeler said, “Keeping people apart makes you imagine what the other people are like. People on the other side of the fence are demonized – they grow horns and tails and you lose out on the opportunity to interact” (Burchill, 2002) and the scary thing is, I can relate to it. 

I believe that there is no ‘right’ answer to education, however it seems ludicrous to me that, on the one hand Northern Ireland’s education system is evolving yet the most obvious issue is staring us in the face and so far we still haven’t changed it.  

Drinking a well deserved Iced tea

References:

Burchill (2002) available at: http://www.pur.honorscollege.pitt.edu/docs/v22n1-integrated-education-burchill.pdf accessed on 10/06/13

Pearson Foundation (2013) available at: http://www.pearsonfoundation.org/oecd/poland.html accessed on 10/06/13

The World Bank (2013) available at: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/0,,contentMDK:22767787~pagePK:146736~piPK:146830~theSitePK:258599,00.html accessed on: 9/06/13

Week 15: Personal Blog: 24.05.13 - 31.05.13

Beautiful Stary Renek 

Before taking Mumi to dinner

It’s the last month of my Erasmus experience and I don’t know where the time has gone! Last week was my friend, Mumi’s birthday. Lutfullah and I took him out for a traditional Turkish meal, something which has become quite normal for me! We went to a bar after and chatted for a couple of hours, talking about the things that have happened over the last few months.

Lutfullah and Mumi were the first people I met who really took me under their wing and introduced me to their friends, and for this I am so grateful. When I arrived at Poznan, everything felt unfamiliar and a little scary if I am honest. In some ways, I agree with the statement made by the Italian Poet, Cesare Pavese: 

“Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it” (The world wanderer, 2011)

However, this ‘off balance’ sensation pushed me into exploring my new world and meeting people, people who I now consider lifelong friends.

Lut and Mumi

 Mumi and Lutfullah have been wonderful friends to me throughout the entire Erasmus period and I hope that we will all keep in touch after our Erasmus experience ends. We have so many funny anecdotes and memories together which will never be forgotten. In order to preserve these moments, we created an Erasmus adventure photo album along with all our friends’ signatures for Mumi’s birthday.

Mumi's BBQ birthday party

Some of my Erasmus family

Later in the week, a group of us, who I like to think of as my ‘Erasmus Family’ got together and planned a surprise BBQ party for Mumi. It was a really warm night and as everyone was joining together and lighting their BBQs to celebrate his birthday I realised I only had one more month of this. We gave Mumi his birthday present at the BBQ and he was so appreciative that we took the time to make something special for him to remember his time here in Poznan. That night, I think it was on everyone’s mind that soon we would have to leave each other, People are already starting to leave and I really don’t know how I will cope with this. 

Giving Mumi his birthday present

Erasmus has been like a dream to me. It has given me the opportunity for self growth and to really understand people from other cultures. It has also made me change my perspective about a lot of things. I now think of the world as a very small place, with lots of possibilities. I have also started to consider a teaching career outside of Northern Ireland, as I had never realised there are so many opportunities for qualified teachers, especially when their native tongue is English! 

References:

The world wanderer (2011) available at http://theworldwanderer.net/2011/08/25/the-brutality-of-travel/ accessed on 31/06/13