My experience in the Erasmus + programme “Staff Mobility for Teaching”

I'm MªAngeles Dominguez, I'm a teacher of vocational studies of Building and Civil Engineering in Universidad Laboral school.

This year I have taken advantage of the opportunity, to do the Erasmus programme for teaching. I could improve my English in a real context and visit our student of Building Project, who was doing his internship in a British company.

The city where I had to go to is the capital of an island called “The Isle of Wight” in the south of England. The student had chosen Newport because he couldn't find any other place in England to do his internship, so there he found a college that helped him look for a company. The college's name is “The Isle of Wight College”. The worse thing was that I had to travel by plane, train, ferry and bus to get to Newport. But in the end it was easier than I thought.

Some of the objectives of the teaching programme were:

- To see in situ what is done in other countries, about the world of education, which we could apply in our school.

- To establish a first contact with the Institution in order to maintain a future relationship between both schools.

- To get to know about other methods of teaching that are being carried out in the college.

- To attend and impart classes of my specialty.

My first day in The Isle of Wight College. I was really overwhelmed, because I really didn't have any expectations. However my first impression was that people were really kind and ready to help me. So I felt completely relieved.

The head of the international department "Pat", who is in charge of foreign visitors, had organized my stay and many different activities, even attending hospitality and catering classes.

That day began with a Tour around the college. I was amazed to see such a huge college, it has many types of courses, not only apprenticeships, they also impart eLearning Courses, Employer Training, University degrees, languages courses and much more. Moreover I also met Cristina, who works in the international department with Pat, she is a charming person and we keep in touch nowadays.

Some of the activities that I did that week were; I attended theory and training classes of Carpentry, Plumping, Brickwork etc, all of them are related to the building industry, I had to pay attention to the teachers’ lesson. Thankfully I had learnt beforehand some vocabulary about these subjects. What surprised me most was the organization of the workshops and the great discipline in class. Furthermore I went to the library and hospitality and catering classes, I also met the apprenticeship team and I had lunch with them, we tried to establish the equivalents of our vocational studies. So I was really busy, but delighted to be able to manage the language without any problem, I forgot my insecurities and tried to make myself understood. Even some of them anyone told me that I spoke English quite clearly, and I thought that they were just being really polite. 

  

Visit the Spanish student of Building Projects. Another day I went to visit Derek, our Building Project student. He was working with an architect called Gian Gilbert. I talked to him about our student and he said that Derek had great knowledge about building and drawing plans and he could probably hire him to work there as soon as he finishes the Erasmus programme. So it was good news, he is working there now.

On the other hand, two students of Information and Guiding Tour, Isabel and Raul are doing their internship in two companies of The Isle Of Wight now, so I am delighted to see, that my stay there have been useable to maintain a relationship between both schools, and to collaborate in future projects.

To sum up, I strongly recommend going abroad, if I were you, I would go once in your life, it is worth the challenge. It will make you test your limits, another advantage of knowing a foreign culture is that it makes you an open minded person.  

I regret not having done the Erasmus programme when I was at university, in that time our exchange was with Denmark. I wish I had done it. 

However  it's never too late!.