Special needs children’s teacher assistants in Holland

Hoi! This is the Friesland’s most popular form of greeting and from nowonit is also ours. We arrived almost two weeks ago but it already feels a month because so many things have happened to us and we have already had lots of experiences.

Me and Kriszti are studying to be special needs children’s teacher assistants. This week the real vocational practices began.  We were wondering what our work placements would be like, who we were going to be with and what the ’colleagues’ would be like. I am on practice with Kriszti in a Montessori school in Drachten. Since we knew very little about Montessori education before, I asked my mother, who is in the same vocation, and also I searched on the Net. I found out that it is a common pedagogical method in Holland. The slogan of this system is ‘Teach me to do it myself.’ The children do the exercises themselves, study on their own and manage their time for themselves. The teacher just shows directions.

I experienced the following things: the school building is beautiful and the people who work here are very nice. The institution teaches visually impaired student.

There are a lot of differences between the schools here and in Hungary. The children here come to school at 8.30 in the morning and they go home for lunch at 12.00. The lunch break is one hour long, after that they come back at 13.00 and they continue studying till 15.00.

There are 5 groups in this institute. In one of these groups the children are below the age of 6. In two groups there are kids between 6 and 9, and in the other two the children are between the age of 9 and 12. They study through videos that the teachers had downloaded from the internet for them. In the kindergarten group the main difference is that they don’t sleep in the afternoon like the children of the same age in Hungary. The timetables aren’t as strict as ours in Hungary.

It was really surprising for me that the children are so self-sufficient. The teachers are only in the background they are not who really teaching the children, but the children can turn to them for help at anytime.

Today we were on practice in the Leeuwarden school where we participated in interactive health care and health education lessons. They were about useful things such as caretaking and healthy eating.

Vivi