Vinstra Ungdomsskole

Vinstra Ungdomsskole is located in the town of Vinstra, Norway. I visited them on October 27th and did four lessons for students and then an after school session with the teachers. Vinstra is a town of approximately 3,000 and when I got in on Sunday night around 10 pm the entire town was shut down including my motel. The only thing open was the one pub in town and there were maybe seven people in there. Luckily the bartender spoke some English and pointed me in the direction of the motel. Once I arrived the place was closed and locked, but there was a note on the door, some of which I could actually translate and quite a bit I couldn’t because it was written in what they call New Norwegian. Eventually I figured out that I could pick any of the rooms in back that had a key in the door. So the trip to Vinstra started out a bit stressful.

However, the next morning I was picked up by the host teacher, Knut, who is married to an American from Minnesota. They made sure that I was well-taken care of the rest of my stay driving me out to the ski resort, making me tacos for dinner at their house, and then driving me to Otta.

The Vinstra Ungdomsskole has around 375 students from grades 8-10. Though it is a small town, it is very liberal. For example, I was told that the nurse at the school is allowed to give out contraception including birth control pills to students. The school is also one of only two schools in Norway who have begun a new program that integrates English into their content classes. The teachers visited a school in Germany that is currently using this pedagogy. My first lesson that I taught was to an 8th grade social studies/English class. I was to do a simulation on the American War of Independence (a.k.a. the Revolutionary War) and it turned out really well. I did taxation without representation and gave out Non-stops (their version on M&M’s) and then taxed them. I gave the candy I collected as a tax to one of the students who I named the king (and yes I purposely chose the kid who was acting silly when I came in because I knew he would really act his part!). We didn’t have time to discuss the current day examples of this, but the lesson was fun and they were able to get the big idea.

I then did three lessons on the US election. I am starting to feel a little rote as I have done this lesson so many times. I have simplified it a bit. One way was to get rid of the free-writes as the students don’t get the idea of this and when I come in for just one class it isn’t something I can work with them to understand how to do it. Many of the comments and reactions are the same as I have received in other schools. But for entertainment purposes I thought I would share some of the funnier comments the students said during these lessons.

The first comment came when I was doing the agree/disagree four corners activity. The statement the students were to share their opinion on was Same sex marriages should be legal. Like in all the classes, the students were fairly evenly divided among the four corners. However, this time I had one boy who stood in the middle between agree and disagree. When I asked him why he chose to stand where he did, he responded, “Well, I don’t like the idea of two guys getting married, but two girls would be okay.” This of course caused all of us to laugh.

I also had the kid in the white hoody above come talk to me after class. He started the conversation, “Have you ever been on a goat farm?” I told him that my father had goats, but I have never been on a real goat farm. He told me all about the farm that he lives on, how they milk the goats, and his motocross injuries. It was so sweet. He truly loved farming. He told me as he left that his dream was to go to America and buy a farm. It broke my heart, because I am not sure that dream will ever come true for him. Though I told him that with the recent economic downturn he might be able to find a farm fairly cheap soon in the US.

I also had the kid in the gray v-neck sweater above, ask me if I ate Kentucky Fried Chicken. I said, yes occasionally but that I didn’t eat that much fast food in the US. He told me that was good, because he recently read an email sent to him by the PTA and he told me that “Basically Kentucky Fried Chicken are assholes.” I wonder when I will be used to the amount of swearing from the Norwegian students.

After school I presented to 10 English teachers. Knut asked me to talk about inquiry stations, webquests, and the elections. So I did a brief description of what I do with the Norwegian students and had the engagements there for the teachers to try. It was interesting for two reasons. The first was a teacher who said that all the ideas were okay but they seemed to take a lot of time. Knut told me this was typical of Norwegian teachers. That if something takes time or money, they choose not to do it. The other intersting part of this after school workshop was a teacher who commented about a US student letter. I brought with me several 8th grade students' writing from the rural south in which they were to explain what it was like to live in the US. One of the students repeated several times about how blessed he was to live in America. The teacher was surprised at this and said that "no Norwegian student would ever say that he was blessed to live in Norway." She seemed almost offended by the comment the US student made. I didn't probe this further, but wished I had after I thought about it further. It is a question I may need to ask Knut via email.