After 3 days of teaching and being in a primary (elementary) school in Scotland, I can definitely say that I grew my skills in way more than just teaching. This experience helped me to gain so many skills that I never expected to gain.

  1. Tolerance- If this trip taught me anything, it certainly taught me tolerance. Which, to some people, that may sound like a bad thing. But, honestly, it isn’t. Before traveling half way around the world to teach young students about the Vikings, I had never truly encountered a group of people that I would have to work so closely with that had such different views than me. Between working with students from the University of Georgia and students from the University of Glasgow, we certainly had tons of different views about how things in our lesson would work and run. Taking this course and attending this trip truly taught me that multiple view-points and ideas can all fit together and make an amazing lesson if you work hard enough to let them and keep your mind open to thoughts other than your own.
  2. Respect- This trip taught me respect in so many ways I cannot list them all. It taught me to respect myself more, respect my peers more, and respect even the world little more. Through this trip, I learned that too often I take things for granted, and sometimes I just need to step back and think about all the things I have to be grateful for the respect I should have for those things and myself in how hard I have worked for them.
  3. Awareness- I cannot describe the awareness that came with teaching young children in Scotland. It was like before I left America I had no idea what the world around me was like. I had no true “awareness” that things could be done differently than I grew up with them being. It is hard to describe just what I mean, but since teaching those amazing children I can’t help but notice things around me a little more. I can’t help but see that the sky is bluer, the grass is greener, and that there are so many ways to accomplish things that I never saw before.
Posted in: