Road to Ireland
Experience can be the best teacher, especially for future educators.
Lisa Swain of Mars traveled to Dublin, Ireland, from Nov. 6 to Dec. 14 to complete student teaching requirements for a bachelor's in elementary education and early childhood development from Slippery Rock University.
Swain and about 20 classmates flew as a group to Dublin Airport.After they arrived, Swain and two other girls met their host parents, a kindly older couple named Bill and Marie.“They made us a traditional Irish breakfast right off the bat,” Swain said.After a meal of ham, sausage, baked beans and fried eggs, the host parents showed them the schools where they'd be teaching.The students then took a more in-depth tour of the area and visited Harold's Cross, a village on the south side of Dublin.The town gets its name from a large stone cross erected to mark the village boundaries in medieval times.The next day, Swain visited her school, Presentation School, and met the principal, students and the teacher she'd shadow.“It's an all-girls school from ‘junior infants,' which would be like our preschool, to ‘sixth class,' which is like our sixth grade,” Swain said.
The university students then embarked on a four-day trip.Their first stop was the town of Omagh, where they visited the Ulster American Folk Park.One of the national museums of Ireland, the open-air park focuses on the link between Ulster and America, particularly the experiences of immigrants who traveled to America in the 18th and 19th centuries.As the students walked through the grounds, volunteers in period costumes showed how people lived and explained the migration that took place.The group stayed overnight near the park and continued to Donegal the next day for a guided tour. The students then went on to the city of Derry, where they saw a performance of authentic Irish music.That evening, they stayed in a quaint bed and breakfast in Bunbeg, Swain said.“It was like in the movies, a little old woman owned it,” she said. “They had pink flowered wallpaper and pictures of their family everywhere and big old keys for the doors and things like that.”The small town overlooks the Irish Sea, she said.“The next morning, we woke up and took a beach walk, which was really beautiful,” Swain said. “It was so incredibly windy, there would be times when you were literally afraid you'd fall over.”The group then returned to Donegal for a guided tour of Donegal Castle, where the guide explained how castles were built for protection.“They had tiny slits for windows to shoot arrows out, and the spiral staircase spiraled to the right, so if you were right-handed, you were disadvantaged when you came up the stairs,” she said, explaining how swordsmen in the castle were trained to carry their weapons to the right.The medieval castle was juxtaposed with the modern city of Donegal, Swain said.“It was all made of stone and it's right there in the middle of the city, almost like it doesn't belong,” Swain said. “But it was there first.”The group then visited Sligo to see the gravestone of Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who spent his childhood there.“The Irish are very proud of their literature's influence,” she said.They spent the night in Sligo, but had limited time in town.“A lot of things closed very early; they're very family-oriented,” Swain said. “Even in the city, things would start closing around 5 or 6 p.m. so people could be with their families.”After visiting a few more sites, the group returned to Dublin.
The student teachers began work the following Monday, and Swain said she was more excited than nervous to meet her junior infants class.When she arrived, she introduced herself with a presentation about her life in America.The students were fascinated by the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving, said Swain, who later visited all the school's classes to explain the custom.“The girls asked me so many good questions,” she said. “They wanted to know if there was a church service for it, they thought we gave gifts. They asked if we dress up as pilgrims.”She spent the rest of the day observing the teacher at work, which was markedly different from the American school experience, she said.“They don't have a different teacher for art or music, so the same teacher takes the girls to the gym and teaches P.E. class, then art, math, reading,” Swain said. “They do all of that.”The classroom teacher offered Swain flexibility in scheduling and choosing which subjects to teach.“I started teaching the very next day,” said Swain, who shared a poem, discussed rhyming words and asked the girls to come up with their own rhymes.Though there was no language barrier, colloquialisms and accents sometimes caused confusion, Swain said.“When I taught the letter T, I said the world ‘tomato,'” Swain said. “They all said, ‘No, Miss Swain, that's to-mah-to!' They couldn't get over the fact that I was saying it differently.”The experience will help her relate to future students from different backgrounds and cultures, Swain said.Swain planned and taught several lessons per day and took responsibility for teaching physical education to all the junior infant classes.Many households, including Swain's host family, did not have computers or Internet access, and supplies like construction paper were often limited, Swain said.These challenges taught her to be more resourceful and creative in the classroom, Swain said.School ended at 2:30 p.m., so Swain had the afternoons to herself.Students were admitted free to dozens of places, so she visited art and history museums, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Christ's Church Cathedral and more.“I think I know how to get around Dublin better than Pittsburgh now,” she said.Swain put this knowledge to use when her parents, John and Peggy Swain, and sister, Christine, 15, visited from Nov. 20 to 28.Her family met Bill and Marie, who invited them for a home-cooked meal, and visited traditional tourist sites.“It's so hard to explain everything so it's really neat that my family got to come,” Swain said.One of her favorite moments was their visit to the Cliffs of Moher, which attract more than a million visitors each year with its awe-inspiring views of the rolling green hills and steep sandstone cliffs.
Slippery Rock University offers student teaching abroad in Dublin during the fall semester and Mexico City in the spring.“Seeing instruction in another country provides them with more experience with a variety of teaching strategies,” said Robert Snyder, associate professor of elementary education and early childhood development at SRU.Lessons learned abroad have a lasting impact, he added.“It immerses students in another culture — making them more open-minded, flexible and sensitive to diversity,” Snyder said.Swain returned to the United States Dec. 14 and graduated from Slippery Rock University four days later.Despite the hectic pace, she was thrilled to be back home with her family and to see her fiance after six weeks of separation.Life seemed to operate at a slower pace everywhere in Ireland than in America, Swain noticed.“It was a nice reminder to me,” she said. “Even though you want to be successful in your career, when it comes down to it, you need to slow down and enjoy the things you take for granted.”
Sharing her snapshots is Lisa Swain, 22, of Mars.Swain said she always wanted to visit Ireland, where she worked as a student teacher.“Ireland really is as green as you think it will be: It does rain a lot and you do see rainbows often,” said Swain.A 2006 graduate of Mars High School, she is the daughter of John and Peggy Swain. She lives at home with her parents and sister Christine, 15.She works as a substitute teacher in the Mars, Butler and Riverside school districts while looking for a full-time teaching position and planning her Aug. 5 wedding to Mike Ripper of New Brighton.Before her Ireland trip, Swain completed 10 weeks of student teaching with a fourth-grade class in the Butler School District.“It was very different,” said Swain, comparing her two student teaching roles. “I definitely learned classroom management and being comfortable and confident in front of the kids.”
• Capital (and largest city): Dublin• Official languages: Irish, English• Location: Western Europe, occupying five-sixths of the island of Ireland in the North Atlantic Ocean, west of Great Britain• Area: 27,132 square miles (slightly larger than West Virginia)• Population: 4.5 million (July 2010 estimate)• Terrain: Mostly level to rolling interior plain surrounded by rugged hills and low mountains; sea cliffs on west coast• Climate: Due to a temperate oceanic climate, temperatures are rarely lower than 26 degrees in winter or higher than 72 degrees in summer• Religion: Roman Catholic, 87 percent; Church of Ireland, 3 percent; other Christian, 2 percent; other, 2 percent;, unspecified, 2 percent; none, 4 percent (according to 2006 census)<B>SOURCE: CIA World Fact Book</B>
<I>Road to Ireland is the latest in a monthly travel series that highlights county residents and their journeys. To share your vacation with Butler County readers, contact Focus editor Sandy Marwick at 724-282-8000, Ext. 252.</I>
