Next
week many Polish children will be overjoyed, as it's going to be the
first week of their summer holiday! Two months of freedom, playing with
friends, swimming, devouring lots of ice cream, bothering mama and tata 24/7...
Until September, they don't have to go to school - and neither do we.
So, before the summer holiday begins and before we will organize different
kinds of activities, out of school, I would like to share some of my
recent experiences with you. What's it like to be a cultural ambassador of the Netherlands?
Basically, in Polish schools the
volunteers of the Multicultural Language Cafe carry out two different
types of activities: workshops and cultural presentations. The
workshops, about human rights or intercultural education, are meant to
be highly interactive. Participation and freedom of thought and
expression are important human rights values, and therefore these kind
of workshops should be organised in a consistent way. For this reason,
we usually conduct workshops in pairs. Cultural presentations, on the
other hand, are carried out alone. (It would not make much sense if a
volunteer from the Netherlands shows aspects of Ukrainian culture, for
example.) These presentations also tend to be less interactive than
workshops, although asking and answering questions is an essential (and
often the most interesting) part of it.
The
first time I went to a Polish school, twelve days after my arrival in
Wrocław, I had to give my cultural presentation to five classes in a
row, from 08:00 until 13:30. Five classrooms full of teenagers who do
not speak your native language and you do not speak theirs... Now
that's what I call a trial. But I succeeded, although my cheeks were
glowing after the fifth presentation - not because I was blushing all
the time, but because I was not used to speaking so much for so long!
Up
until now I've had a lot of opportunities to improve my cultural
presentation - and my 'speaking muscles'. The audience does not always
consist of teenagers, so I had to adapt my presentation several times.
So far I made four different versions - one for kindergartens, one for
lower schools, one for gimnazja (middle schools / lower high
schools) and one for homeless people. All these versions differ slightly
from one another. For example, the kindergarten-version contains almost
no written text in comparison with the other versions, and the one for
homeless people does not mention typical Dutch food or alcoholic
beverages. All versions are still not finished: sometimes I change
something because of the feedback, or because I stumble upon something
that's even more Dutch than what I found already. It also prevents the
task from becoming a tedious routine - no matter how much I love the
Netherlands, after a while it becomes quite boring to share the same
information over and over again.
Because of the feedback I got after my first presentations - "Do you smoke weed?" - I added one slide to the gimnazjum-version of my presentation. Personally, I believe this tolerant/liberal part
of my country is more essential to its identity than cheese and
windmills (and that teenagers know this - even if I don't mention it),
but initially I didn't talk about this topic because I didn't want to upset anyone. The second time I went to a gimnazjum, I mentioned it, but this led to commotion and negative responses every time. For instance, after mentioning same-sex marriage one
of the students clearly showed a 'thumbs-down'... Not the kind of
feedback I was hoping for. Hopefully there's a way to mention this topic
without creating an uproar.
Within
less than two months I learned a lot. I improved my cultural
presentation, I know more about the Netherlands than ever before, and I
heard many times what people from Poland and other countries think of my
country and the people who live there - in a nutshell: Dutchies are
crazy and open-minded people in a country full of tulips, windmills and
weed. As I mentioned before, the volunteers of the MLC also conduct
workshops about human rights and intercultural education, but this is an
area I do not yet feel familiar with. During the summer holiday,
besides organizing other activities and eating lots of ice cream, I hope to get a better insight into what it takes to give effective workshops. Let's hope the summer will be long!
