In Ringe, Denmark

After a week in school I went on my first trip with pupils this semester, a semester that is unusually filled with trips. I went to visit our friend school in Ringe in Denmark with two colegues and 21 pupils from eighth and ninth grade. I have been in contact with Nordagerskolen for some years, and the one time I have actually visited the school before it felt like coming home. I have had a lot of contact with two teachers working there. Most of all Katja, who has also visited my school with another colegue of hers. We applied for a Nordplus fund that we regretfully did not get. I have also had quite a lot of contact with Mikkel, and with him and Elisa from our friend school in Zaragoza, I held a speech at SETT last year.

Me and Katja have worked some time to enable an exchange between the two schools The pupils at Nordagerskolen, ages 7-9, choose amongst three different profiles; International, Sports and Natural Science. Katja works with the International Profile, and her pupils have been in contact with pupils of Fäladsgården for a couple of years. Last May I applied for funds from the Hedda Hylander Fond and there got money that made it possible to invite a little more than twenty pupils to a free three day trip to Denmark. The pupils stayed at Danish families and together we made a lot of activities to get to know each other and the other language and country. If you know or understand Swedish it´s possible to read much more about it in this blog.

We learnt a lot during the days in Denmark, both pupils and teachers, partly because of the differences in the groups of pupils. I don´t think any of us anticipated that the cultural differences would matter, and the differences were more about gender and city versus countryside than of nationality, but we go second thoughts about how we mix pupils that differ in age. We had a lot of fun also and many of them made really good friends during the days in Ringe, and hopefully they will come and visit us during our International Week in May!