I travel every week day from Brussels to Leuven. So, I switch from one city to another, one culture to another, one language to another ... Leuven is a part of Belgium but it is another world and another mentality. It feels strange coming back from Leuven into Brussels.
In Leuven, I have courses in English. I am in total immersion. The English language is the only way to communicate and to understand each other. I have the impression that at the end of this exchange, my English will be more fluent and my vocabulary more extensive.
People from Leuven are open-minded and serene but serious at work at the same time. Both students and teachers invest themselves thoroughly. These qualities put me at ease, motivate me and this gives me the ability to feel integrated.
I didn’t know this open-mindedness to this degree of Flemish people before. As my Leuven teacher of the course “Language: code & culture” has said: “We easily fall into the trap of cultural stereotypes.” So, we have the tendency to generalize: all Flemish people are like this or all English people are like that! This course I just mentioned is my favourite. I leave the class cultured, informed by some matters I didn’t know or pay attention to before. As a teacher of a course that I will mention later has said: “General knowledge allows you to move, to be flexible.”
As a second stage of my “top courses”, I will put the course called “Education, society and intercultural dialogue”. This course gives attention to democracy, human rights, ethics and international migration. It deals with the functions, the borders, the challenges ... of education. I find this course very important in my teacher training because the key word of this course is “education” and I think that this concept belongs to the same category as the word “teacher”, what I would like to be!
The teachers of these courses give us tasks; philosophical questions to think about and to do some investigation at home. At the next lesson, we give feedback of our thinking and findings in class. It’s very interesting because I learn from the teachers and the students too. They give some ideas that I had never imagined. These tasks will be the basis of the exam evaluation.
The programme I belong to has been designed and organized in light of UNESCO’s Four Pillars of Education. This means that all courses I have will fall under one of the pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. I will analyze UNESCO’s vision of the Four Pillars of Education within the framework of the course “Organizing education”.
I am supposed to create a project with a group. This project is within the course “Enterprising education”. I expect and hope this will bring me useful experience.
I am eager to have the course “China: its language and culture”. This course hasn’t started yet. According to what I know, it will consist in giving us an idea of China: geography, history and language. Workshops will be organized in cooking (This will maybe give me taste for cooking!), watching Chinese movies etc. I don’t know anything about China but I am hungry to learn more about this impressive culture and country. (Hungry is a word used in different contexts and used a lot by one of my teachers!)
The relationship with the students has evolved in a positive way. I can go further in communication with them because each one feels at ease to talk about everything. We know each other more and more personally and intellectually. There isn’t any day we haven’t the opportunity to laugh together, both with students and teachers. I appreciate the respect expressed for each other. There is a work atmosphere and the class is joyful at the same time.
Sanaa
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