Rotterdam

I had the unique opportunity this week to tag along on a professional development trip to Holland for a meeting of European teachers. I was invited at the last minute because one of the English profs who was supposed to go had to stay in Nantes because of a death in her family. I didn't have much information when I got to the train station and actually asked one of the other teachers "where the kids were" as she handed me my train ticket. That got a good laugh because there were no kids. The trip turned out to be mostly a vacation for me, with the Academy of Nantes picking up the bill.

The occasion was a reunion of teachers from four schools (one in Ireland, one in Germany, Lycee Guist'Hau in Nantes and the school we visited in Vlaardigan, Netherlands)to share ideas about teaching languages, technology and administration. I had the privilege of attending a social studies class and an art class the first day. Both were taught in English.

The Dutch almost all speak flawless English. I concluded that this was in no small part thanks to their focus on languages in the schools though they prefer to credit their history as a sea-faring nation. The art class I saw was for 12-13 year-old students. Instructions were given in English and the kids were expected to interact in English while they worked (or they were forced to sing in English). I found that teaching classes like art (where a lot of instruction is reinforced with demonstration) was a really effective way to get kids to speak a language at a young age. The effectiveness of the system was reinforced for me that afternoon in a social studies class for 17 year-old students who all gave presentations on political parties in the upcoming municipal elections in perfect English.

The central business of our little conference was also almost all carried out in English, as that was the only common language shared by all (although everyone except for the Irish teachers also spoke some French). Side discussions often occurred in French, German or Dutch and I did spend a couple of car rides without adding anything to the conversation in the back of the car with the German guys.



The afternoons were spent seeing the cities of Rotterdam, Delft and Kinderdijk. Kinderdijk is near the sea and the ground it is built on has settled down below sea level over the past few centuries. Some of the windmills once used to pump the water out through a system of dikes are still standing and spinning in the stiff breeze; but I found the 2 meter diameter, diesel-powered Archimedes screws now used to pump the water out at least as impressive.



While I met some real characters on this trip, my favorite personality was sweet old Sister Mary of Kilkee, Ireland (although her colleague Geraldine won some points when she credited Sen. George Mitchell's central role in the northern Ireland peace negotiations, allowing me to claim him as a fellow Bowdoin Alum). None of the non-anglophones could really understand Sister Mary when she talked. This didn't stop her from talking, but I was the only one she could converse with who hadn't already heard all her stories. When she met me and learned I went to school in Maine she was excited to tell me they had recently had a young teacher from Maine in their school for a couple of years. She couldn't remember his name (they had nicknamed him Tony Mahoney) and it turned out he had been at the school from 1983 to 1986. I told her I probably didn't know him. I heard about cutting and drying sod for the fireplace and some distant relation of hers digging up what could be another volume of the Book of Kells in a peat bog a decade ago. I learned about Irish dancing and some game that sounds like a combination of field hockey and lacrosse. I nodded and said, "I can imagine" as she described how hard it is to pump gas when wearing a traditional nun's habit. She was a sweet lady and a real pleasure to talk to.



The weather was beautiful and I had a blast on this trip. I always love to visit a new place and draw comparisons, so I found it especially interesting to get a glimpse into another European school system. I was very impressed by the Dutch schools we visited, although the other French teachers were somewhat appalled by the informal relationship between teachers and students, and the fact that students were sometimes allowed to drink water or even milk and juice in class.



Other things that really impressed me about the Netherlands:
-Bikes seemed to be the dominant mode of transportation. There were enormous bike parking lots at schools and under skyscrapers and bike lanes paralleling every major roadway.
-Thanks to the country's Calvinist heritage, every house and apartment has enormous windows. A good Christian wouldn't do anything in the privacy of his home that wouldn't be perfectly acceptable in public, so why hide it?
-Maybe thanks to the fact that much of their country lies below sea level, the Dutch are pretty focused on combating climate change. The school we visited is partially powered by solar panels and much of the nations electricity comes from wind.
-At the school we visited, every freshman receives a laptop which they keep in a locker at school. They pay 6 euros/month x 10 months/year x 4 years and they get to take the computer home with them when they graduate.
-The school we visited also hosts the children of families from the large international refugee population the Netherlands takes under its wing. I met kids from Somalia, Iraq and Sri Lanka who had spent last school year learning Dutch and were now being integrated into the mainstream classrooms. They all told me (through a teacher's aide translating their Dutch into English) how much they love Holland.
-Cheap, delicious beer was a refreshing discovery.