Summary Theme 1 'School'

School: through the eyes of our students:

The St. Odulphuslyceum in Tilburg  has about 1400 students and 150 teachers. Our school (and the building) is quite old, it exists for 113 years in september 2012! Your school career goes from the 1^st grade (you’re about 12 years old when you enter) till the 5^th or 6^th  grade (depends on which route you follow, and you’re about 18 when you graduate).

                                                                The schoolyard

Lessons start at 8.30 a.m. each day, and the last lessons end at 4.50 p.m.  But that doesn’t mean that everybody has lessons  from 8.30 till late in the afternoon  every day. It depends on your schedule and the subjects you have. From the 4th grade on you get to make a selection of subjects which suits you best. For instance: some people are better at subjects like maths and chemistry and some are more language-orientated. Your future career-plans (in case you have those already) are also important for the kind of subjects you choose.

Here’s an example of a timetable of one of our 4th grade students :

A lesson lasts 50 minutes and after the first two lessons in the morning there is a short break of 20 minutes. Then  after two more lessons the 1st, 2nd, and 3d graders have their 30 minutes lunch-break. The older students have their lunch break later, after the 5th lesson. Therefore the school is not too crowded during lunch break. The students involved in the project mostly have a lot of homework, so they say. At least about two hours a day.

Things our students like about our school are: the cosy environment, nice teachers (in general), two gym halls and a gym field outside and also a lot of activities besides school lessons, like the trips abroad in the fourth grade.

Things our students like less about our school are: the timetables and the school building (old, quite beautiful, though too small)

School: through the eyes of our students parents:

The parents think school nowadays is less  about reproducing knowledge and discipline compared to their own schooldays. In some ways that’s a negative thing, in some ways it can also be explained positively (who need to reproduce knowledge when it has become so easy to look things up?). Nowadays there is more interaction and more freedom at school. So students learn how to communicate and to stand up for themselves. Also a big difference between then and now is the computer.  Communication, learning, writing, everything is nowadays connected to the use of computers.