Holmstad Skole

Holmstad Skole is located about 15 km outside Sortland which is within the arctic circle, so still no sun (though in a couple of weeks the sun should be making an appearance). It has approximately 170 students from 1-10th grade. Though the building on the outside (and some places on the inside) look old and a bit run down for a Norwegian school, the view from the front door was beautiful!

This particular school has worked hard to provide unique opportunities for their students even though the school is located outside the town. Besides bringing me in, the students also do something called Storyline. From the explanation given to me by the host teacher, Storyline is something similar to the murder-mystery dinners. There is a theme such as Vikings and the students all have roles. They dress up and throughout the day they are giving little pieces of paper that tells them what happens next or what they do. Some of the themes have focused on particular countries that the whole school is focusing on or even a current event. For example there is a recent controversy about drilling for oil off the Norwegian coasts. This is especially important to this area as many of the family members are fishermen. So in the Storyline engagement some students were assigned the role of oil drillers, some were fisherman, some were politicians. Throughout they day they may have had to give speeches create, posters for demonstrations, etc. The other thing this school does frequently is something they called Operation Day’s Work. For this, the school focuses on a developing country in their classes. Then the students go to work for a day in a local business. The money they make is donated to charity. This is to encourage students to know more about the world, how they can help, and teach them to learn to work for others not just themselves. The teachers often invited the newspaper to come and document the experience and that is exactly what they did when I came. The article about me should come out in next week’s local newspaper. I will post a link, though the article will be in Norwegian.

I worked with 3 classes: one 8th grade, one 9th grade, and one 10th grade class. All of the classes requested the same lesson (which made my life a lot easier): the inquiry stations. Because they gave me extra time, I began with the game of putting a word on the students’ backs and having them go around and ask yes/no questions of each other (in English) to figure out what they are. Once everyone figured out their words, I had them group by like words (i.e. all food together, all cities together, etc.). This activity works great with students. It gets them up moving around, speaking English, and having a little fun at the beginning of the class.

I then had the students visit the inquiry stations. I haven’t changed much since I started other than some of the movie options. I need to get rid of My Big Fat Greek Wedding as there is one scene were they are kissing and all the students make note of that. I think I am going to replace it with High School Musical. I am thinking about replacing some of the other movie selections as well since the students always seem to focus on Supersize Me where it just emphasizes the idea that Americans are fat. Most of all though, these lessons reinforced to me two things: 1. a large classroom makes it SO much easier to handle squirrely adolescents and 2. staying in one room all day is much more relaxing. This second thought made me wonder how stressful it is for students to move from room to room and never feel like they have their own space at school. Though it would not be a convenient for teachers, I wonder how it would help students transition into 6th grade.

Here are some of the final thesis statements and visual images the students came up with after completing the inquiry stations:

Some of the comments students made about the stations are as follows:

• I would have liked to live in America.
• It's hard for an immigrant to live in such a big country.
• It's a very varied climate in America which I like a lot too! :)
• When they [Americans] do something, they do it for real.
• When two different races meet, there's a lot of problems.
• There are many people and a lot of different cultures.
• I mean its [the music] likea cowboy music. I think Norwegian music its better. [sic]

Some of the questions the students asked me are as follows:

• What do you think about the current economic crisis?
• Is it true that Americans have donuts and cookies for breakfast?
• Why are there so many paparatsies in USA? [sic]
• How long does it take to fly from Washington [DC] to San Francisco?
• Do you think Obama will be a good president?

These kids were a bit edgier and much more squirrely than many of the other groups of students. For example, one 8th grade student walked down the hall with his arm around a girl and his hand firmly grabbing her bottom. Then in class, the same boy had another girl sitting on his lap with her head tucked in his neck through all of the student presentations. One of the 9th grade students had a girl on his lap that he kept bouncing with his knee in a way that was very sexual. This kind of stuff still surprises me and it surprises me even more that the teachers don’t seem to be bothered by it. It just reminds me how deep our own culture runs and though I am open-minded I am still taken aback by the PDA within the schools. These students also had a deep fascination with smoking. They talked about it all the time, asked if I smoked, if I ever smoked, why I didn’t smoke, and on and on.

This last picture made me laugh. The host teacher had taken pictures all day and I couldn’t believe the number of teacher looks I gave that she caught on camera. This last time, I remember vividly. The students were so hyper, I was telling them to “Relax!”