Greetings from Malta!

 

Two of our teachers attended a course called Spice up your teaching at Executive Training Institute in Malta. The course was part of the Erasmus+ project the school is participating in at the moment. This is the first time Pattanen School is taking part in this kind of a project which offers teachers a chance to broaden their teaching competence by attending courses abroad , but it certainly won’t be the last! The whole experience was very interesting and rewarding. The trainer of the course was wonderful and the tuition gave us a lot of great new ideas for teaching. Malta was a perfect location for the course. The weather was wonderful the whole week, at times maybe even a bit too hot for a Finn who’s not used to such a warm climate! Our hotel and the school were in St. Julian’s which is a busy town crowded with tourists and many construction sites as well.

St.Julian's

 

Besides studying we had a chance to do some sightseeing. On Tuesday we visited Valetta, the capital of Malta, which is the smallest capital in the EU and on Thursday it was time to visit Mdina which was the capital of Malta from antiquity to the medieval period. It’s a popular tourist attraction as about 750,000 tourists visit Mdina every year. Cars are not allowed in the narrow streets of Mdina and therefore the town is a very quiet and peaceful place to be. Due to this it is also called “the Silent City”. After roaming the noisy and touristy streets of St. Julian Mdina offered a haven of peace and tranquility.

Mdina

Mdina

Right next to St. Julian’s there is a town called Sliema which you can reach by walking along the beautiful seaside promenade with breathtaking views.

Sliema

There are also many restaurants where you can eat delicious food from traditional Maltese and Mediterranean dishes to e.g. Asian cuisine.

In addition to studying and sightseeing we had a chance to meet some wonderful colleagues from France, Holland, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy and Finland to mention a few. It was fascinating to exchange ideas and talk about the different school systems and other differences between the countries. Hopefully this will be the beginning of fruitful collaboration in the future!


To sum it up, the combination of gaining fresh ideas for teaching, meeting new people from other countries and sharing knowledge and experiences with them is something that you cannot acquire in your daily work in your own classroom and that is why we can warmly recommend other schools to participate in Erasmus+ projects for teachers!