Week Six Cultural

Chicago River on St. Patrick's day 

This week I had my first experience of teaching in the Netherlands.  My mentor gave me the opportunity to choose what I would like to teach the children and as St. Patrick’s Day was coming up I decided  to inform the children about this feast day.  My class were very interested to find out about St. Patrick’s Day and were amazed at the pictures I showed them of different landmarks all over the world changing to green to celebrate this special day.  Although English is not their mother tongue the children have been amazing to teach and they have really surprised me with the amount of effort they have been putting into my lessons. CCEA (2007) states that "When children value difference and are comfortable with their own and others' individuality they are less likely to be prejudiced." I got to witness my children being accepting of my culture when I returned to my class on Tuesday and seen that all the children had decided to wear green clothes to help me celebrate St. Patrick’s day and make me feel more like home in the class.   

Niagara Falls 

This week we also got to learn about the different political systems within the various countries in our Dutch Culture and Society class.  It was amazing to see the variety of interest in Politics that all the students had when it came to discussing their PowerPoint’s, with some students only having prepared one slide while others had 9 slides.  This class has not only introduced us to Dutch culture and society but because our class is so diverse we have been learning about countries all over the world.  So far we have learned about the most important time periods and the politics of these countries and next week we will be learning about celebrations and products that are produced there.  

We also got to travel to another city this weekend.  The city that we travelled to was called ‘Eindhoven’ which is towards the south of the Netherlands.  The reason behind this adventure was that Sarah’s friend was flying into Eindhoven so we took this as an opportunity to explore a new city.  Eindhoven is the fifth largest city in the Netherlands and we found out that it is a “trend-setting centre of innovation and technology” ( Eindhoven.Eu, 2006). This was easy to see straight away as Eindhoven was a much more modern city compared to Nijmegen and had a range of unusual building shapes and styles. 

The city of Eindhoven

Saint Catherine's Church

Sacred Heart Church

The making of this trip was when we stumbled upon the Sacred Heart Church (Heilig Hartkerk) and Saint Catherine’s Church (Catharinakerk).  The Sacred Heart Church was not open to the public but the outside of the Church was just beautiful.  The first thing we noticed about it was that on a 60 metre tall tower there was a statue of Jesus that stood 4 metres high.  We did however have the opportunity to venture inside Saint Catherine’s Church and we were amazed by the beauty of it and the humbling feeling it gave us when we walked inside.  We later found out that in 1972 it was declared a national monument of the Netherlands. 

Of course our week would not be complete without celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day.  Although Saint Patrick’s Day was just on Sunday our celebrations lasted the whole weekend with all our Erasmus family taking part and dressing up in green.  From green hair to green shoes I think we had achieved every shade of green possible (and to top it off there were some green faces the next day haha). We celebrated the day in the local Irish bar called ‘The Shamrock’.  All and all it was a great weekend and I think this was proven when one boy from Belgium was introducing himself as Séan Óg from Limerick all weekend as he was enjoying himself that much.

Saint Patrick's Day

References

CCEA (2007) Learning more about others, at: http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/docs/key_stages_1_and_2/areas_of_learning/pdmu/livinglearningtogether/year5/yr5_unit6.pdf

(Accessed 15/03/13) 

Eindhoven EU (2006) Facts and Figures, available at http://www.eindhoven.eu/en/Introduction/Introducing_Eindhoven/Facts_&_Figures (accessed 16/03/13)