4

Organisatorisch competent
(Organizationally competent)


For the purposes of this project, this means:

•  Ik kan internationaliseringprojecten op mijn school plannen, uitvoeren en evalueren. (I can plan, carry out and evaluate international projects at my school.)
• Ik kan internationalisering plaatsen binnen een lange termijn planning, die bij de leerlingen bekend is en waar zij hun eigen planning op kunnen afstemmen. (I can place internationalism within long-term planning so that students can coordinate these plans with ther own planning.)

When I taught at Maartenscollege in their TTO, I was in charge of organizing an exchange for our TTO students with a school in Romania. I went first to visit to organize the exchange with an English teacher in Pitesti. Together we planned the exchange so that in one school year the Romanian students (about 35) came here and in the next school year our students (about 35) went there. For our part of the exchange I applied for and received a subsidy from the European Platform.

Ahead of the exchange I opened a Yahoo group for the students so they could informally get to know each other ahead of time. During the exchange itself they stayed in each other's homes and worked on various assignments around a cultural theme in mixed groups. I can dig up some evidence from this trip, but I'd rather not post it on public site, so just ask me.

Once the exchange was over, the teacher at the Romanian school, a teacher at a Turkish school and I worked together on applying for a Comenius subsidy so that we could carry out a three-way exchange. Unfortunately this never happened: we received our subsidy, as did the Turkish school, but the Romanian school did not. Without a minimum of three schools, we could not get the subsidy.

After that, we decided to change tactics, given the sheer amount of time and energy the Romanian exchange and then applying for a subsidy had cost me. Instead, for the next year's group of 4th year TTO students, I arranged a trip to Dublin, which turned out very successful. The international exchange component, unfortunately, is missing, but the students do get a bit of contact with the Irish because they do home-stay during the week in Dublin. Again, I can dig up some evidence of this trip on request.

I stopped teaching in the TTO after that year, but the Dublin trip has since become a regularly scheduled yearly part of the TTO programme at Maartenscollege.