If you don’t want to read text above, you can just watch this video about my trip to Mallorca. There are pictures from Palma city, IES Bendinat school, working places Illes Centres de Wellness  and Forestal Park Mallorca with beautifull sights and nature, pictures from working time and free time.  You’ll find video HERE.

My name is Nina Mäki and I am teacher of physical education in Jämsä College. I also teach in further qualification of physical education. I have worked in Jämsä college since 2000, almost right after I graduated from Univerity of Jyväskylä.

About this internationality work, I have been in contact with friendship school IES Bendinat from Mallorca since last spring.  First when their coordinator Nela visited Jämsä. We had a lot of talk and visited different places and working places.  Now one of their student, Xavier, came to Jämsä in the end of March to do his two months final practice including to his studies. I have coached and organized his staying and training in Jämsä. He has been working in different places, for example as teacher and assistant in p.e. in different schools like secondary school, high school and Jämsä college. He has also been working in swimming hall and football club. Xavi has promised to write about his thoughts in this blog later.

In the end of April two of our further qualification in physical education students went to Mallorca to do their learning and training there. In Mallorca I would meet girls and  visit environments and working places for future plans also.

On Monday 15th of May after full working day I started my trip by train first to Helsinki and on Tuesday morning trip continued to Mallorca. I was going to visit some working places in Mallorca and become familiar with staff, their sport studies and environments.

I came to Palma de Mallorca airport at 11:00 am on Tuesday. Adrian pick me from airport. There was some problems in using wifi and getting contact to him. The gate I came was showed wrong in the wall, so he waited me in wrong place, but wefound  finally each other.

We started working right away, by visiting my student’s first working place Illes Wellness Center. It was a huge center with full activity and classes from 6:00 am to 22:00 pm. Very special view from sport classes, nice staff, good and modern equipment of different activities.  All places from swimming pool to functional training places were introduced to me by Manu and Jana Orduna. They also explained their system of student training. Their structure is that student learns all kinds of activities by taking part in classes. In the final week student keeps one or more class by her/his self. I think it’s good plan also for most of our students. The language is a little problem for acting as instructor in classes and this  must be thought well in advance if competence test is planned to do in this environment. There was also talk about induction, which is needed more next time. But this was good experience and very all round working place for future to the module of exercise instruction. They didn’t have so much experience with foreign student, I think we were first, but of cource there has been a lot of spanish students doing their practice.

Second working place was a Forestal Park which is an adventure park in forest. There was very good induction for students to place and safety.  They had also many instructions in english. There are good possibilities to get learning of customer service to groups and to individuals, equipements, safety things and exercise instruction. Here in first picture are Sanna, Katja and the head of Forestal Park Begona.

I also visited accommodation of Sanna and Katja. It was very nice student accommodation and if we compare it to dormitory of Jämsä, there is no big differences. Nice view 🙂

One day I visited school IES Bendinat. There is secondary shcool, high school and vocational school in same building. Totally about 1200 students. For sport studies they have lower and higher studies. Lower studies are for nature sport activities like hiking, mountain biking, canoying and so on. Higher studies prepare you to act as personal trainer, or head of gym, instructor and so on. At school there were very good equipements and facilities. For example this amount of mountain bikes would be nice. Adrian (in picture with me) teaches both in lower studies and higher studies.

Classrooms were quite similar to finnish classrooms. There was also one special class room with  possibilities to do all kind of work with hands, place for functional learning.

In the picture below there was going a class in nature sport studies. They learned here for example how to forecast and take account weather when you are hiking in mountains etc.

Above in picture is teacher of sport studies Carlos Ginovart. He told me that in Spain they have managed to get minimum level of education that you can work in sport field. Meaning it’s not possible to work for example as instructor in gym or as personal trainer, if you don’t have education of minimum level. For example if you act as a personal training without education, you can get penalty of 3000 euros. That kind of decision would be super in Finland also. For peoples safety.

There was also going an international volleyball tournament in the school. They would like to have our students there next year! This year there was participants from Spain, Poland, Italy and Germany aged between 14 and 19. I got good contacts with their teachers, some of the were p.e. teachers. Tournament ended with beach volley.

Here (picture above) is the head of sport studies in IES Bendinat Alfredo Zamora, p.e. teacher from Italy (name is missing) and teacher Anna Lovati from Italy. I think this volleyball tournament could be on the job learning for module acting as professional in sports (and arranging a sport event) and there would even be change to make a competence test with this tournament.

One day I had a lunch with principal of IES Bendinat Margarita Gomila in  such an amazing place (pictures below). There was also teacher Migue Angel Romero, my tutors Adrian Vega and Nela Hidalgo. I think in speech there was similar issues going on. Like how to get teacher to work more together. They were thinking should they break walls from working offices.

Can you imagine more beautifull place to take a lunch ?

I participated also with sport group amazing race in Palma. This student group is doing very similar studies to our further qualification of physical education.

There was a lot of different sport places right in city center. In Palma there is 300 000 residents living and the most time of year tourists multiple this amount.

Picture above: personal trainer working in citypark.

Only three days, but so many different places,  people and views. I think I came back a lot of richer because I got a lot of  experiences. I also have many ideas for competence tests and totally better knowledge in planning on-the-job-training periods in Mallorca in future.

Whole my tour I was taken care  very well by Adrian and Nela from IES Bendinat, but also by superkind hostess for my accommodation  Nuria. Last evening we walked and took dinner with Nuria in Valldemossa, which is nice and beautifull old village just 18 kilometers from Palma. Here in picture is a street of Valldemossa.

Adíos Mallorca !!!

-Nina-