Today was my first day at Linblommans skola. Today was a little different schedule for me because my teacher at Linblommans skola asked to meet at 9:00 a.m. Usually I will start school at 8:10 in the morning, except on Wednesdays. I wish that I could express that I have a partner with me during this experience, but unfortunately she went home today. She ended up getting sick and thought it was the best idea to go home and see her doctors in the United States. So I had to experience a new school, a new place in the city of Umeå, and riding the bus by myself. Luckily, this morning, Lennart (our Umeå supervisor) was so kind and grateful enough to take me to the school. Lennart met me right outside my room. He was generous enough to walk me to the bus station to take a look at the map and show me where I will need to be going and how I will be getting there for tomorrow. Afterwards, we took a walk to the grocery store to buy my bus pass, but unfortunately the place I needed to buy my pass at was close. So he took me on an adventure showing me places to visit in the next few weekends through the city of Umeå just to get the bus pass.
After receiving my bus pass, we headed towards the school. Once we arrived, Lennart was explaining that the building I am in is the elementary building and the otherside is the high school building. Once we arrived at school, we found the students playing outside and taking their break. My teacher’s name is Katarina and I will be working with her for some of the time in the elementary school. The classes are run as teams, so I will also be working with Frida, Britt-Inger, and Johan. They all teach different subjects (English, Swedish, Social Studies, Science, and Math) and the students rotate classrooms. I even got a tour of the school, which was extremely small.
I tried to soak in as much as I could through the introduction of the school, meeting my co-workers for the next four weeks, and meeting the students in the classroom. I am working with about 15- 5th grade students and 15 – 6th grade students. Much smaller class sizes because that is about all the students that they have in the classroom for those class sizes. During Social Studies, there were about ten students who were labeling a map of Europe. They were trying to labels the countries and the cities. As my teacher and I were talking, she was explaining to me that they label cities and states on the United States map in order to learn about the United States. She asked me if I could teach a little something about the United States history to the students. I think that the best part of being in the school is I get to talk in English and the students must learn to understand English from me during the day. For math, she explained to me that they are just starting to work on multiplication. That was quiet the surprise that they are just starting to learn multiplication and division, when I was teaching decimals at home! During English class the students had to talk in the English language and it was a time to do our introductions of getting to know each other. The students had about six questions each for me to answer. Some questions I did not know. I learned what floorball (innebandy) was. It is another way of saying floor hockey.
For lunch, I ate with the students today. The teachers in the classrooms have to do recess duty each time they go out and have lunchroom duty. While on lunchroom duty, I had the opportunity to eat the lunch that was provided by the school. They would not let me eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I had packed for myself. :/ Today’s lunch was fisk (fish), ris (rice), and anything you wanted from their “salad bar”. That was the first time I had a Swedish meal and it happened to be fish. I do not eat fish at home, so it was an experience for me to try as well. It was not bad at all, it tasted really good (I swear, this trip is opening my eyes to eating a variety of foods, except I will always stay away from tomatoes). After lunch, five 6th graders went on a walk with me to show me where the bus stop was. The teacher let the students walk me around to show me where to get on and get off in Röbeck. Might I add having the opportunity to be shown where the bus stop was nice but it was about a ten-minute walk from the school, and we did not have to sign out of the school! I was completely shocked that the teachers were willing to allow the students to leave the school to take me to the bus station.
After we got back from our walk, it was time to come in for English class. To my surprise, all the students took off their jackets, as well as their shoes. So the students were walking around the classroom with just their socks on! The teachers kept their shoes on, but the students were walking around in their socks. Today, I felt completely overdressed. I wore my khaki pants with a nice sweater. Note to self, always wear jeans and different shoes! The teachers were in nice shirts, jeans, and tennis shoes. I always thought that teachers had the same dress codes as the teachers in the United States, but I was wrong. Luckily I brought enough jeans but it looks like my dress pants will not be touched during the adventure unless the girls I am traveling with decide to go out to a fancy restaurant (which you do not see many around here).
As we were getting ready to leave, all the students either walk or ride their bikes. The only buses that you see are the ones that take you to the major cities along the way. The girls that showed me where the bus stop was during the school hours offered to take me to the bus stop at the end of the day. I was very grateful for what they did. I was learning some more Swedish terms and learning how to say them. They were probably laughing at me because I cannot roll the “r” nor could I say the terms correctly. Oh well, looks like I have a lot of learning to do while I am here the next four weeks!
Here are a few other things that I saw in the school today:
1.) All the students came into the classroom quiet and sat down waiting patiently for the teacher to finish talking to me or come back from walking in the hallway.
2.) Students have a free range of the classroom. They can come and go whenever they would like.
3.) During group discussions the teacher sent the students to the student kitchen area, the coat area, or kept them in the classroom to talk.
4.) There is not much floor space, plus the floor is really dirty you would not want to work on the floor.
5.) The teacher does a lot of teaching from the desk. The desk is in front of the classroom and the desks are in pods of about 4 – 6. Plus they are not your average style of desks. Students have drawers for their materials in different sections of the room and they are allowed to just sit at their assigned seat.
6.) Students get about a 10 – 15 minute break after each class. The students go outside for their recess during this time.
7.) The teachers have a workroom and a teacher’s lounge where they keep their coats, an extra pair of shoes, and where they do somewhat of their lesson planning.
8.) There are not many books in the classrooms or even in the library. The library was extremely small. It was about half the size of Mrs. Anderson’s classroom, maybe even smaller!
9.) Everyone speaks in Swedish. I am going to be teaching the staff and students a lot of English in the next four weeks. Sometimes I feel strange asking the students what they are saying because I do not understanding. But they are all very nice and willing to help me with everything that I need.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to take some pictures of the school. I was so busy trying to figure out what was going on, meeting the teachers, and talking with the students that I forgot to take pictures. Plus at the end of the day, I was worried about traveling on a bus by myself since I did not know where I was going, I left right away when school was done at 14:00 (2:00 p.m.). I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings for me being in the classroom. It should be interesting since I am trying to learn what they are understanding!
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