Heidal Skule

This 1st-10th grade school has 175 students and is situated in the town of Heidal which has a population of 1,500. It is located in the mountains and is about 30 km outside of Otta (which is the closest large town, but that is a relative word as there are only 3,500 people in Otta). The town might just happen to be the most beautiful place I have seen thus far in Norway. It was absolutely gorgeous nestled in the mountains with the fresh snowfall, the rushing river, and the smoke coming out of the tiny little houses (many with sod on their roofs). Absolutely breathtaking.


The school was recently remodeled and the inside was gorgeous. Each classroom had a smartboard and throughout the school hung beautiful pieces of original artwork from local people and antique school pieces. The teachers were part of the design team and were able to design much of the school structure.


The picture to the left is the common area for the students and the photo above is the teacher's lounge.

I presented in the auditorium on October 28, to two classes (9th and 10th graders) combined. Interestingly, all my students were in their socks as they took their shoes off outside of the auditorium. I had 37 students and about 4-5 teachers in attendance including the headmaster of the school. Of those 37, four of the students had some type of severe disability. I was supposed to teach about the US election for two 45-minute class periods.

I had low expectations for this lesson prior to teaching it for several reasons. First 90 minutes on the presidential election would not be the most exciting thing for Norwegian teenagers. Second, the idea of combining two classes never works well as the students are even more nervous about talking in English when they are mixed with a different class especially when it is a different grade. But then when I woke up in the morning and saw the dusting of snow and realized it was still snowing, I had another sinking feeling. It is always hard to teach on the first snowfall of the season. So you can imagine, the lesson was not my best.

However, I did get some funny comments and some interesting work. For example, when I had the students do the agree/disagree four corners activity. I had a group of boys stand under the “Strongly agree” sign for the statement: I believe that assault weapons should be banned. When I asked them why they felt that way their response was, “Because Americans are dangerous with weapons.” This, of course, made everyone laugh. This first activity of four corners was more difficult to do with 37 students and none of them wanting to talk in front of the other 36 students. Plus not as many students had a chance to talk. They were all moving around and at least thinking about the issues (though I am pretty certain several just went where their friends went).

After the break in which the kids went out and played in the snow (thus the reason they took off their shoes prior to entering the auditorium), we went onto the next part of the presentation. They were broken into groups and were supposed to deconstruct their given media (i.e. bumper stickers, political cartoons, TV clips, etc.) and then create a piece of media similar to what they looked at (i.e., if group A looked at bumper stickers, then they were to create a bumper sticker) to share with the rest of the class. Their media was supposed to reflect how they think Norwegians view the US presidential elections. To be quite honest, this didn’t go so well. They struggled with the deconstruction and they struggled with making the media. Of the 5 groups 3 were really strong:

Bumper Sticker

Poltical Cartoon

Magazine Cover (this one is my favorite!)

And another group who did an excellent job on the deconstruction of the social networking sites, but their visual wasn’t as creative. I did find their drawing of Obama interesting as they remembered to give him ears:

I had one group who did it at all. They were to create a skit of a TV interview with one or both the candidates. One girl came up to me after class and apologized for not doing it. She was the leader and one of the strongest of the whole group in English, but she could not get the others to talk in English in front of everyone else. This was interesting to me, because US students love an opportunity to be a class clown and do these type of performances. However, Norwegian students are a bit more shy and they often do not like to bring attention to themselves.

This school, though small and rural, was very progressive in terms of how it dealt with its students who struggle with learning challenges, bringing in outside resources (like myself, they had a 3 year relationship with a school in Ireland where the students even went to Ireland for a trip, and outdoor activities). In each season the school takes the students to do some sort of out door activity. One of these activities is for the 9th grade. Each year in March, the 9th grade students go for a week into the mountains. They take snow mobiles (not like ours, they look more like snow tanks) to get there while some of the teachers ski along behind. They dig snow holes, build igloos, cross country ski, and hike to the top of the 2nd largest mountain in Norway. There is no cell phone reception up in this area. I asked if there were ever any problems and I was told, “Ja… with the weather.” The week before the trip, the teacher give the students in-depth instruction on “mountain behavior.” I assumed that meant things like, “listening when an adult is talking and not wandering off.” Good thing I asked, because they meant things like dealing with avalanches, warding off frost-bite, etc. Last year, as they students were digging their snow holes, there was an avalanche. The teacher in charge told me, “That was a bit scary” and I thought that is a bit of an understatement. They held an informational meeting with the parents upon arrival back to the school and the parents “were okay with it.” Obviously they were not American parents! The school headmaster invited me to go along this year and I am going to try everything I can to do so. It sounds like such a wonderful experience and a fun way to interact with the students. I will just have to work on my Norwegian from now until March so that it will be easier for me to understand what is going on. I will also need to work on my tele-ing abilities so that I can ski down from the mountain.