A Long Week at Ås

April 30, and May 5, 7, and 8 I spent at Ås Ungdomsskole. I worked with one particular teacher who had been out the most of the year due to maternity leave (his wife had a baby prior to Christmas I believe). So I had not previously worked with him, but had worked with two of his 9^th grade classes prior (I did the election presentation with them in November). I did five presentations, three with the same group of in-depth 8^th grade students and then a presentation on immigration in two 9^th grade classes. I have one more visit to this school before I leave Norway.

Working with the 8^th grade in-depth English class was the first time being in Norway where I had the opportunity to work with the same group of students over a period of time. Ironically this was one of the toughest groups to work with. In-depth English is a class that is offered in ungdomsskole starting in 8^th grade. When students enter 8^th grade they are offered a chance to either learn a 3^rd language (usually French, Spanish, or German) or they can choose to take in-depth English. The original idea was that students who wanted to focus more intensely on English would choose this option. What happens in reality is that often students who do not naturally pick up languages well or who do not want to learn a 3^rd language choose the in-depth English. Often these classes have more behavioral problems, require more hands-on activities, need more structure, etc. It sometimes ends up as remedial English rather than in-depth study. Regardless, I was given 3 class periods to work with this group. Since I did not have time to create three new lessons that all tied together, my original idea was to do my election presentations, broken down into three different presentations. The first day (a Friday!) I attempted the election presentation with the four corners activity. The students enjoyed moving around, but I quickly found out that they struggled with English and much more so when talking about politics as this was not easy topic for them. After a rather rocky lesson, I changed my mind for the next two presentations. I gave up on building on the previous presentation and instead chose two of my other presentations that might be a better fit with their English language abilities and their interests. So on the 5^th, I did the US school presentation and then the 7^th did the text set presentation. As usual the students were really interested in learning about the schools and the Oprah video clip was the only thing that actually got their undivided attention (for the 6 minutes of the clip). Here are some of the responses they had about the schools:

Ironically the text set presentation went unbelievable well, which actually shocked me because I had had some problems previously getting the students to engage with the texts, etc. I knew this particular class needed structure and I did exactly that and I was surprised at how well it went. Quite honestly they gave me some of the best graffiti boards of the year. They struggled in presenting them to the class, but they had images, words, and phrases from the stories they read. I am still shocked at how well this went, but I think it was because I broke up the groups, they are more visual learners so the picture books and the drawing appealed to them, and I structured the activity. Here are some examples below:

For the two lessons I did on immigration I used the book-in-a-day strategy and read Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman. Each chapter is written by a different character who lives in the ethnically diverse inner city of Cleveland. The book follows the characters as they create a community garden from a vacant lot and overcome racial stereotypes and personal prejudices. It highlights not only how difficult it can be to be an immigrant in the US, but also how by working together people can create something beautiful. I start with the four corners activity to get the students thinking about immigration, which is a very touchy subject for Norwegians. They want to be open-minded and accepting, but many are not there yet. For example, many of the students strongly agreed or agreed to the following statements:

• Countries should control the amount and type of immigrants.
• Racism is taught at home
• Many Norwegians are racist.

I then modified the engagement for simplicity sake. I begin by reading the first chapter aloud (since I was reminded about how much they enjoy read alouds) and then passed out chapters 2-12 to individuals or pairs of students. I asked the students to read their chapter and write down four main events on post-it notes (one event per post-it). I’ve been using the post-it note idea since the beginning but I was also using a handout that went with it. Since I had only an hour to do this presentation, I needed to simplify, simplify, simplify. After each group read their post-its aloud and then posted them along the wall in a visual timeline, I read the final chapter aloud. I then asked the students to find two other people who read a different chapter than theirs and create one sentence for each of the following questions:

• What assumptions can you draw about immigration in America from this text?
• What can Norwegians learn about immigration from reading this text?

The first class ran out of time, so they answered the first question only. I had a broad range of answers, but I have to say that the weaker answers were most likely because I used the activity as an exit slip and that has not worked for me ever in this country. Students are perfectly happy to turn in a blank page as they walk out the door or to write something that is illegible or banal. However, I had some that were quite thoughtful. Here are their responses:

• When people work together it will be a better community for all.
• It is not easy to be new in a country. It is not fair.
• That there’s a lot of rasicme in America but also a lot of the opposite [sic]
• They are poor.
• There is a lot of rasicm some places in the USA [sic]
• There are some people in USA that don’t like peoples from other countries.
• They all plants plantes [sic]

The second group I was given a bit more time and so they were able to address both questions in their group (and it was not an exit slip). However this second group had struggles all the way through. I had to quickly modify the four corners engagement because they were not doing the activity (instead they were hanging on each other, not discussing, and some were not even leaving their seats). So I had them sit in pairs and come up with their opinion for each of the statements. I then went around and each group gave their opinion. This was only somewhat effective as it eliminated the students from moving around which is something I like to get the students to do, but since it was the end of a very long week of their particular teacher’s classes (in which classroom management was NOT his strong suit), I was not feeling very energetic in terms of making the engagement work. However, once I started the groups on the reading it went a bit smoother. I still had one pair of boys who refused to participate and a group of girls who did the whole “I don’t get it. I need help” (which normally works very well on this teacher, but he decided not to come in on this day since he was still technically on maternity leave and thus left me with a sub). However, we made it through and here are the responses the students gave to the first question, What assumptions can you draw about immigration in America from this text?:

• People can misunderstand each others. [sic]
• There is many immigrations in USA. [sic]
• It’s friendly.
• They put differences in dark and white people.
• It can be hard to make contact with people from other cultures because of language barriers and racism. Sometimes it’s easier to stick to our own group of people.

Here are the responses the students gave to the second questions, What can Norwegians learn about immigration from reading this text?:

• We can learn different cultures. We can be friendly.
• Norwegians can learn about caring about plants.
• Norwegians should be more helpful to immigrants.
• Norway can learn to be more open for those immigrations that needs us. [sic}
• Norwegian people [are] perfect! [sic]
• We shold let more imigrants to the contry if they have a reason [sic]

I have to say the whole experience would have been better if I had a different host teacher. It is so odd, because this particular school is really strong. But this particular teacher is not (and ironically he is not a Norwegian, but a North American). There were tons of little things that even my student teachers would know how to handle better, yet I do think he tries. The problems existed in the expectations of the classroom (there were none), the communication in the classroom (which was basically just talk louder to be heard), the lack of structure/organization (he even forgot to pick me up at the train station, let along what goes on in the classroom), and the low expectations (instead of working from where the kids were, he would just tell them the answers). I haven’t really dissed a teacher yet in this blog, but after a week of working with him (and since he is not Norwegian I feel like it is fair to be a harsher judge) and the students, I was ready for a stiff drink! There was even a point when he had another teacher in with me and the students were wonderful, when he came back and swapped with the teacher, the students quit working. It was so frustrating and one of the most annoying aspects of my job because I do not have any authority. If I push kids (which sometimes I do out of habit) sometimes they go along other times they rebel (as you would expect), but if they rebel “I got nuthin’.” But I think what I find the most frustrating is not my lack of control, but how hard it is to watch and not say anything. Sometimes, I try in a roundabout way to say something like, “you know this class really needs structure, doesn’t it?” I hope that the teacher will get the hint. This one did not.

I return to Ås next week and I already know it will be a different experience. I have worked with the other teachers and students previously and have been so impressed with their work. I am actually even working on a Voices in the Middle article about Renate because I think she is not only an amazing teacher but has so much to share with the US in terms of teaching English Language Learners. So though I dissed one teacher (lets hope he never reads this), I have to say that he is absolutely NOT representative of the English teaching faculty sat that school.