Wednesday (12 - 3 - 2008)

Hello,
Today we visited the Europaschool in Genk.



Normally we would be going to a Jewish school in Antwerpen. I thought it was a pity because i was looking forward to that. I did’nt thought that the Europaschool would be that interesting. I must say that i had not a good image of this school. I thought it was a school for imigrants and that they might have a lower level of education. I thought it would'nt have something special besides that there were a lot of differant cultures. But, boy... was i wrong!!!



I am glad that my vision about it has changed because of the visit.
At first we got some information about the school. A woman told us that around 90% of the children in the school are comming from another countrie. Most of them are from Turkey or from Morocco. I was suprised to hear that there are also teachers from other countries, like Turkey, Italy, Morocco and Hungary. These teachers offcourse also have to speak and write Dutch.The school does this because they want to have a mix of cultures at school.

Because the school also wants to reach the autochton pupils, they have to give a good level.
It suprised me to hear that this school also follows ‘eindtermen’. They follow the same rules as a normal school. I thought it would be more something like ‘ontwikkelingsdoelen’ such as they use in special need – schools. I thought that because of the language-problem, the social problem,... they would ‘nt be able to follow the ‘eindtermen’. Aparantly this school did succeeded at it, because the students pass the ‘eindtermtoetsing’.

A very possitive thing about this school, is that they have a good connection with the parrents. They do a lot of activities to get the parrents involved with the school and its child. Some examples are: they invite the parents to school for information, some teachers do some home-visits to talk with the parents, one time a month there is a parent evening, there are coffee-mornings where the parents can talk with counselors and with eachother about some toppics...
I think this is something where other schools can learn from, because parent-involving is very important.

Another thing that i thought that other schools could learn from, is that there aren’t only rapports about their progress, but also about their social skills. The behaviour and ordre is very important. Not only in the class, but also on the playground, in the buss...
To improve the social behaviour, the school works with a rewarding system that works with smileys. At the end of the day the teacher evaluats the class together with the pupils. When they behaved good, they get a yellow smiley. When that is not the case, they get a blue smiley. The class with the most yellow smileys is rewarded with a classtrip.

I think that is a very good system. I would like to integrate it in my class later but with some adjustments if the whole school wouldn’t participate.




During the guided tour in this school i got even more surprised because of all the special things they do and have in this school.

- Art is something very important in this school. They want to improve there self-confidence and they get a good workattitude. They learn also to appreciate the beauty in things and they get more respect for things and persons. In this school they think it is important that the children work together.


You can see in the whole school the artwork of the children. Even in the most unusual places.

- There is a theaterroom in the school where the children can see puppetshows and do some drama activities. In this room a lot is teached about the dutch language in a fun way.




- The system with the headphones was something i never saw before.



Children can listen to relaxing and stimulating music while they are doing some activities like art or a game... They think that this system is good for the concentration and lets the children forget about their situation at home.


- Another special thing that I saw, was a room called the ‘Snoezelruimte’. I already saw a room like this in an elderhome where i worked.
In this room the the children can relax and work on their self-confidence, their fears and aggression.



It was suprising to see that they work with this room in a ‘normal school’ because it is expensive and it is more used in special needs schools.




I can conclude that the Europaschool in Genk is not a very normal school. It is a school with a lot of special things and good systems and priorities!