For many years UWC Red Cross Nordic has cooperated with the University of Leiden. This is a mutual beneficial cooperation which allows students at Leiden University to get hands-on experience working as teachers. For RCN it’s a great opportunity for us to welcome and include fresh new ideas into the classrooms and the interns are always very popular amongst the students.

After 2 year with no physical visits due to the pandemic it was a pleasure to finally welcome back 2 interns from the University of Leiden, Blanca and Aedan. During April and May they worked with teachers, held classes, participated in extra-academic activities and helped out with the first year exams. Read their thoughts about their stay with us:

Blanca Casanovas Gordillo

I am Dutch/Spanish, living in the Netherlands, and currently finishing my Master of Education at Leiden University. Before this, I finished my Master of Translation and have been translating and teaching Spanish to adults at the Dutch Health Organisation called GGD. During holidays, I love to travel with my family in Spain, but have also explored many different countries like the Czech Republic, Marrocco, or South Korea, to name a few. During my month at RCN I have taught Spanish B and Spanish ab initio. In the Netherlands, I also teach at an international school, so I was already familiar with the IB system when I started teaching here, though I had never taught ab initio level before. It has been very fun to work together with the students that started at beginner level and quickly improved their Spanish through cooperation and motivation.
On my last Monday, I started the ab initio lesson with the introduction that it would be our last class together, and one of the tougher boys in the back – who is usually goofing with his friends and pretending to not be interested – was the first one to let out a sad ‘oh no really?’, to his own surprise, after which the rest of the class also reacted that they had enjoyed our classes together and would’ve loved for me to stay.
Everyone has been very welcoming. I had never been on a campus before where everyone lived in the same ‘village’ and had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, so did not know what to expect of the teacher-student relationship and general interaction. As an intern, I think I was lucky to be kind of in between, because I was able to join the teachers in the staff room, but also have dinner with the students on the weekend and talk about their life on and off campus and plans for the future.

Aedan Lamers

 I am in the second year of my Master of Biology and Education at Leiden University. Before this, I completed my bachelor’s across two small universities in The Netherlands and Canada that each felt a little similar to UWC RCN in their own way. My background is in evolutionary ecology and I’m interested to keep learning about the two-way relationship between humans and nature, as well creating accessible ways of communicating science. I taught Biology and ESS, as well as observing various other classes and invigilating first year exams. I learned a lot about the IB system, for example by experiencing a Theory of Knowledge class for the first time! Blanca and I also enjoyed tagging along with the Outdoor Discovery EAC almost every week.
Spending time here reminded me how important it is, as a teacher, to cultivate a connection with your students. I was impressed with how well the teachers I observed knew their students and how this helped them to support their students and make the subject content relatable. By the end of my time, I was also remembering details about my students’ interests and incorporating them into my lessons. Furthermore, joining Outdoor Discovery and talking to colleagues about the local environment inspired me to plan more lessons outside in nature in the future. You never know exactly what you are going to find outside, which makes for fun and unexpected learning opportunities.   I really enjoyed my time here and am grateful for all the new experiences, impressions and insights that I will take with me. I also agree with Blanca that the community was very welcoming. There was always someone from the students or staff eager to chat and answer all of our questions. I’d like to thank everyone who shared their company, their stores, their perspectives and their curiosity!

Congratulations to our Class 2022!

Our Class of 2022 graduated on the 20th May. It was a great pleasure to welcome so many families, host families from our local community and other guests at the ceremony after two years without guests. The evening before the ceremony we welcomed the guests with a café and a cultural show, all prepared and coordinated by the first year students. The guests also got to meet with our leadership during an informal but hopefully informative session on how life has developed at RCN the last 2 years.

“Being a student at UWC RCN is always a challenging experience, but never more so than in the last two years. This year our students lived through an incredible amount of rain, a huge amount of academic work, a phenomenal amount of growth in our residential and extra-academic programme, and they have done so with integrity, resilience and a huge amount of joy. They have certainly brought joy to all of those who are lucky enough to work with them. Congratulations UWC Red Cross Nordic 2022!” Natasha Lambert, Director of Academics

Photos by RCN Media Crew

“Two years of happiness, laughter, tears, study nights, fjord jumps and so much more… it all is slowly wrapping up and parents are starting to appear in every corner, people with graduation hats (that’s the Scandinavian students), messy rooms and conversations of future meet up plans are heard everywhere. It feels like a big rock has fallen off of many people’s shoulders and now for the last few days we have a truly IB-free and UWC-full time. These past two years for many have been full of growth where mountains were climbed (sometimes, literally). These years were full of dances, fun, late night conversations and spontaneity. But also tears, rainy days, hard patches and perhaps even confusion. They have built a community that is now slowly spreading all throughout the world.” Liva Asmane, RCN ’22

For the last 2 years due to the pandemic we have livestreamed the graduation ceremony. We know that many parents are unable to travel the long way to Norway so we have decided to continue live streaming all graduation ceremonies. This way our whole community can connect with the occasion.

See the Graduation video of the Class 2022: