On July 23rd, 2023, a group of high school students from Tokaj, Hungary stepped off a bus in Rzeszów. They had two weeks, a focus on pedagogy, and a question none of them could fully answer yet: what does working with people actually look like outside a classroom?
This was not a school trip. The students came through the Erasmus+ programme to gain hands-on experience in a new country, with an unfamiliar language and unfamiliar surroundings. That disorientation was the first lesson, and no textbook covers it.
The programme centred on different approaches to working with children and young people. One of the key visits took them to the TUTU Centre for Psychophysical Development, an organisation supporting people affected by the war as well as the broader local community in the Podkarpackie region. Watching the staff work and talking with them up close showed the students what it means to support others with real attention and care, not just professional procedure.
They also visited a Montessori school in Rzeszów, where the philosophy running the place – built on independence, trust and the natural curiosity of children – stood in sharp contrast to the systems most of them had grown up inside. Conversations with teachers there made one thing clear: there are many roads to the same destination, helping young people grow.
Between visits, workshops run by INPRO volunteers gave participants room to talk, practise communication and work together as an international group. It became obvious quickly that pedagogy isn't primarily about educational theory. It's about relationships, empathy and the capacity to actually listen.
There was time for the city too. Rzeszów offered museums, historic sites, local events and encounters with people from different cultures – all of it feeding into a fuller picture of life in the place where they spent those two weeks.
Toward the end of the programme, one question kept surfacing in conversations: what is the most important quality of a good teacher? The answers varied. Knowledge came up, patience, creativity. But one idea returned more than any other – that in pedagogy, what matters most is simply being present with another person. Listening. Staying engaged. Showing that you care.
Two weeks in Rzeszów didn't answer every question about teaching. But they gave a group of future educators something more useful than answers – a clearer sense of what the work actually feels like.
The project was funded by the Erasmus+ Programme.
