My name is Meghan Button and I am a third-year Bachelor of Education (Primary/Elementary) student who completed my internship in Harlow during the Fall 2023 Semester.
Leaving home for the first time
I have lived with my family for all 22 years of my life. Not only was I leaving home for the first time which was scary in itself, but I was leaving home to live on a completely different continent. As scary as it was, I really pushed myself to do it because I knew I had to take this opportunity.
Myself and six other education students (now my best friends) stayed in the Cabot House at the Memorial University Harlow Campus. We had our own rooms and shared a kitchen and living room area. It quickly became our home. We would come home from school and do our work together, and every night we would grab a mug and have tea time in the living room. It was even more of a comfort to use a Newfoundland mug that former students had left behind.
Amazing staff
We were greeted by the most amazing staff on campus to help us settle in. We were gifted welcome packs with loads of information on transportation, food, and even health care if we needed it.
In the dining hall, Nick and Ginette made sure we were always taken care of when it came to supper, dessert, fruit and anything else we might have needed. Some of us had our birthdays while staying at Harlow campus, and I in particular have never had a birthday away from home. Ginette made sure I had a fabulous birthday by making me a cake and providing a party in the dining hall with the rest of the students.
School life
I came to the Harlow Campus to complete my 65-day teaching internship. I was lucky enough to be placed in Hare Street Primary School in a Year 2 Classroom. I was placed with the most amazing mentor teacher, class and fabulous staff all around. My head teacher knew how to make us feel at home, as every morning we would come in and he would say “Whaddya at bys!” It felt just like we were in Newfoundland!
I could not have imagined my internship going any better. Seeing a different school system has allowed me to gain so much knowledge and broaden my experiences outside of what I have seen in Newfoundland schools. I feel so prepared to use knowledge from both places to develop my future classroom.
Travel
Although we were in school Monday-Friday, we really made the most out of our weekends by doing as much travelling as we could. We spent many days in London, which was only an hour from the Harlow Campus!
Besides the United Kingdom, I travelled to 8 other countries while studying in Harlow. With Stansted airport just a 20-minute drive away, the travel opportunities were endless. It is crazy how much you can pack into one weekend! One of our favorite group trips was our most recent one, once we finished school, in Switzerland. We flew into Zurich and took the train to Zermatt. We stayed basically in the mountains and went over 12,000 feet up the Matterhorn Mountain. It really didn’t feel like real life, that we were doing something like this! These dreams are possible when studying at the Harlow Campus.
Summary
There are no words to summarize how amazing these four months were. It was the absolute best experience of my life, and I would recommend it to anyone.
If you are on the fence about going, GO!
I promise you, you will not regret it. It may be scary at first, but these memories will last for the rest of your life. We said on our first trip “We are so lucky’ and it is something that we said on every single trip that we went on. It was the only thing we could say to sum up how grateful and lucky we are to have had this experience.
