Goodbye, Texas!

-


I am sitting in the DFW airport waiting for our flight to take off. I'm nervous yet so excited for what this month will bring me. Currently I am student teaching in a third grade ELA class in Aledo, TX. I am so grateful for the time I've spent at the school so far and I look forward to going back to the same classroom in March. For the month of February, I will be student teaching at a Montessori school in The Hague, Netherlands. Since I've only observed one Montessori classroom in the states, I am intrigued to see if there are any similarities, but I anticipate many differences. I am eager to get to our school this Monday to begin student teaching and learning about education in The Netherlands. I'm not sure what grade-level I will be with yet, but I am looking forward to this ed-venture. See you in one month, Texas!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hallo from Holland!

-
Image
My first week at the Valkenbos Montessori school was wonderful! We have a great mentor who introduced us to the school and his classroom. The main classroom I'm assigned to is a bovenbouw group of levels 6-8. These students are 10-12 years old, or Grades 4, 5, and 6 in US schools. However, I have the opportunity to be in middenbouw and onderbouw classroom as well. The Motessori structure is very different from that of public schools in the US. The middenbouw classrooms include levels 3-5 and ages 6-9, and the onderbouw classrooms have levels 1-2 and ages 4-5 (Kindergarten). This week has been very busy! I was able to visit all three levels and really got the opportunity to see how the children of various ages interacted within the classroom. I spent the majority of my time in the bovenbouw classroom this week, so I thought I would focus this post on how the bovenbouw classroom operates. The students in the bovenbouw classroom are very autonomous, as the majority of the students...
Read more

My Last Week

-
Image
My last week at Montessori Valkenbos was bittersweet. I am so thankful for my time here and have learned so much these past three weeks. On Wednesday, the school celebrated Juffendag. This day was set aside for all of the teachers to celebrate their birthdays on one day of the school year. Teachers who had birthdays in the summer got to be celebrated, too. It was a day filled with food and games! Students brought flowers or a small gift to honor their teacher’s birthday. Wednesdays are half days at Montessori Valkenbos, so the students go home at 12:15, while teachers stay at the school to plan. In the Netherlands, most all schools get half days on Wednesdays—the reason being so parents can be with their kids in the afternoon. I like that this system is built into the school schedule. It gives time devoted to families to be together during the week. I was also asked to teach an English lesson in my bovenbouw class this week. I did not write a plan, as I was asked ...
Read more

Biggest Takeaways

-
Image
My three weeks at Valkenbos Montessori have been such an amazing experience. I loved that I had the opportunity to visit all three levels of classrooms. This really allowed me to see the growth and development of students in a Montessori setting from start to end. The number one question I was asked was, “What is different from the Dutch school and US schools?” This is kind of a challenging question to answer because I’m not exactly sure if the differences are solely because of the difference in education systems, or because I was in a Montessori school vs. a traditional public school. However, I’ve learned some amazing methods/strategies I want to take with me to my classroom. 1.      Let children roam around the room more while working. In my classrooms in the US, students work differently than the children in the Montessori school. It’s much more natural for children to move around than be confined to a desk the entire class period. ...
Read more