Hi. My name is Vesna and I am a Comenius Assistant from Slovenia, currently working around Orkney schools (You will soon be able to find out more about me and the reasons I am here at the page of International Education).
Besides visiting different classes and getting a good overview of how teaching-learning relationship works around here, I also got the chance to attend meetings of Pupil Council. Even though, I do not believe we have such a thing as Pupil Council around schools in Slovenia, I really liked the idea of it. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that the learners are able to cooperate in establishing a school to be positive learning environment to work in. Bringing up their own ideas and with the help of the school staff managing to put them into practice enables them to feel that the school is about them and theirs.
During the last PC meeting I was also asked some questions by the learners who are a part of PC. They were mainly interested into why I decided to come to Orkney, how I like it and whether Slovenia is a very different country from the place they live in. It was my pleasure to answer all of their questions, as well as point out some major differences between the two places. Speaking about Slovenia and showing them brochures with all the pictures and everything made me think about my country and that I still FEEL sLOVEnija, despite the fact that I like Orkney.
It was very interesting finding out about schools in Slovenia. I look forward to finding out lots more about Slovenian culture, especially as we come to the festive season.
ReplyDeleteMrs Rendall
I sLOVEnija the title for this post.
ReplyDeleteYou've obviously met with a great pupil council. Unfortunately it's not always the case that pupil councils are about collaboration in learning. Often they're set up in such a way that they can't really have any impact and/or don't really represent all the pupils in the school.
Do you think you'll take this idea back to Slovenia?
How will it go down in schools there?
I'd love to go out to Slovenia to help set up a pupil council, so if you need any help drop me an email ;)
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThe reason for coming here was to find out more about the school system in the UK and around Scotland, of course. I was pleasantly surprised of how schools are organized and got the impression that students matter, which is on my opinion one of the most important issues considering education. Visiting Pupil Council, indeed, inspired me to take this idea back home to Slovenia. Even though, I am still not employed as a teacher back in Slovenia (as I’ve just graduated) I’m very keen on the idea of establishing Pupil Council around schools in Slovenia. Moreover, I would not like it just to be there for no reason, but also to make it work.
I am aware of the fact that things Pupil Councils decides can not always fit in with expectations of all of those they represent. But, this is called collaboration. As far as I know, learners are to bring each class’s ideas to the meeting and by getting the representatives to bring up suggestions and make comments about previously discussed ideas the whole thing seems to work out quite well. I was not only once at the meeting, so I have a quite the idea of what they were planning to do. So, I realized some things have actually been put to practice. Working things out this way seems much more sensible that if the learners were set with rules to obey and play according to them. I agree learners could be involved in many other aspects of. That’s why we say learning from experience can only improve what we are doing.
I can imagine similar thing could be established around schools in Slovenia step by step. Anyway, once it would get going I suppose it would run just as smoothly and successfully as around here and the learners would actually be more willing to suggest ideas once they realized they are actually heard.
I am really exited about your suggestion about spreading the idea back to my home county, but don’t really know where to start.