Skåredalen Skule

On March 30, 2009, I visited the town of Haugesund on the western coast of Norway. I visited three 10th grade classes at Skåredalen Skule. The school is a 1st-10th grade and has about 500 students.

I taught the same lesson to all three classes and all three were great groups of students. The first class was a bit quiet, the second class had a group of boys who were really not into participating, and the third group participated so much and had so many questions I didn't have time to get through 2 of the engagements. Yet all three groups were really strong in English, had questions, and seemed interested (even the 2nd group with the boys... though they would not participate in writing anything down, I did notice they were looking at all the pictures and talking amongst themselves about the images.)

Only one class was able to get to the part where I had them tell me what US schools should learn from Norwegian schools and vice versa. Here are some of their comments:

• Norwegians shold learn from Americans: yellow school buses.
• They can lurn us to work more... [sic]
• Maybe schools in Norway should be stricter.
• People [students in the US] should be allowd to dress however they like [sic]
• The US school should learn fro the norwegian school to have mor playtime [sic]
• [Norway can learn from the US to be more like] the typical American school is that the school are more involved in your life, that they care more for you.
• Norwegian chool should learn from the US schools is to do more sports [sic]

I had two things I wanted to write about and unfortunately I can only remember one (the most insignificant of the two). I try to jot a note for myself while I am teaching if a student says something witty or I notice something on the wall. But this time, I didn't and therefore I lost it. :( Hopefully I will be reminded of it later. The insignificant thing was that I saw the students playing hangman. I just thought it was an interesting cross cultural connection.

Here are my thoughts on the lessons I would create now that I have been here for a year: 1) media literacy: looking at how to be critical of television--like maybe show how CNN and BBC cover the same topic and then look at how South Park covers it and help the students understand how to be a more critical media consumer. 2) immigration: I would do a whole lesson focusing on issues of immigrants in the US and try to help the Norwegians students see how those issues apply to their own country, 3) I would have one that focused on a typical day in the life of a teenager-including things like popular trends, clothes, food, etc. and 4) then a couple that I have done like US schools and the short stories. Hmmm.... maybe I should pass this on to the new Roving Scholars!