St. Franciskus Ungdomsskole

On October 8th and 9th I traveled to Arendal and visited St. Franciskus Ungdomsskole. Arendal is a harbor town of approximately 40,000 people and are known for their summer festivals and boat races. St. Franciskus is a private catholic school going from elementary, or barneskole, to grade 10. Private schools are not as big in Norway as they are in the US, but they do receive partial funding by the government. Many of the students at the school are not there because of religious beliefs but there because they think the school is better than the others in the city or they were kicked out of the others and this is their last opportunity to attend school. There are 720 students at the school, but they will not have more than 20 students in a class. Once a month the students in the school attend chapel, and they being each day with the Our Father. Each year, the 8th grade class travels to Oslo to meet the Bishop and stays at a Monastery. Often those who take French will go a day early and attend a class at the French school, view a French film, and eat at a French restaurant. The 10th grade class, like all 10th grade classes in Catholic schools in Norway, will take a trip to Rome to see the Pope and meet some of the higher officials in the Vatican. The schools will also take a ski trip together in February.

The teachers shared with me their typical schedule. They are to teach 23 class periods of about 45 minutes each in a week. They then can manage the rest of their 17 hours (to make a 40 hour work week) however they choose. They have what is known as bound time, in which Monday-Wednesday they have to be at the school from 8:00-3:30. Thursday and Friday they can work at school or at home. This set up seems more like a college environment, where the teachers do not have to be on campus for their planning time or grading time. Each grade level has 2 teachers who are their “class teachers.” These teachers are in charge of contacting parents, tutoring students who need help, scheduling, and the administrative components of teacher for that class. In exchange for this work, the teacher gets what is similar to what we call at the college level a course release. The teachers I talked to though said that it is easier to teach a class than being the class teacher. If the school can’t manage to arrange the schedule for the teacher to not teach a class, then the teacher is paid extra for the work.

I taught for 2 days at the school. The first day I taught a 2 hour lesson to an 8th grade class using textsets and a 2 hour lesson to a 9th grade class about the electoral college. The second day I taught two 2 hour lessons to two different sets of 10th grade students. I did short stories with both of the 10th grade classes. All my lessons start off the same (though even this intro is getting better). Most teachers do not introduce me and at times sometimes there isn’t even a teacher in the room when I start. So I always start with who I am and what I my job is here in Norway. Then I have a PowerPoint where I have a slide for each of the states I lived in (MO, IL, CA, & SC). I have a picture of the US map and then pictures of that area. I tell them little trivia about the area like that you can feel the St. Louis Arch sway in the wind if you are up top on a windy day, that there are as many Norwegians that live in the US as in Norway, and that it takes 3 or 4 days to drive from California to South Carolina. I then have them each tell me their names and one thing they like about living in their city. I do this to get them talking in an easy and non-threatening way and after they do this successfully, they do usually seem to loosen up a bit with me. I think it is because once they know that they really can be understood by a native English speaker their confidence levels go up dramatically.

I then ask them questions like how many of you have been out of the country? The ones that raise their hands tell me where and usually there is one person in the class who has been to the US. They have usually been to Orlando, New York City, or LA. Though I did have one student tell me she went to Las Vegas as well. I then ask them what they know about Americans and how do they get this information. I ask them to tell me the TV shows they watch, the movies they have seen, and the music. Each class I have worked I have found the students to be most excited about talking about TV. Like the other group, they love Gossip Girls, The Simpsons, South Park, CSI, House, The Family Guy, etc.

The first class went great. The 8th graders enjoyed the class, their English was fantastic and they were a general joy all around. After the introduction, I had them write down everything they could think of about Americans. This group wrote down things like many Americans are fat because they eat to much fast-food [sic], a lot of expencive clotes [sic], big houses, big malls, gangs, they love movies, loud, friendly, and they live in big cities. Some of my favorite ones are:

• They are verry fat or realy then and the super models et cotton and drink walter. [sic]


• My impression of americans is that they eat a lot of food, the government is greedy, and that they have mexicans. they sue each other constantly. They got many poor places (ghetto’s) and they have terrorist (middle east) they are all fat, and they play a lot of PC [sic]


• They talk very fast. (you think this one might have come from their first introduction to yourse truly?)

After their freewrite, I put the students in groups by taping to their backs a word that was related to the US (i.e., names of states, current politicians, food, holidays, money, etc.). They had to walk around and ask in English yes/no questions to try to figure out what the word was on their back. Once everyone had figured out their word, they then had to group themselves on like words. The students had a great time doing this and was a fun way to get them talking to each other and me in English.

Once they were in their groups, I passed out textsets of pictures books based on topics (similar to what I did in Vergårshei) and had the students create graffiti based on what they learned from the pictures books. As it has been a long time since I have taught kids and this didn’t go as well as I would have liked in Vergårshei, I made those adjustments that when you look back at it you just forget when you teach college students who follow your directions for the most part. For example, this time I didn’t pass out the markers until I gave them 10 minutes to browse the books… wow, what a difference! I am almost embarrassed about the fact that it took me a couple lessons to get back into the swing of things. However, the types of engagements I have been doing with the students seem to be different than what a lot of the teachers usually do in class. So when I walk in with markers and group work, it’s like mass chaos. However, with that being said, it didn’t take me long to go back to memories of working with 13 year olds and structuring my directions in a way that promoted success (thank God I can still do it… otherwise it would have been a LONG year). The groups did an excellent job and the students thought it was fun to do graffiti.

I had them present their work to the class at the end of the lesson. I still get a chuckle at how much Norwegian swear. For example, one student who was sharing his graffiti explained that one of the pictures was a “fucked up car.” I took advantage of that teachable moment to explain how in the US that phrase would probably be received with a little shock as it is not typical for students to use that type of language in a classroom presentation (or in the classroom at all).

The second class, the 9th graders, I had 2 hours on the electoral college. I am fairly sure that US middle school students would not be interested in a 2 hour lecture on the electoral college, so I had to be a bit creative. After the introductions, I used a simulation to get the students interested. Each student was given a slip of paper that told them what state they were in. They grouped up based on their state. They then picked an elector, someone they trusted to be honest and do the right thing. They returned to their desks, I then played a Coke commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1NnyE6DDnQ) and a Pepsi commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Ps1fISESA), gave them a taste test of both drinks, and shared with them the excerpt from Blink by Malcolm Gladwell about how the taste test is skewed. They then had to vote for their favorite. They returned to their state and submitted their votes to the elector, who then tallied the votes and submitted to me which soda the state chose. It actually worked perfectly. Three states for Pepsi and three states for Coke. This meant I could explain what happens in a Presidential election occurs and there is a tie. To make the simulation even better, the popular vote actually went to Coke, but since it was a tie, Coke didn’t necessarily win. It worked perfectly. The students and teachers loved the simulation.

I then broke the students up and gave each group a one page summary of the electoral college. They had to read and make sure everyone understood. I then had them jigsaw and reciprocal teach it. Once each group had discussed the handouts, the students had to create a symbol that they think best represented the electoral college. This was difficult for them, the primary reason is that the one page handouts were written at too high a level (so if I do this again, I am finding easier reading for this part of the lesson), and then developing a visual representation is something they have never done before. So it was a bit of a struggle. It was interesting that in assessing their understanding during the presentations, one of the teachers said, “it seems the groups either did a good picture or they explained it well.” Unfortunately none of the groups did both well. So in an effort to be completely honest, I thought I would share the best symbol the students created and then I will show you some of the others because they are interesting in the fact that you can see how 9th grade students perceive the 2008 US Presidential elections. I let you determine which one most represents the Electoral College and which ones are just editorializing about US politics:













The second day, I worked with 2 10th grade classes. They warned me before going in that these classes were a bit rough. One class was chatty with several students who have ADD and the other had some mean students who were in trouble with the law and were on their last alternative because they have been kicked out of the public schools (this group of students had piercings, tattoos, and pink hair; came in late; and at one point literally turned on her IPOD so loud I could hear it in the front of the room). With this group after the introductions, I did a variety of short stories with them. They were broken into groups and each group was given a different short story. They did a pair share with the story (they could choose to read it together or individually but had to stop in different places to talk with their partner). I then had the small groups jigsaw and share their stories with each other, develop a thesis statement about what these stories suggest about teenagers in the US, and create a symbol. I chose a variety of stories including one about a Mexican American boy in California, a boy struggling with his sexual identity, a Native American boy in a Northern rural town, a boy going through his bar mitzvah, a teen on death row, etc. I didn’t realize until I got there that I had all boy characters! I also didn’t realize that some of the stories were just too long for the students. Eight to nine pages seemed to be ideal; the longer stories the students lost interest quick. Even though I picked stories that 7th graders in the US could probably read independently, having to translate took a bit more time and the students had to work harder at the reading. Needless to say I sent a frantic message to Julie Neihaus back at USC to help me find shorter short stories (and ones with girls in them) to use in the future. Regardless, the students work hard and I was impressed with some of the ideas they came up with. The best example came from a group of boys. But the other groups came up with decent responses as well. In the final assessment, my goal was to show that the US doesn’t just have one type of culture. It was interesting to note, however, that one group of 10th graders took this one step further and began critiquing the US and pointed out that in each of the stories, the US teens were judging others and often looking down on those who were different.

My time in Arendal was great…even though I definitely had to work hard at classroom management. As I was leaving one of the teachers told me that the teachers were talking about me in the teacher’s lounge. They said that it was obvious I had taught a long time because I really knew how to keep the students on task and engaged. The teachers also asked if I could come back to do a workshop for them to share more of the pedagogy I did with the students. That was probably one of the best compliments I could have ever received from teachers.