Shanna Jansen van Jorksveld surprised by all the after-school activities.
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Netherlands' student Shanna Jansen van Jorksveld got to spent five days at The Republican, joining reporter Jeannette DeForge on assignment at Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee, spending a day at Cathedral High School and writing about it and taking with Republican staffers like editorial page editor Carolyn Robbins about their jobs in journalism.
By SHANNA JANSEN VAN JORKSVELD
Why would a 17-year-old student from Ijsselstein in the center of Netherlands, want to spend five days at The Republican?
It is because my school, the Anna van Rijn College in Nieuwegein, encourages us to spend a week in a completely English-speaking environment.
Our school provides us with a special course which includes having half of the lessons in English.
Spending a week abroad is part of the course — it helps us to improve our English and gives us the chance to observe another culture.
My teachers told us to pay extra attention to the differences in the school system, because every country has its own way of education.
I spent a day at Cathedral High School where UNlisted board member Ryan Migeed served as my host.
When I got to the school, I immediately noticed a few differences.
Most of the students come to school by car or school bus, while in the Netherlands most students take their bicycle.
The other thing I noticed were the school uniforms, the girls with the long skirts and the boys in their khaki pants.
Back home I don’t know a single school that still uses school uniforms.
In the past the Netherlands did have school uniforms, but that was probably in the time when my grandparents went to school.
We have three different levels of education in the Netherlands, which all take a different amounts of time.
The lowest level takes eight years, which means students will be done when they are 12.
The next level after that takes five years, the level would be called something like “higher common education.”
The last level — equivalent to college in the United States — is the highest and for that reason also takes the longest, six years in total.
In all the levels you have to choose a profile in your third year and it must be the one that suits you the best.
(You actually take an important test after the first level that determines what type of school, such as vocational or academic, you will continue to learn in.)
There are four different types of profiles: nature and technical, nature and health, economics and society and culture and society.
I have chosen economics and society.
This profile includes economics, history, mathematics, English, Dutch and social studies.
Also, in every profile we have to pick an extra language to study, which could be French, German, Greek or Latin.
I took German because Germany is right next to the Netherlands and the language itself sounds a little like Dutch.
All the schools also allow you to take an extra subject if you like, and it can be whatever you want that is not in your profile.
It could be something like art or another extra language.
I choose geography because I have always enjoyed it.
I’m also taking the special course which means I am taking subject classes like history in English.
In my school they now have the advantaged English classes for every level which means that all the students are trying to speak English!
Not every school has this, so for this reason the school I go to is really popular in the area right now.
In the Netherlands, English, Dutch and mathematics are subjects that are always in a student’s profile, no matter your level or year.
There are three different levels in mathematics, so you can choose the one you think is best.
All the students start taking classes in English when they are in elementary school.
This usually starts in the seventh year when the students are about 10 years old.
Students from Cathedral High School told me they would have liked to learn an another language that early in life.
That is why I consider it a privilege that I had English this early in life because it can help me find a job or give me the chance to live abroad.
During my day at Cathedral, I also noticed that the classes are different from back home, the students here do their homework and discuss it in class.
Our classes usually consist of three basic elements: asking questions about homework that had to be done, discussing new theory and working on assignments.
I like the way the teachers do it here because now it becomes important that students do their work, back home it doesn’t matter if you did it or not because not all the teachers check the homework.
The timetable is also very different, students here go to school at a certain time and are always done at the same time.
I wish I had that!
Our classes take 50 minutes each, and we have a break after two classes.
That doesn’t mean I’m always done at the same time.
When a teacher is ill or not at school, I just don’t have that class that day.
This means I sometimes have to wait three hours for one class at the end of the day!
I always try to do my homework of find some friends to chat with.
We are also allowed to leave the schoolgrounds when we are waiting, so we can go shopping or go to buy food.
When the day was over, all the students at Cathedral had their sports practice, drama rehearsals or something else.
Schools in the Netherlands aren’t that involved with the student’s lives, which means that they don’t provide us with sports or drama rehearsals, which I think is a shame because I like it.
That is the reason why I joined Ryan in the drama club’s rehearsals of “Alice in Wonderland.”
It was nice to see that so many students were involved in the play and the rehearsals was nice to see.
Helping out with the scenery was also fun, and the tree looked very nice after we were done painting it.
I had a really good time because all the students were really nice to me and made me feel at home. We talked about numerous topics, made some jokes and talked about the differences between the United States and the Netherlands.
It was a nice experience spending a day in a different school, in a different country and in a different language.