Essay Contest

The International Education Week
Vojin Mitic

The International Education Week is behind us and if I have to describe my participation and effort in doing presentations about Serbia and Serbian culture in one word, it would be: Successful!

The idea of making this kind of event when people from different parts of the world can present their own cultures and talk about their countries and experiences is something so important and unique and I'm more than honored to have an opportunity to present my own country. It is not just about learning about new cultures. It is more about learning how to respect diversities and differences between people and how to appreciate things you have in your own life. The IEW is important because it makes you think how to present your country and some true values in the best way.

For me, personally, IEW was an event that made me find my own way to try to present the whole idea of the importance of having an opportunity to meet new culture and new people in the way I'm doing that right now, by being here as an exchange student and to try to take my classmates to a one-class-period long exchange trip to Serbia, and show them my country and culture.

I gave my presentation in all classes I attend, and many teachers, after seeing the presentation were so interested and asked me if I can do that in their other periods so as the result of that I had to make a schedule for the whole week because almost every teacher was highly interested to show the presentation to the other classes. That gave me an opportunity to talk to students I haven't met before and that was another task for me, to make a good presentation with public that may not know me or may not heard anything about Serbia before. And everything went just great!

I've also done presentations in my host family home, during the Friday's pizza night with neighbors. They were also very interested so I was answering on their question for more than hour after the presentation. I also contacted some organizations and offices in my community, volunteering centers, and community service offices (Hearthstone Village Senior Living Community, McHenry Centegra Hospital, Village City Hall, McHenry Police Department, Community and Neighborhood services, Alden Terrace of McHenry, "Run your own life"...). They offered me to organize workshops and presentations in some more public environments where everyone will be able to come and learn something new about my topic. I expect to meet people from organizations in McHenry county in order to organize everything and have some more presentations and workshops. Many of them have already answered on my e-mails and meetings are already dated. I hope I'll find people who are willing to cooperate and give me an opportunity to do more for International Education Week project. It looks very promising right now to me. I've also contacted elementary and middle schools in McHenry via e-mail for the same reason, knowing that those kind of workshops and presentations can be important for kids at that age. I'm also planning to do presentations during the after school activities like Chess club, Key club, Warrior Nation club... I've already talked about that with teachers that are in charge of those activities and they will be more than happy to let me finish my project.   Next week I'll be giving the interview for the local newspapers in order to invite people to learn something new, to talk about the whole project, my exchange experience and try to explain the whole idea and importance of the intercultural spirit and diversities.  

The base of my presentation was a power point presentation which was 1 hour long and that included a lot of basic things about Serbia, some important geographic and history facts and some important facts about my country as a part of Europe, about government and economy of Serbia. My original 1 hour presentation had to be abridged and adjusted to my class period duration, which was done without missing any of important facts and points of my presentation. I tried to present some values that are very important to people in my country by giving examples from the past and making the "boring" history part of my presentation more interesting. I showed a lot of slide photos about Serbia and my hometown, followed by explanations of everything students were able to see on the screen. In the end, I tried to concentrate on my personal thoughts about Serbia and I tried to explain everything in the way of a regular teenager in order to make it more clear for them to understand everything. Probably the best part of the presentation were questions in the end. Students were able to ask me whatever they wanted to know, and the most of their question were about my personal experience of being an exchange student and life of Serbian teenagers in their own environment. I answered on every question clearly and honestly.

Students' and teachers' reactions after the presentation were something that made me sure that I did a good job in presenting my topic because I noticed that they are now even more interested to find out more about me and people in Serbia. They always ask me questions about some parts of presentation which shows that they are truly interested in learning new things. Their reactions after seeing the video clips and photo slides of my hometown and Serbia in general were very nice and a lot of them said some very nice things about everything which made me satisfied with all my work and the way I prepared this project.

Although I had spent a lot of time preparing for this week and working on my presentations it was more than worth of it because in the end all that counts is how much effort you've put into something because that is what makes real quality. The importance of the International Education Week made me work hard in order to make a good presentation and I'm more than happy with the result and the reactions caused by the whole project.

Click here to see the video.