euskalkultura.eus

The third meeting of Basque teachers of European Basque clubs took place on the 17 and 18 of October in Berlin, organized by the HABE’s Euskara Munduan Program.  The Berlin Basque club, Gernika Kulturunf., was the host of the meeting that, as in prior editions, was highly attended by teachers.  There were 22 teachers from Basque clubs in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Valladolid, Bordeaux, Paris, Rome, London and Brussels with the German hosts. 

Berlin, Germany.   The third Meeting of Basque Teachers in Europe left both teachers and its organizers very satisfied.  The goal of the meeting was to share experiences, ideas and promote projects in common, which is highly valued by Basque club teachers.

The profile of Basque club teachers is greatly varied, according to sources in Euskara Munduan.  “Some have a high level, because that is their profession.  In other cases, they are just passing through, and the club changes teachers every year, so constantly starting over. But in general they all have a good level of Basque, and the majority have an EGA degree.  This means that these meetings put teachers with a lot of experience with others that don’t have as much, and their support and advice are very valuable.

Like in an euskaltegi

Teaching in Basque is one of the most important activities in a large number of Basque clubs in Europe.  Fore example, during the 2013-14 school year there were a total of 726 students, and 8,427 of teaching hours.

In some cases, the Basque clubs function as an euskaltegi in the Basque Country: they have a large number of students, homogenous groups and can carry out the process of learning Basque as in an euskaltegi. These are clubs like those in Madrid, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Paris…. In several others, there are fewer students and the groups are formed with people with different levels, with all the added difficulty that this brings along with it.

Proposals for the new semester

The meeting included three work blocks.  In the first, each participant shared his/her situation at his/her Basque club.  This was also to share information and served as an exchange of experiences, ideas and energy.  Afterwards, they worked on a theme that was proposed earlier by the group, which was to practice oral conversation at this meeting.

Finally, the last part of the meeting was dedicated to work on proposals and activities for the recently begun semesters.  During this time they worked on topics like literature contests and short films, the International Day of Euskera, Uninterrupted Reading of Classics, the ENE award as well as how to promote teaching Basque online.