About the project work…

Now that we have finished the group work I can have a global idea of all the process we followed doing it, and all the things I have learned and also the problems and doubts that arose. I have worked with Alexia, Bente, Laia and Mia about teenage mothers. We had to compare the focus group at different levels between three countries: Denmark, France and Spain.

At the beginning, when the teachers explained us the idea of the project, I felt a little bit afraid because sometimes is difficult to work in group, and I have never worked in international groups, where explaining yourself is more difficult for the language barrier and where you don´t know the way that your pals are used to work.

But when we received the groups division, I felt really lucky and I start having wanted of start, because I like the people I had to work with and the subject we choose was very interesting for me. Since the beginning, all of us gave their opinion, we chose the focus together, teenage mothers, and I think all of us were interested in it.

Talking about the expectations and the contract, I felt very motivated because all of us wanted to work and try to get a good mark, but in the other hand also very relaxed and comfortable, because we agreed on trust each other, for example being comprehensive if someone needed a break, or a free day, or got ill, and working the rest without anger if something would happen.

When we started talking about the project, everything was very confusing and messed up, but after some days we started making our own index of the project and work, linking the structure that the teachers gave us with the useful information about the focus we have chosen, so we had a clear and concrete starting point, where everybody knew what to look for and how to do it. In my opinion, it was one of the biggest successes we had in this way, because it facilitated all the work and conditioned the whole process in a good way.

I think we found a very nice way of working, because we were hard-working but not very strict with each others, so I felt really good with that dynamic, and very lucky with my colleagues because all of them were very very hard-working. We only felt uncomfortable about the punctuality, because some of us, me included, used to arrive a bit later than the meeting hour, and I understood that is equally hard for all to wake up early and go to school, but although it never meant a big problem, I still feel a little bit guilty for being late sometimes.

About the Spanish part of the project, I felt very comfortable working with my Spanish pal, Laia, because she is very easy-going and we understood each other easily. We shared the tasks with the investigation, redaction and translation, and we make our part sooner than I was expecting.

At the moment of put all the countries information together, we were serious reading the other´s parts, and all of us provided some ideas or opinions about what to write and how to structure it. Obviously, some people spoke more than others, but I think it´s completely normal because it depends on each one´s personality, and happens in every kind of groups, but I believe that the important thing is that everybody feels free and motivated of sharing their opinions, and I think that more or less all of us felt like this.

Sometimes I could feel very big differences about the ways of working and understanding the project, but talking, respecting and being flexible we always overcame the obstacles. This was really useful and positive because we learned how to work with different working cultures and traditions, what provided us with competences as professionals, because is really important for a social educator to know how to negotiate, listening and respecting the rest but making myself heard too, and sharing interests, opinions, methods…and even some constructive critics.

About the tutorials, I thought at the beginning that would be boring and stressful, but I felt very comfortable with and I think they were really concrete and efficient, because Karen was very clear and focused in the important parts and aspects of the work, forgetting the less important things, and counseling us with a lot of respect and sincerity. I felt a very mature way of working by both parties, and I really liked it, because I never felt we were loosing time o making Karen loose it, but at the same time the tutorials were useful and necessaries.

After hand over the project and the autumn break, we prepared the presentation for the rest of the class. It was pretty easy because we had the information clear and order, so we just chose what we found as important and share the presentation, and resumed the project in a Powerpoint to support our explanations.

The day of the presentations I felt a little bit nervous about speaking in front of all the class, and this time being evaluated…but after seeing two of my class mate´s presentations, and fully trusting in my colleagues, I could finally feel comfortable and talkative during our presentation. I was very happy about how it worked when we finished and very relieved about finishing the project work, which took us five weeks.

About the mark, I feel really happy, I think is a good mark and we worked hard for it, so it´s very heartwarming. As a conclusion, the work was hard and difficult and some days I finished with a hard headache, but I have learned many positive things and competences about the focus group and working methods and tools, so definitely, it was a really good experience.

Finally, I just want to say thank you very much to my colleagues for working hard and easy-going and to the teachers for “forcing” us to learn by doing professional skills at the same time that we learned professional theory.

Intercultural module

Well… conclusions about the intercultural module… there are…

In a general view, I think the module was interesting, although I have learned almost all the theoretical contents in my last course in Spain, in a subject called Intercultural Education, where we talked about integration, inclusion of immigrant children in schools, intercultural meetings and shocks… One of the things I most remember about that contents is the different models of understand the coexistence in the schools. We learned it with a very useful “food example”, where we could find three different “school-plates”:

- The “soup” school: where different cultures and people coexist maintaining their own identity and characteristics, only sharing the same place and contents.

- The “fondue” school: where different cultures are involved in a majority culture that covers everything, so they coexist but without mixing and with the supremacy of the local culture and traditions.

- The “pure” school: where many different cultures and kinds of people are completely mixed, making a new and common type of culture.

With this metaphor I understood the big different between multicultural, that only imply coexistence in the same environment, and intercultural, that implies that different cultures are mixed and learn of each others, creating a new one.
Other of my experiences I most thought about during that module was when I worked in a homeless shelter, where more than a half of them were from foreign countries. Apart of the language barriers, I could feel sometimes how difficult was to understand each other, and how we understood different things with a same explanation…When I read the conversation between the magistrate and the aboriginal, I revive a lot of situations where I was involved…situations where understanding looks almost impossible, not only for the language, also for the different cultural backgrounds, ways of thinking and understanding, conceptions about gender, work, ways of life…

I think that conversation was a very good example and was very useful for me to reflect about the difficult of having a horizontal relation with minority groups, because always the most powerful part of the dialogue is who looks right and the less powerful or belonging to a minority looks wrong… In one of the group works at the camp, talking about this conversation, somebody says that the aboriginal looks stupid… Hours later, thinking about it, I comprehend that for my was more stupid the magistrate, because knowing perfectly that the other person were not going to understand him, repeated and repeated the same questions, without changing any expression or trying to make his speech understandable… So, both parts are equally important:

- The aboriginal must try to adapt to the dominant/new culture, not for obligation or because his own culture would be less-valid, only to understand the majority and to coexist in a good way with as much people as possible. It´s like if I would not be open to learn English, I would lost the opportunity of meeting a lot of people, places, ways of working…

- The magistrate must have intercultural competences, tools to work with, open his mind and try to be understandable for different people and cultures, because all are same valid, and specially in a multicultural world like this where we live today.

So, if one of these parts is not prepared or able to understand each other, there is no possibility of meeting… Is equal difficult to not have anybody to help you that try to help somebody that don´t want your help…

I could understand the importance of intercultural competences as social educator in this kind of situations, because if you are not patient, comprehensive, open minded and respectful there is no possibility of understanding, so there is not possibility of working or advancing in a social project… So I think is not only important, is completely necessary to have this qualities to do some kinds of works with some kinds of target groups.

And I´m not talking about immigrants only, because there are also many differences of this type into a same country or between different ethnic of the same nationality (for example, with Spanish gypsies, or with people from very small villages or that just have very different points of view and conceptions than yours).

And also I´m not saying that it´s easy, and it wasn´t at all for me in my job… Is a very hard and long work to acquire this competences and understand and respect cultures that defend things that for me are indefensible, like treating children and women like private property, disrespect for the workers, cruel treat to non-human animals, contempt about other ways of living or thinking… But I think that understanding is the first step to get the rest of the things (respect, equality, coexistence, changes in mentality, equal opportunities, horizontal relations, cooperation, solidarity…and all this beautiful words that we listen everyday in the theoretical classes but at the moment of practice are so difficult to get…).

So it´s a really long and difficult way that we need to go if we want to be able to work with people, wherever they come from…

a little bit about me...

Hi, i'm Dani from Madrid, Spain!

I study social education and feel really lucky to have this opportunity to know another country, meet a lot of different people and cultures, and to learn about pedagogy and social work from other points of view.

I expect that this internacional course will be a place to meet, to share, to discuss and to learn different ways of working, teaching and learning, in different contexts and situations. A place to learn about the Scandinavian tradition with children and young people, and i hope that a little bit about social education and work too.

About me...my bigest passion is the music, listening and playing it(if i can, of course), but i'm not a mussician, just a boy that like to test different instruments and kinds of music to enjoy and feel it.

Well, that's all at the moment! See you on the school and in your blogs.
Bye!