Vivien in Maria, prostovoljki iz Mladinskega centra Zagorje, sta strnili vtise o delu na naši šoli ter primerjali našo šolo z šolami v Italiji in na Madžarskem. Obeta se vam zanimivo branje.

Hello everyone!

Vivi

Vivien

My name is Vivi, I’m a Hungarian volunteer in Mladinski Center Zagorje ob Savi. At the university I was studying economics and immadiately after finishing it I came to Slovenia to do my European Voluntary Service (EVS). I already heard about this opportunity before and it was on my bucket list to do it. In last February I found this project accidentally on the internet and applied without thinking on it too much. The timing, the project discription, the location, everything was suitable for me. And Slovenia is a perfect first step for living abroad. That’s why I’ve been living in Zagorje since last August and work in the Youth Center. After one month, in September, we started our cooperation with the school, we participate on the English lessons every Tuesday.

Since Slovenia and Hungary are neighbour countries, I haven’t noticed any special intercultural differences, but the school system compared to my former primary school is a bit different. First of all, the primary school in Hungary is only till the 8th grade. Secondly, we always started the lessons at 8 o’clock, they were 45 minutes long and the breaks 15 minutes. Here, in Zagorje the kids start learning English in the 4th grade, in my school we started to learn the foreign languages in the first class, but we could choose between German and English. And German was a bit more popular as a first language, because the grammar structure is harder and it’s easier to learn English afterwards. But even if here they start English later, the level of the knowledge is very good. As I observed, this is true generally for the Slovenian people. What else is very likeable for me is that this Tone Okrogar school is pretty open-minded. The best example to prove it is us, the EVS volunteers. They cooperate with the Youth Center and host us on the English lessons. And the kids here have more opportunity to make their own decisions. Besides the obligatory subjects they can choose by themselves some other interesting things to learn/try. About sports, nature, arts, theatre, etc. Also more technical facilities are provided, like computers in the classrooms, projectors and the eAsistent online system. But maybe this is because the passing of the time, I finished the primary school 9 years ago. So all in all I think how things are done in this school suits more the 21th century.

And how is the work with the kids? It’s hard to do it properly without the needed studies and knowledge, but it gives so many pluses for your life. So many new impressions, experiences, reactions and feedbacks. I’ve never thought before that somebody will ever has a homework to draw my profile photo, after an interview write a short essay about me or answer questions about my family. And somebody will scream my name when they see me on the corridor because they are happy about it. The kids, specially the younger ones are very open, curious and enthusiastic. Working with the older students is quite different, you can feel that they are becoming adults and trying to find their limits. Mostly their English knowledge is very good and they can always surprise me with their thoughtful and interesting comments.

Working in the school is a pleasure for me, I hope also for them, and I’m very thankful for this opportunity.

Hello everybody!

Maria

Maria

My name is Maria, I am an Italian girl and I come from Naples, the city of the »pizza«. I graduated in Political Sciences and International Relations and since the 11th of January I’m living in Zagorje as a new EVS volunteer in MC ZOS. I’ve been accepted for the EVS project named »Gamble your Chance«. So I left my country and I moved to Slovenia. Maybe, the most of you don’t know what the European Voluntary Service is. The EVS is a European program promoted and funded by the European Comission, that give to young people the opportunity to live in another country providing a service in a non-profit organizations. In the MC ZOS I will organize several events involving the local community and giving my all support. My project including also a cooperation with your school. Actually me and the other EVS volunteer Vivien, we come in the school every Tuesday during the English classes. We give our support to the teachers, and we try to involve the students and ourselves making different activities to improve the English language and to learn more about our countries’ culture and traditions. Even if I never worked with children, and I was a little worried about it because it’s a new thing for me, I think it would be a great opportunity to learn a lot of things and to become more confident. I was for the first time in your school two weeks ago, to introduce myself and my country, and it looks a little different from the Italian school.

First, in Italy we have a different school system. We start with the primary school, from six years to ten years old. Then we have a secondary school that lasts three years with a state exam at the end. Usually, all the lessons are in the morning, but in some schools, children could attend lessons also in the afternoon. One of the first things that I noticed was the constant student’s change of classrooms. In the Italian schools children have one classroom for all the year, and they can go outside from the classroom only for the main break.

What about technologies? I was really surprised about the number of computers and projectors that you have in some classrooms. In the Italian classrooms we don’t have it, and if even we had it, it wouldn’t work!! The last thing, but not the least important thing, is about the English knowledge. I think that the level of English in the Slovenian school is much better than in the Italian school. For example, I started to study English later, in the high school, because before I learnt French. Now the Italian children start to learn English language at the primary school. In Italy we don’t study so well the English language, sometimes we don’t have good teachers and we don’t care about it. And just because Italian people aren’t able to speak English we are famous in the world! (After the pizza and pasta obviously!) So I hope we’ll have great time together.

(Skupno 127 obiskov, današnjih obiskov 1)
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