The power of interculturality

For PTE students, lecturers and also for professors Fulbright is a great opportunity to study or continue their academic work in the USA. During this time they can live the American dream, experience things they could nowhere else. The great thing is that they can also be a part of the Fulbright programme and come to our little country. Mostly the reason behind their trip to Hungary is that they met a Hungarian in the States and that person made them to feel like that they need to visit this Eastern-Middle-European country. From all of these stories my personal favourite is that when a lucky man had a Hungarian Physics professor at the university. Can you guess who? Yes, Teller Ede! Recently there are several Americans in Hungary related to this scholarship, one of them, Robin Valerie Cathey lives in Pécs for a year now.

Why Hungary? Everything started when I became a friend of a Hungarian man and when he moved back to Hungary I came to see him and I fell in love with the country. This was my very first travel to another continent. I knew at that point that I want to experience other cultures and lands. It was a real starting point for the rest of my life. Now I live here for a while and I absolutely love it. The city is wonderful, it is quite historical, there are so many buildings that are just great to look at. This place is an unbelievable cultural centre of the region. I am also so lucky because I found a flat at Széchenyi Square, when I want to eat something or drink a coffee with my friends I have a bunch of places to choose from. This city amazes me with its colourfulness, it has everything I need and the people, they are just so nice and welcoming.

We already know that she did not regret moving here but is her aim here?  As she said she wants to give further her knowledge.

I love to be with people, I love teaching but not in the sense Hungarians think or at least most Hungarians. When I decided to take part in Fulbright my main idea was to do something helpful that I would like to teach but not at a university. Why? It is easy, just think about it. Those students who could go to a university did not have a lack of good education. Although, now I do teach at PTE at the department of Romology, where my students work really hard and fight against so many obstacles. I hoped that Fulbright will a place where students want to study and they do not have the facility to learn from a native speaker. This is how we found Gandhi.

Gandhi, probably most of the people does not know anything about it, let’s change it. Gandhi is a Gymnasium with an elementary art training and a dormitory all in one. This was the first romany school in Hungary and even in Europe which gives high school diploma.  The institute was founded in the early 90s with the help of Gandhi Foundation. The main goal of the endowment was to give those opportunities for the Romany students which are given for the other members of the community as well. Now that it is clear let’s see what can a native English speaker who also studied applied linguistics during her university years add to this idea.

Since I am here I am not only teaching but I learn a lot, too. I participate on Hungarian language courses which are awesome. In connection with English classes I noticed some basic differences between Hungarian and American education. In Hungary teachers give a well-built curriculum for the class which from the students cannot decide what is important and which part is useless. Moreover, I think that they suffer from the lack of communication or I could say that the communication is too one-sided. In the States communication takes the biggest part of conveying knowledge but the exchange of the knowledge could be a better expression. When our education starts in the primary school we are taught to see everything with a critical eye, be brave enough to express our opinion about something and to be able to give relevant reasons reason which stand for our point of view. Personally I want teach my students to question everything, to be brave to tell their ideas in class. Of course it takes some time to get used to this type of learning when you are not used to it as a student.

Robin believes that every teacher has his or her style but every group needs to be treated differently, the teachers should adapt to the class.

I truly believe that they can profit from the mentality I brought with myself. I already see the development, they do well on my classes but it is more important that they enjoy them and if somebody enjoys doing something then that person will continue doing it, 100%.  It means the world when somebody understands why do we use a tense, a phrase etc. When somebody passes a test with a great result it is a success for me too. Here is an example: “one of my university students passed the ECL with flying colors and it was a wonderful moment for all of us at the department and even the staff at ECL who contributed by waiving the test fee!”.  I really like my students I see that they give their best day by day.

UnivPécs International