School practice part 1

During our first week of practice Kate and I stayed at the VUC, the adult education centre, in Haderslev. We observed and also taught in the elementary courses (corresponding the 9th grade in public schools) as well as in the advanced courses (corresponding the 10th grade in public schools). Although the students were devided into these two levels there were striking differences in their abilities to speak English. I can't say much about their writing skills but probably there might be a similar situation. Another interesting impression was the difference in age among the students. Some of them were just 18, other almost 70 years old. And they all learned together in the same group. I had never seen members of different generations working together so close before in the sense of being educated. So this was a very special experience for me though I'm still not sure whether I like the idea or not.
I liked the way how the teachers involved us in the classroom activities and I really apprechiated the openness and curiosity of the students. They seemed to be very interested in what Kate and I were doing in Denmark and why. So we had to answer the same questions over and over again, but still it was always a different communicative situation and that made the whole story exciting again. We also learned much about being spontanous and changing plans within a short time. Sometimes students would have questions and problems that would not really fit into our plans. On other ocasions the teachers changed their plans spontaniously so we also had to reorganize ourselves.

After all it was a great week for me because it was something completely different compared to my practice times in Germany in ordinary public schools. But still I would probably not want to teach in such an institution because I prefer more homogenous learning groups with more similar states of knowledge.