Brummendal Ungdomsskole

On May 28th and 29th, 2009, I completed my last school visit at Brummendal Ungdomsskole. I asked several people the population of Brummendal and no one knew. I can tell you it was so small the train station didn’t have a Narvessen (which is like a 7-Eleven). In the US I often judge the size of a town based on the number of stoplights; here I seem to judge it based on the train station. This town has an interesting recent history that several people told me about prior to the visit and even during the visit. Apparently in the 90s the town had some serious racial problems and a riot occurred with over 6,000 people involved. Though I was told about the town’s dark past regarding immigration and racism, I did not see that in my visit. In reality, the school was no more diverse than any other small town school around Norway and the students were no more or less aware of race issues nor did they show any more negative beliefs towards immigration than others around the country.

The school, however, was rather large by Norwegian standards, approximately 400 students 8-10th grade attended the ungdomsskole. I was invited out for two days, four lessons each day. The class sizes were rather large. My smallest class was 27 and my largest class was 38. To create the classes, some teachers had their whole class (like several of the 9th and 10th grade classes) and other teachers had it by choice (like the 8th grade class). This was the first time, other than the Montessori school, that allowed for student choice. Part of me really liked the idea for several reasons: 1) I am always a fan of choice for kids of this age, 2) it offers those kids who want enrichment (which is often missing in Norwegian schools), and 3) completely selfish here…. I got the best of the crop! The students who chose to come to my presentation were strong in English for the most part. I don’t think this is a good idea for all schools, because I found that often the kids who felt they were not the best in English benefited the most from the presentations because it gave them confidence and they often excelled in a situation where the teacher (me) doesn’t know them or their past history so they have a fresh slate.

Unfortunately for my packing, I was asked to do several different presentations for this school. On Thursday, I started with an 8th grade class for an hour and a half with the election. I was really worried about this because usually the election does not go over well with 8th graders, especially now since all the election hoopla has died down. I was also worried about the hour and half which seemed a long time for this age group. However, the 8th grade group was a mixture of several classes and made-up of those students who wanted to come for that particular presentation. And it went fabulously. They did an excellent job. I mixed the election four corners with the Obama stations and the students, who started out quiet, by the end were really talking a lot in English. Here are some of the Obama posters the students created:



Though these may not be as sophisticated as some of the other Obama posters on this blog, please remember these were 8th graders.

I then did two presentations (one with a 9th grade class and one with a 9th & 10th grade combined class) on the Revolutionary War, or as the Norwegians call it the War of Independence. These two lessons went exceptionally well. If you remember this lesson combines a simulation about taxation without representation using non-stop (which is the Norwegian version of M&M’s). I choose a king, 2 parliament members, and 2 tax collectors. The rest of the students are colonists. The king and parliament members then choose how they wish to tax the colonist. For example, if you are wearing blue jeans, then you owe the king 3 Non-stop. If you have socks on then you owe the king 1 Non-stop. The tax collectors go around and take the candy from the students. (which is really funny because they often take the role quite serious and demand the students to “pay the tax.”) After 3 or 4 “taxes” the king parliament and tax collectors share out the profits. I then let all the students eat what they have. After the simulation, we watch a Schoolhouse Rock video about taxation without representation and then the students drew either a bumper sticker or a billboard that represented their views on the issue. Here are some of the examples of the students:

Bumper Stickers:



Billboards:



And, of course, my favorite. I always get a chuckle out of students who feel the need to say everything is “boring.” I mean, really. I gave candy, we watched a cartoon, and I had them draw…. I really don’t think I can do anything else to make it more fun! LOL. It just goes to show you that middle school kids are the same no matter where you go!!



I also did the short story lesson with a group of 10th grade students. Though the students were well behaved the responses were not overly impressive. I did not have a lot of time for the reading and I am going to blame some of the less sophisticated responses on the short amount of time, though the host teacher told me that these students do not do a lot of reading so it could be a result of that as well. The first few examples here are the stronger ones:



But I also got a few like this, where the students got the really basic view of what the story was about, but did not write a complete sentence nor really answer the prompt. They provided the basic content of the story, but not how it reflected the life of a teenager in the US:



Another lesson that I did twice was the text set lesson and both times it was with a group of 9th grade students. The first time I had 1 ½ hours, the second time only one hour. Ironically you won’t be able to see that much difference between the two in terms of their final product, though I did make some modifications for the second class which was the shorter period. First, I did not do the grouping game; I let the students group themselves to save time. I also did not have them look for patterns. The first 9th grade class was really badly behaved. They did not have their typical teacher with them and they really just were disrespectful all around (this was actually the first time I had a group of boys with their pants down by they knees. Though this doesn’t bother me, it really irritated the teacher who was with me). Literally at the end of the class, I felt like saying, “Good riddance!” This is frustrating when it is your first class of the day and always starts the day off badly. The second group did much better, but then I simplified it greatly for them. I did use poster sized pieces of paper this time and that may have been too big for them because they spent a lot of time drawing their title and coloring it in and they really didn’t have much time after that to put the words or phrases on the paper. I did show the students what the previous class had done and learned something about Norwegian schools in terms of competition. Even though competition is not necessarily encouraged among individuals, there is definitely competition among classes. So as a group you can be competitive against the other groups. I have seen this a little bit before, but I have become more aware of it in the last few visits. I see this group mentality the most when I ask the kids about their soccer team. If I ask a student if he/she is good in soccer, they will always say, “No, not really,” which leaves the others to tell me how good of a player that student really is. However, if I ask if their soccer TEAM is good, I always get a resounding, “JA!”

Here are a few of the graffiti boards the students created:



I also did two lessons using the book-in-a-day strategy with the novel Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman (2004) . The first group went okay but the students’ behavior about drove me crazy. The last group did fine too, but they were so slow in doing the work and coming up to present that we didn’t get to finish. This was disappointing to me because it was my last presentation of the year and it certainly did not end with a bang. The students once again found the reading difficult and struggled to read something on their own and respond. Of course there were students who did this fine, but there were a lot who really struggled in both classes. I spoke with a lot of Norwegian English teachers and many talk about how they read “the classics” with the kids. They tell me they will read the text out loud (sometimes 3 times) and explain to the students the symbolism and such within the text. I am certainly not against reading the classics, but I am starting to wonder if the Norwegian teachers are doing more of the work and the students are being passive. Seedfolks is a text that is appropriate for grades 6-8, so for 10th grade EFL students it should be a fairly easy read for them, especially if in their regular English class they are reading Shakespeare, Hemmingway, and Chaucer! Maybe some of the Norwegian English teachers need a good dose of Rosenblatt’s (1978) reader response theory and Barnes’ (1975/1992) working together to make meaning.

I talked with the teachers a bit before and after school and we discussed the idea of looping. I told them about how many US middle/high schools do not loop with their students. At first they were shocked and I tried my best to explain how many US teachers think it would be more work (they would have to learn 3 different curricula) and that if you got a bad group of students you were stuck with them for 3 years. One teacher came back the second day and told me that she thought about it a lot the night before and still could not understand why US teachers would not want to loop. She felt the benefits of knowing the students far outweighed the two negative arguments that I had heard from teachers. She said not only do the students learn the routines so you don’t have to spend time going over those again, they do not have to spend time getting to know one another both personally and academically. She also said that you build a strong relationship with parents and really feel like a family with the students. When I asked about whether in 8th grade if the teachers saw a bad group of students would they split them up in 9th grade. They said that it did happen, but not often. I also asked if parents ever asked to have their child moved out of a teacher’s class. One teacher, who had taught for 19 years, said it happened once for her. I wish more middle schools in the US would consider looping. Research shows that it is effective and I see what strong relationships students have with their teachers here. After seeing it for a year, I truly feel that the benefits outweigh the negatives.

I was surprised by the host teacher’s, who happened to be from England, comment that Norwegian students do not read many books. She said that even in their Norwegian class they may only read one book a year. I know that this is not true for all classes, as some schools the students read quite a bit, but I was not surprised. I have written a lot in the past about students resistance to writing, I would say it was somewhat (though not as bad) to reading. What I found even more ironic is that the teachers had a higher opinion on the students’ reading ability than I had after working with the students. For example, many, prior to my arrival, felt that picture books were too “childish” for their students. Yet repeatedly, I saw students struggle to comprehend or even have the stamina to read a whole picture book. One of the teachers, after the book-in-a-day presentation, commented that she was surprised that the students struggled as much as they did reading their portion and writing down 3 events in the story. This was even more concerning to me in that this was a fairly low-level reading engagement. All this is in context of the fact that Norwegians, per capita, buy more books than any other nation and that to be a part of “the book club,” an organization that offers books greatly discounted, is part of the nation’s culture as well. One Norwegian teacher told me, “You are not considered a ‘good’ parent if you don’t enroll your child in the children’s book club.” And truly every Norwegian I have met thus far was in “the book club.” So it was quite an anomaly for me. I realize that for many small towns without movie theaters and such that the winters are long, dark, and cold, thus people are more motivated to read. However I have also heard teachers lament about the amount of computer time teens are racking up. In one way the teachers say it is great for their English as many of the boys who like gaming have to IM in English if they wish to play in international arenas. In other ways they worry about more time spent behind the computer rather than reading books or being out skiing. So I have not come to any conclusion about literacy in Norway.

Since this is my last entry, I will leave you with my overall thoughts:

Things I like about the Norwegians schools: recess, free fruit for all kids, healthy living emphasis, looping, having offices rather than classrooms (I like how the students had their own space and the classroom was not the teacher’s), the fact that the teaching schedule is similar to a professors (i.e., there are certain times you need to be there to teach and for “office hours”/meetings, the rest of the day is yours to schedule), ski trips, shorter school day, kids walk or ride their bike to school (those who lived too far away to walk or ride, rode the public bus—which meant no car pool lines where you can see the gas $$ just floating up from the line of SUVs), how strong their teacher unions are, the equality of resources for all students regardless of where you are in the country, strength in languages among the majority of students (e.g., by the time they leave middle school they are working on their 3rd or 4th language) and treating the students with respect (I even heard several times that “kids have rights too”) not like cattle or prisoners like many US schools treat students.

Things I was not so found of: how lax some teachers were regarding behavior, the level of expectations some teachers had for their students, moving from classroom to classroom (and yes, this directly contradicts a comment above but I got tired of moving my stuff all day), lack of after school activities for kids, how difficult it is to get rid of a poor teacher, and going to school in the dark and coming home in the dark. (And I got a little tired of the bread and cheese sandwich I was served!)

So, as you can see, overall I found there were many more positives than negatives and I believe the US has much to learn from the Norwegian schools. I hope that those of you who have followed my blog to the bitter end were not overly bored with my endless reflection on teaching. For me personally, it was such a wonderful year to get back into the classroom, to see the pedagogy that I have been preaching about for the last 8 years really work with contemporary kids, and to be reminded of the energy it takes to teach this age group. This year renewed my passion for education and reminded me why we do what we do in the College of Education. This all may sound super cheesy or too philosophical but it really inspired me to continue in my work. I love this year, with all of its ups and downs. Kids are kids all over the world and it was fun to be reminded of how funny, intelligent, and caring they truly can be.

I want to thank the Fulbright Organization (though this blog is NOT sanctioned by the Fulbight Organization) for providing me with this wonderful opportunity. They supported me through not only monetary means, but in so any other ways including tips on travel, background about culture, and a chance to network within the field of education. I want to thank University of Oslo mostly for their copier. I can’t tell you how many times I stood in the middle of the night trying to figure out what papirstopp meant on the copier (for your information I finally found out it meant “paper jam”). I also want to thank USC College of Education for making this possible for me. Many scholars go on a Fulbright during their sabbatical and USC supported me doing this even though I was not on sabbatical. And last I want to thank all the teachers around Norway who went out of their way to make my visits successful. I received warm welcomes everywhere I went; participated in many enlightening discussions during lunch; received many lovely gifts; enjoyed many cups of tea, glasses of wine, bottles of beer, and dinner with teachers and their families; and was impressed over and over again by the teachers’ ability to make it all happen so seamlessly. Thank you!