Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Risenga Ungdomsskole

Risenga Ungdomsskole is located 30 minutes outside of Oslo in a town called Asker. Asker is most known for its wide range of sports most notably the Norwegian women’s soccer team (which is apparently very good) and the practice center for the Norwegian ice hockey team.

I visited Risenga on the 11th of November. It was an old school and almost everyone I met made some comment about how unattractive the school was. One person actually said they were waiting for the school to burn down so they could have a new one. Though the school was not beautiful, it certain didn’t look like old schools in the US. It was clean, freshly painted, and had new linoleum.

The teachers requested my US election lesson, and I thought that I should do something different since the election had already taken place. So I did the electoral college simulation and added information at the end about which candidate (Obama/McCain) won which states. The lesson went okay, but honestly not my best. I don’t know if it was because I was exhausted from all the traveling, or if it was the group. The lesson might have been too juvenile for them, though they were very engaged and interested. The problem with the simulation is that it works great when the popular vote is different from the electoral vote, because then the students get worked up about it. However when the popular and the electoral votes are the same, they don’t care as much and the simulation loses some of its punch. Of the five presentations I gave, only once did the two votes differ. And just in case some of you out there are wondering which brand Norwegian students prefer…. well it has been a complete tie.

The other new thing that occurred at this school was rather funny. When I had the students tell me one thing they liked about their school or community, I had three boys in back who worked together on a little sequence. The first student said how great his English teacher was, then the next one said he loved me, and then the last one of the sequence thought I should go out on a date with their English teacher and see the community to find what I might like.

Some of the girls also invited me back to Asker to see a handball game since I have never seen one live (or on TV for that matter). So hopefully I will be able to get back to Asker to see one.

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