Rosten Skole

On February 11, 2009, I visited Rosten Skole in the "suburbs" of Trondheim (population 150,000 and the original capital of Norway). Notice the sun!!! It was beautiful in Trondheim the few days I was there and was such a welcome relief from the gray overcast skies I have had since I returned from Christmas! Rosten Skole houses 200 8th-10th grade students. They used to have 1-10th grade, but recently moved to being just an ungdomsskole. The teachers said they missed having the little ones around and hope in a few years they will return to a 1st-10th grade school.

I did three classes of 9th grade students and all three lessons were about US middle/high schools. I really enjoy this lecture the most because the students are really interested in it; they have a lot of opinions about schools from High School Musical I, II, and III; and the engagements I have planned makes them feel like they are having fun when in reality they are learning and talking English. Some of the things the kids focus on in the pictures is the fact that the students all wear IDs, that in one picture a teacher is handing out candy, that there is a TV in the classroom, that the classrooms are very cramped and untidy, and that the kids take a limo to prom, and that there is a weight room in the high school (which they wondered how Americans can be so fat if all the high schools have a weight room). Here are some of the final projects the students created with my comments next to them:

I just loved this picture!

Such an important point that international students pick up from our media.

A lot of the students pointed out the need for more space in US schools.

I liked the idea that US schools should "fade away the sad punishment." The strict rules in US schools are something that the students are always amazed at.

I liked this one because of the bottom picture. The student is dreaming of a school bus and all he has is a taxi. I bet there are a lot of kids in the US who would prefer a taxi to school than a school bus! The two boys who presented this were really funny in their presentation, too, so I had to include it.

I liked this one mostly because they drew a lot from their note taking sheet from the picture pass, but I also liked the fact that they though US students should learn more about Norway.

So I made the mistake of talking about PDA. The kids LOVED this term and thought it was so funny that many US teachers don't allow students to have PDA in the school. So there were several posters that dealt with the fact that US students should be allowed to touch one another and even encouraged to touch one another!

I liked this last one because in the presentation the student was so funny. He said, "The US just needs to show some love!" I thought, How true is that in more ways than one!

Some of the other posters that were really cute were:

This group of kids was really interesting in that their English was really strong (which is not unusual in a bigger city, but I have been in so many small towns recently I have forgotten that point) and there was a bit more diversity than I have seen in many schools. One of the teachers told me that the area around the school was called "China Town" because so many Vietnamese have settled in the area. The irony was not lost on me. Norway is just beginning to deal with massive waves of immigrants into an otherwise fairly homogenous country. This was really the first time I noticed (shame on me) that all the teachers I have seen thus far in my travels around Norway have all been "ethnic Norwegian" which is what they call non-immigrants or those who are not born of immigrants. When I asked a teacher about it today, she told me that there were some teachers who are not ethnic Norwegian, but they usually are part-time and come in to teach their native language. All of this was brought to my attention after a taxi cab driver in Oslo shared with me the entire cab ride about the systemic racism that exists in Norway. He argued that it was not as violent as Germany or the US in terms of blatant racism, but it was in the system. He said it was hard to get a job if you are not an ethnic Norwegian and therefore he was driving a cab and counting the days until he could move to Australia. This is something I am interested in finding more about as Norway is beginning to see their immigrant population boom.