Scaffolding and Our Austrian Adventure

This past weekend, myself as well as 7 other students went to Austria (Vienna, Salzburg, and Hallstatt) and saw all 3 cities in 2 days. It was a whirlwind to say the least! Last Thursday we discussed the idea of scaffolding which is a strategy employed by teachers which allows students to do something they wouldn't be able to do on their own, and this idea as it relates to real life was apparent all weekend. What I gathered from our discussion was that scaffolding was important because if I student is given a task they cannot complete without help then they will become overwhelmed, and in my case get stressed out/shut down. When our group went to Salzburg we had almost no idea what we were doing there or even where we were staying. There was no structure to our trip which put it off to a rather rocky start since there was no organization. To me this seemed to be a great example of why scaffolding is important. This same sort of overwhelming feeling was how I felt when we first came to Prague, and we had no idea where to go or what to do. Orientation, the next day, provided us some sort of structure as to how to get around what to to etc. With this structure that was provided to us at orientation I no longer felt overwhelmed by the idea of spending 6 weeks in Prague. I have actually started to feel at home here, and am enjoying every day. Simply being able to walk around and explore a city with such rich history is something I've been trying very hard not to take for granted. I can't wait to see what the rest of our time here brings!!