Dutch treat at Nashoba Tech

WESTFORD — When Isabelle van Eijk had the chance to travel from her native Netherlands to a school in Massachusetts, she jumped at it.

Van Eijk, who teaches veterinary science, wanted to witness firsthand the differences between teaching in Holland and teaching in the United States. What she found is that despite those differences, the basics are the same: Most teachers are dedicated to instructing students, and most students are dedicated to learning.

Her journey across the pond, which came thanks to a program of the Institute for Training & Development, brought her to Nashoba Valley Technical High School because it’s one of the few high schools in Massachusetts that has a Veterinary Assisting program.

“I was very happy to find a school similar to mine. It’s been a great experience,” said van Eijk, who spent a week living with a family in Westford while visiting Nashoba Tech. “All teachers in Holland can apply. They picked 20, and I was very lucky to be chosen.”

The purpose of the ITD program, van Eijk said, is “to exchange ideas and bring those ideas home.”

“I thought it was an awesome idea to have Isabelle spend a week here,” Nashoba Tech Veterinary Assisting instructor Kate Hawkins said. “I’m hoping I can get a chance to visit her in Holland.”

It did take van Eijk a day or two to get acclimated to the ways of the West.

For instance, in the high school where she teaches, there is only vocational education, no academic classes. Students attend elementary school from age 4 to 12. At that point, they take a test to determine how many years they will spend in high school. Some will go for four years, then go straight into a vocational school; others will go for five years, then attend the University of Applied Sciences; still others will go for six years, then be able to transfer to any university.

Once students enter vocational education, all they learn is the specialty they’ve chosen.

“Students here have all kinds of courses — history and science,” van Eijk said. “In Holland, they only focus on technical education. I took history only until I was 14 or 15. You have to be quite sure at a young age what you want to do.”

She got a chance to visit other technical programs as well as academic classrooms at Nashoba Tech and envied the fact that students here have so many opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities.

“Here, they’re busy with sports and instruments. It makes me feel lazy about our students — and about myself,” she said. “I find the students here are quite serious. When teachers are teaching, it’s mostly quiet. I think maybe it’s respect for the teachers?”

Another major difference? “It’s way less expensive,” van Eijk said, adding that it costs about $2,500 a year to attend college in the Netherlands.

Van Eijk started teaching in 2008 and switched to vocational education three years ago. Before coming to Nashoba Tech, she spent a week in Amherst, attending lectures and acclimating to the new culture with her 19 colleagues from the Netherlands.

Although she would have liked to have stayed longer, she was prepared to return to her country with new ideas about how to teach veterinary science.

“I could stay a whole year to learn everything,” she said. “I want to say a great thank-you to the school and all the teachers who let me visit their classes. I learned way more than I expected to learn.”