Broadened Horizons (paper on expectations and goals)

The opportunity Alfred University has given me to travel to Denmark has been incredible. I am hoping to teach and learn from everyone I meet and be able to reflect upon this experience myself carrying all of its lessons wherever my future brings me.

My goal is to take what I learn about another culture, society, and educational upbringing through this course, and apply it to what I do in my future. As an Assistant Taekwondo Instructor in my hometown, I work with a very diverse group of children on a daily basis. At my practicum site they devote an entire part of the school to children of different backgrounds. I am looking to develop skills through working with these children to help me become a better instructor for the children I teach. Through observing the multilingual children at Majebo Bronby, I will have the opportunity to learn from the pedagogues, see how they communicate with the other children, and share ideas with my peers. By the end of this course I want to be able to reflect on what I will have learned to use it in next semester’s program. I am hoping to tie together the different styles of teaching I come across, apply what I learn from my supervisors, and bring suggestions and new ideas back to my professors and peers at Alfred University.

Many people are not aware of other approaches to education. I have chosen this program because it is giving me an opportunity to examine a different approach to early education and childcare in the context of social system I am not familiar with. This practicum will give me another way to educate others and I will be facing a language barrier with the children I work with. I am expecting to give insight and experience to the children I work with while having the opportunity for the children to give something back to me as well.