Gosen Skole

Gosen Skole is located in Stavanger, Norway. Stavanger is the 4th largest city in Norway (around 150,000 people). Stavanger is tied closely to the off shore oil industry and thus it is very international.

Gosen Skole is a very progressive and international school. Their students were some of the best in terms of English as well as their grasp of understanding of US culture. Many of their students study abroad during their time in ungdomsskole and many have travelled abroad. The picture above of the school is a little deceiving in that the school is undergoing construction, so the classes are currently held in these “tent” buildings.

Each year, Gosen Skole puts on a play that is written specifically for that year’s students. It includes music, dancing, etc. and is performed it in front of 8,000 people. It has become a Stavanger tradition. They gave me a DVD of last year’s school musical and it was amazing.

The curriculum at the school is very much like what I have seen in some of the best US middle schools. They are integrative and higher level/critical thinking. They have created these units that have forms similar to the one below

This are just two pages of the unit plan, but it goes on. These are placed on their school website and give to students and parents. It includes how they will be assessed and art work that relates to the unit. The teachers I talked with were using much of the “best practice” pedagogy like reading workshop. One teacher told me he used the book The boy in the Stripe Pajamas with his English class and I even saw one students reading one of the Twilight series books in English.
I visited the 10th grade students at Gosen and did a lesson on short stories. This was on November 5th, so I was incredibly tired. I was working on two hours of sleep since I had attended an election party the night before that did not get over until the election was called at 4:00 am Norwegian time and still had to fly to Stavanger that day. They of course were very excited about the election results and when I mentioned it at the beginning of my lesson, each class broke out in spontaneous and rather wild applause and whistling, once class even gave a standing ovation. It is amazing how much the perception of the US has changed almost over night. Even one of the teachers, made the comment that it seems like the Norwegians are warming up again to the US and that it is starting to be “okay to like the US again.”

I had to modify the short story lesson because the original short stories I picked were too long. So after the last time I did this particular lesson, I contacted Julie Niehaus at USC and she helped me get shorter short stories. The lesson this time consisted of my normal introduction and their introduction where they told me their names and one thing I should do while I am in Stavanger. This is always interesting because I get everything from restaurant suggestions to walks, sites to coffee shops. For me, this is fun because I get to see what the students think is important and interesting about their town and they get to be experts and share what they are most proud of. Of course I always have a few kids who tell me there is nothing to see and I should just sleep in and a few girls who tell me to go shopping.

I then ask the students what they know about the US. This group is the first group of students who didn’t start out with, “fat.” They instead offered quite interesting and very accurate comments about the US including information about the Statue of Liberty, the Civil War, and pop culture. One of my favorite comments came from a young man who said, “US is the country that everyone thinks they know a lot about. It’s the country that everyone talks about.”

After I get them talking to me about what they know about the US and who has traveled to the US, I do a modified version of Kylene Beers’ tea party. I give the students slips of paper that have one sentence on it. The slips contain a sentence from one of the six short stories. The students then need to walk around the class and see if they can find three other people that have sentences that would fit into the same story. This is how I put them in groups, get them moving around, and get them thinking about what the story might be about prior to reading it. Once they think they are in the right groups, I give them the correct groups on the PowerPoint. Each class at this school almost always were in the right groups which goes to show you how strong they were in both English and critical thinking.

Once in their groups they had to put their slips of paper in the order they thought would occur in the story and then began reading their story. I had marked several places in each short story for the students to stop and “say something.” At the end of the lesson the students shared a brief summary of their short story and gave a one sentence (like a thesis statement) about a conclusion they were able to draw about US culture from their short story.

Each group in each class came up with excellent conclusions. However, I began to see our YA literature in a new light. In the short stories I used earlier this year, the students pointed out how much bullying and intolerance seemed to exist in the US. In these short stories, this group of students pointed out that there was once again a lot of bulling, aggression, and violence which they felt was an accurate depiction of US culture. This made me really think about not only what our literature is saying about our culture, but it also highlighted how our US foreign policy has paralleled this. I started to realize that bulling, intolerance, aggression, violence, etc. is truly part of our culture. And unless I start using Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul I am not sure I can find YA literature (at least in short stories) that does not have that type message. I am now on the lookout for this so if anyone has some suggestions, I would appreciate it!