Hadsten for Teaching and Aarhus for Fun

In the interest of relative brevity, this blog post will be formatted differently.  First I will briefly touch on my daily activities over the past 5 days and then I will include an overarching reflection from an assignment I wrote recently.

Thursday (my fourth day at Østervangskolen) was spent in 3 English classes (grades 7 and 9) and in another Danish class.  The 7th grade English class began learning about food, which was fun because we got to learn about what types of food they prefer.  They include a few familiar suspects: burgers and pizza, but also include kebab and tartelet. 

The 9th grade English classes began a new unit on "First Love" and discussed crushes.  They had to define the word "crush," explain why they thought the word was "crush," write about the phrase "falling in love" and why the word "falling" is applicable, and come up with more idioms of their own pertaining to the subject.  Some students giggled, but they seemed to have a good time with the topic in general.  Predictably, the boys and girls had different opinions about the topic, but all agreed that it was well chosen, since it's something they talk about anyway.  

Friday (my fifth day at Østervangskolen) was my first day of teaching here (if you define it as being in charge of a class)!  Michael and I were in the same classes as Thursday, which felt like a relief after trying to keep track of what was happening every day. The 7th grade English class continued their study of food and continued to open up and be more receptive to our help.  We did our presentation on the American education system for the 9th grade English classes today and, in one of the classes, led a discussion about the topic from the day before: crushes.  

It was fun to have our first experience leading the whole period here.  The students were a little shy, but overall it feels very natural to find our place here.  In many ways, I would say that this transition is easier than my transition this past fall from junior high to high school.  I know that this doesn't make much sense, and I keep being surprised by this realization, but it is true.

After we were all done at school, the four of us (including a very jet-lagged Brendan - the fourth and final member of our group who was delayed four days by the storms on the East Coast) went to Aarhus to meet up with the four students who came to Santa Barbara from VIA (VIA is the teaching program we are exchanging with)!  We had a really great evening with them, getting introduced to their facilities (completely different because they're studying teaching and a specific subject, since this replaces their undergraduate degree), and seeing Aarhus at night!    

Morton (VIA), Michael, Brendan, Trine (VIA), Allison, and me 

Photo Credit: Allison

Michael, Morton, Sophia (VIA), Brendan, Allison, and me

Photo Credit: Allison

Aarhus at night

The next day was full of nature!  Allison's host family took all of us to a few places just outside of Aarhus.  We walked through a botanical garden forest (Fredfyldt Park), a deer park that is similar to a smaller version of Dyrehaven (near Philip's grandparents'), and along the ocean.  I was so happy to be next to the ocean again and it was breathtakingly beautiful.  Also, Michael and I collected sand for Peggy's collection (Peggy is a professor of ours at TEP).

The deer here were incredibly docile and nonchalant about our presence.  One even sniffed Brendan's hand!

Me with Aarhus in the background.

Looking to the East - also, for those of you in the TEP science cohort: can you spot something we recently learned about in this picture?

Today, Sunday was also spent out in nature because the sun was out!!!

SUN!

In honor of the sun, my host family took me to Himmelbjerget, which is one of the highest points in Denmark.  It is somewhat mountain-like, but it would probably be more accurate to call it a large hill.  There is a beautiful view from the top of a very large lake.  It was quite windy at the top, so we didn't stay too long - especially since we started to see the rain coming!  It was nice to catch a bit of sun first though.     

My host family (Thomas and Jane) and me!

Random fact I learned today - people fly the full Danish flag here when someone in the house is having a birthday!  People fly a small triangular version of the flag (see below) throughout the year and you can see these everywhere.  In general there is a strong feeling of love for the country.

Another random piece of information (more relevant to the last blog post) --See below for a 7th grader's schedule - I'm finally beginning to understand how the schedule works here!

Tomorrow I will be teaching biology all day - so it's time for bed!  You can view my Prezi for tomorrow's lesson here if you're curious.

Finally, if you're interested in reading something a bit more focused on my reflections about teaching practices here, I've inserted a piece below from an assignment on the topic of student engagement:

Student engagement comes in a variety of forms.  One of the most deceptively simple forms is engagement that manifests as students paying attention to and working on the task at hand. In this respect, students are remarkably engaged in and with their lessons here. 

Students are given a lot of time to work in small groups or independently.  My initial instinct is to say: “despite this, students manage to keep themselves on task and refrain from using this time to surf the Internet or chat with their friends (of course this does happen, but they are much more productive than I would expect).”  However, I think it may be more accurate to not use the word “despite” and instead say that it is because of this independence that students are engaged. 

Very little of what I have observed has been a teacher lecturing the class.  There is a very strong view here that students learn most when they teach themselves.  Students are given a lot of responsibility for their own learning and this is used as a technique for keeping students engaged because to some extent they can choose what they would prefer to work on and how they would prefer to work on it.  Further, students understand that if they don’t do their work now it will be homework and this seems to usually be a significant incentive for them.  This is unlike at home where students seem unable to appreciate a benefit for their future self over their present self.

It is difficult to compare this technique for increasing student engagement to techniques at home because (I think) it is very much reliant on several key cultural differences (see previous blog post on student responsbility).  For example, for an English lesson that I observed here, a teacher had students work on an activity from a workbook that came with the textbook for the majority of the lesson.  I have also seen nearly identical lessons at home, but the results have been very different. 

Here, the students were eager to work on their workbook activities (in fact they requested it)!  Most students happily worked in pairs on each activity.  They were very productive with their time and engaged with the activities.  They were clearly doing more than answering each question; they got excited about some and creative with others.  The teacher was able to circle the class and work with each group to assess their learning, to help those who found it more challenging, and to push those who found it easier. 

This is all very unlike home.  When I have seen a similar lesson at home, students do not engage with the subject in the same way.  Instead, students often do not stay focused on the task and take advantage of independent time as time to socialize or daydream.  Further, of those who do stay focused on the task, many whiz through the activities trying to complete them with as little effort as possible, which means they are not truly engaging with the material.  Finally, the teacher may circle the room to work with the students, but the large class sizes often prevent the teacher from reaching each student.  As a result, teachers use very different methods to engage their students and shy away from this method.  

All of this makes me wonder if what I should be looking for is not merely how the technique to promote student engagement differs, but instead why it differs and what I can learn from this difference.  I will be thinking about all of this more over the course of the next week.