We are Another kind of School!

Newsletter July 2013

Newsletter from the DNS Teams ”DNS TVIND”

The Necessary Teacher Training College July 2013

www.dns-tvind.dk www.dns-tvind.dk

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Newsletter July 2013

WHAT IS NEW IN JULY? Picture Galleries

Preparing for International School Practice Field at DNS, Alessandro

Enjoy our picture gallery from DNS 2009 Gradution day in Tvind..

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DNS2010

Saving-up group from Münster had a study trip in Prague, take a look at some good images...

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I Am Thinking — I Do Thinking, Uldis DNS2012

I was asked to write half a page about what I do after first year of studying in DNS. Well I do some things and one of them is thinking.

As in all things what we are doing, one main issue is to keep on doing these things....

Read more...

Hello to everybody. My name is Alessandro and i am from DNS 2010.

A few days ago, the last year of my DNS program started – our 4th year (of the old DNS program). Me and my teammates are going to Africa for our International Teaching Practice Period. This year, a Bus Travel is implemented as a part of the program in the African Teacher Training Colleges run by Humana People to People… Read more...

Education—Miseducation, Francesca DNS2013

“Barely Seen on the Map, but the Center of the World in a Child’s Mind”, Ciprian DNS2014 The following rows are linked to a place which personally meant the world to a little boy, 5-6-7 years old , that happened to be myself...

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At DNS we talk a lot about Education. We investigate Education in other countries, we discuss about Education, we write thesis about Education, we get a License to practice Education – A License to Teach – and we take an Education.

If we take a look into the m o d e r n education, we’ll find a huge crisis; public schools and universities in general are based on "ancient" principles, at least 50 years old… Read more...

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Newsletter July 2013

PICTURE GALLERY

DNS 2009 Graduated!

01. 08. 2009

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Newsletter July 2013

PICTURE GALLERY

Study Trip in Prague (Saving-up group)

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Newsletter July 2013

Preparing for International School Practice Field at DNS, Alessandro DNS2010 Hello to everybody. My name is Alessandro and i am from DNS 2010.

A few days ago, the last year of my DNS program started – our 4th year (of the old DNS program). Me and my teammates are going to Africa for our International Teaching Practice Period. This year, a Bus Travel is implemented as a part of the program in the African Teacher Training Colleges run by Humana People to People.

All together 24 Teacher Training Colleges in Mozambique, Malawi, Angola and Guinea Bissau are preparing their first year students for this ground breaking new way of teacher training.

More than 1000 students are travelling and that is why we at DNS were specifically asked to help with drivers for this huge endeavor.

Me and 4 teammates have successfully completed our driving license courses, passing all the exams - in Danish!

After the challenge of learning Danish, Portuguese language will be the headline for our travel as we all go to Angola – a former Portuguese colony.

In my case, it should be not so difficult because of the similarities with Italian.... but we will see... the reality can be different.

Right now all the schools in Angola are busy preparing the buses in which we will live for the following 4 months (but we will sleep outside in tents).

I can already imagine that the atmosphere in the bus will be very warm due to the African spirit and sun - full of music, rhythms and laughter! I am positive about living with totally different people, also because my sister, whom has just finished DNS, had a very good ex-

perience in Guinea Bissau.

In my study travel with teachers-to-be from Angola, we will visit four different countries: Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia. We will see if the students will be ready to perform their investigation instead of sitting and shiver in the buses. I still remember three years ago in my Asia Travel, how students from the Indian countryside were scared of asking questions to the people living in the rural areas.

Will I be the one who is scared this time or will it be a Deja Vu? You will maybe discover it in the next newsletters….

I would have a lot of things to tell you about how will we try to avoid mosquitoes and other bugs in Africa, but unfortunately I don't have time now. I have to cook a pizza for “The President” – so we call one of our oldest students in the care home - in Africa it will be difficult to find ovens and mozzarella :) So people, I wish you a nice 2nd part of 2013 wherever you are.....and don't forget to go WILD sometimes in your life! Greetings.

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Newsletter July 2013

Fresh and Ready Bus Drivers! ( Marianne, Alessandro, Natalya)

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Newsletter July 2013

I Am Thinking —I Do Thinking, Uldis DNS2012 I was asked to write half a page about what I do after first year of studying in DNS. Well I do some things and one of them is thinking. As in all things what we are doing, one main issue is to keep on doing these things. The same is with thinking. If you choose to do that, you must know that thinking feeds thinking. If you would ask, what am I thinking of, my answer would be simple. I think about my actions, or in other words, I am thinking about things I do. For example, I am sleeping, I am eating, I am practising some hygiene, I am studying, I am earning money, I am reading, I am listening, I am speaking, I am writing, and I am in a specific location on planet Earth (in Berlin).

Now I am not sure in order to continue, if I should ask a question to you or if I should go on with explaining sentences. Time and time again I find myself in dilemmas where certain choices would change things. Here it would be my style of writing (if there is a such style). Therefore, my advice is that if you find yourself in such a dilemma where you should make a choice, take your time. This is what I decided some time ago. After a while practicing this ‘time taking’ it simply prevented me from taking opportunities to gain experiences. So I told to myself: Who thinks of everything, doesn’t do anything. Ok, it is time to open the gate to choices in favour of acting with existing amount of doubts which I have (in

a lot of first moments it seems as running in enormous speed in dark). And let me trust people with whom I am going together (with all my choices) and in the same time I noticed that they came together with me. Step by step it led me to DNS. If in last paragraph a question arose (I needed to remind to myself, that long time ago I decided that I should use as little as possible questions form sentences so that readers could choose the question themselves), but there are choices of much harder nature. These choices belong to what I call short-term and long-term projects. So now I am grateful after first Year of having the DNS experience (this is one huge long-term project) to come to another point of evaluating all my huge projects which came along. Changes, imbalance, balance, and changes have been met. Thank You DNS!

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Newsletter July 2013

Education—Miseducation, Francesca DNS2013 At DNS we talk a lot about Education. We investigate Education in other countries, we discuss about Education, we write thesis about Education, we get a License to practice Education – A License to Teach – and we take an Education.

If we take a look into the modern education, we’ll find a huge crisis; public schools and universities in general are based on "ancient" principles, at least 50 years old. As we know well, people's necessities, communication, psychology and culture, are renewing very fast according to modern life style.

We ask: Which purpose has Education today? In some countries, sadly, young people see only the purpose of getting a good job, a title, a mark.

Usually Education is limited and connected with the idea of surviving in our society. In simple words, few people in education are focusing on the pleasure to learn, and even fewer of them are working to improve their knowledge to change what is not working in our world.

Instead they keep on feeding our wrong system and in this way contribute to an overproduction of unnecessary goods in some countries and to the development of ignorance and poverty in other countries, increasing the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.

Our education system becomes miseducation by not allowing individuals to learn, improve and practice their best and noblest capacities, and by being almost stripped off any practice. Miseducation limits people’s minds instead of developing them.

The result is narrowness, limited horizons, isolation and class division.

Alternative formation and education opportunities are growing up. It means that the student in an alternative education (alternative to the established education system described above) is developing himself through a holistic approach to the local and global reality, that will allow him the possibility to create evolution, novelty and alternative solutions.

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Newsletter July 2013

Education—Miseducation, Francesca DNS2013 A good education should allow the person to find the ultimate purpose behind it, to manage and develop thinking of his life and should allow creativity to blossom which is necessary to set in an independent free working style, and an independent free self who is able to be what he studied for and not just become a replicate of former tradition and thinking.

Education should promote critical thinking.

Education is in this way to transmit the meaning of life and learning so that it can be understood in a context of our time and be mediated directly or indirectly to children and youngsters.

DNS allows this possibility through a wide range of continuous challenges: like the Chinese word wēijī is composed by two characters “Crisis” and “Opportunity”, DNSs practical experiences are moving around this kind of concept, and also around to the concept of Learning by Doing, and it is obvious that it is possible to plan our activities, but it is also impossible that everything will move according to the plans; so in the moment of our actions, we often find ourselves involved in find “last second” solutions to realize our projects. The fact that we connect our brains as we work in the team, is an amazing experience to discover as well as more and more about our creativity and about our emotional intelligence. All this training is important for us to become ready and good teachers. We develop patience, persistancy, empathy and sharpness. Our concept of Alternative Education is unpredictable when it comes to where in the world or in which job we shall do and what tasks we shall carry out; but our future results will talk!

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Newsletter July 2013

“Barely Seen on the Map, but the Center of the World in a Child’s Mind”, Ciprian DNS2014 For the first time we bring an article in our Newsletter from a DNS20140er: Ciprian who is still not at the DNS college, but on the way to start his saving up year soon….

The following rows are linked to a place which personally meant the world to a little boy, 5-6-7 years old , that happened to be myself. The settlement of “Neteni”, a village not to far from where I live now, is located in Northern Romania, a “village” where my mother was born and my grandparents actually live, and..get this…has a population of 16 people. It’s been this way in the past 20 years, when youngsters started moving to town and left the village, searching for a better life. And all that’s left behind are empty houses, sometimes visited by their owners , but during the workdays it’s all just a huge bowl of silence. For the 16 souls that still inhabit the place, the church bell sometimes rings in the holidays, and during storms (because there’s a tradition that ringing the bell will chase away the storm).

As a kid the place actually was really boring to be honest, but the luck that I had was that there were other kids that came and spent the summer holidays there, which from better to worse, finally became my friends. I still remember the long hot summer days when we rode the bicycles, played soccer and just “explored”, because everything around was a mystery, and every hilltop seemed like Everest.

I visited the village recently and took some pictures, and the funny fact is that now even with every hill conquered, there’s still so much to explore, and that’s what I actually do every time I get there. Last time I went there I actually re-met one of my childhood friends and we were roaming the path like in the good old days, and everything seemed so tiny compared to how it used to look like when we were young. And from talk to talk we remembered some really funny stuff that happened to us , and here’s one that I’m going to share with you : Near the village, about 100 meters, there’s one hill that people used to dig sand out of it. It has a really funny name, unreadable in English, something like “ Booh-booh-yough”. The place was a really nice attrac-

tion for “young explorers”, because you can actually see stratifications in it, and it’s a really awesome (but dangerous) place to climb. And one time, the “two paleontologists” were searching for “fossils” to dig out, the jackpot being to find an actual dinosaur, and they were certain that there has to be one there. Until one day, when my neighbor actually found some bones, and a skull (that didn’t look very dinosaurish, but hey…who knows). And as professional paleontologists do, we left them there unmoved, went home to bring our exploring kits( that consisted in needles, some paintbrushes, gloves ) and spent a day in the heat , trying to uncover the mysteries, until the dawn came, and we actually found out that all our work was to unveil the remaining of a poor old horse.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, and who knows, maybe DNS it’s going to be more “exploring ground” for the little dinosaur digger that still lives in my mind.

www.dns-tvind.dk

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Newsletter July 2013

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