In London, Great Britain

London is normally not a place I would take pupils, and specially not a whole class of ninth graders. I might be a coward, but I feel that it is a city with many temptations and also a place where you constantly need to watch out for different reasons. However it so happens that my class this semester won a science competition of inventions and the first prize was a three day trip to London. We went there last week, from the 6th to the 8th of February.

When I travel with school exchange the pupils how decide that they are bold enough to come can be a bit allike. Far from all pupils the ages I teach dare to go to another country and visit a unknown family. The ones travelling are often the ones that have travelled before and feel at ease in new situations and new people. This time, travelling with a class other challenges and possibilities appear. We had pupils in the group that were more nervous than we normally have. The arrangements surrounding a trip were somewhat new to them and as responsible teacher it was acquired to step in a bit before we normally do. With that said I am very happy having done this trip.

All the pupils behaved excellent and it was a thrill to see how they, even after three and a half years, got to know each other better because they spent so many more hours than usual together. Most of all it was a great joy to see the way many of the pupils savoured the trip, and mostly the ones that normally do not travel outside the country. It is special not only to talk about the sightings in London in English, but to tell your classmates something about them standing in front of them. It is developing to order your food in English if you normally don´t and come back with memories and a gift for your family from another country. Well back home they want to keep spending time together, and we are already planning for another, shorter, trip before the leave our school.

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!

In La Serena, Chile

I haven´t started this blog when I should, in the beginning of the year, so these first few posts will recapture the first trips I made that have an impact on my work life.

I spent four years of my childhood, the ones between six and ten, in Chile as my father is an astronomer. I attended a school that was the fairly new, a school founded by two American astronomer families and one Chilean family in 1976. If you are interested in the history of the school, you can read more about it here. We came to la Serena in 1979, and then the school was still quite small. This New Years´I travelled to Chile with my husband, my mother and my children to show them where I grew up. We spent time in the capital, Santiago, but we also visited my old hometown La Serena. I had booked an appointment there with my former two teachers. One is now the head master and the other one is in charge of the younger pupils, the ones from 3 - 5.

Since my times at school it has grown a lot and has changed locations twice, and I´m proud to say that I have seen all three schools. When I got there they had there long combined summer/Christmas vacations and the school had no pupils running around. It would have been nice to talk to the pupils, of course, but it was also nice to visit a school at a calm moment. We talked for hours about similarities and differences between school then and now, and also compared life as a teacher and a pupil in Chile and Sweden. It was fantastic and inspiring to be there as a teacher who now works a lot with globalization issues to be back in the school where my interest for the world and different languages started. I felt very welcome and it was very nice for all of us to remember the way the school had started, the ideas that were, and still are important, and to feel proud about the way the school has developed. 

The International school now has pupils from 3-18 and the spoken language at school is, and always has been, English. Only Castellano, or Spanish, and Chilean History are given in Spanish. The teachers are very engaged in there pupils and the school has a list of pupils that want to go there, but that they don´t have room for. This despite the fact that it in no way is cheap to attend to the school. 

Even if we spoke a lot of memories, mostly we talked about possibilities for cooperation. Our school has quite some experience in working with schools in other countries, and we came up with a lot of ideas together. It is a huge benefit that all classrooms have Smartboards, and it will be easy to start simple with some Mystery Skypes in the classrooms. 

I went from school filled with new ideas and have great hope that we will collaborate in many ways in the nearby future!

This is me

Very welcome to this blog!

I am a Swedish teacher working in Lund in southern Sweden. My subjects are Swedish (mother tongue in Sweden) and Spanish. For a few years I have worked a lot with international and global issues within my school. I write a lot about my work, and love to express myself in writing - in Swedish. I am not equally fond of writing in English. I was brought up partly in an American school and speak English without a doubt, but I am reluctant to the written language since i find English spelling hard. This is the reason that I have not started a blogg in English yet, but as all the people I work with don´t understand Swedish I have decided to challenge myself here. 

 Within the school we organize different types of collaboration with other countries. We have had a exchange with Spain for the past 17 years, and with Germany for the last eight. Beginning this year we also have an exchange with Denmark and France. The school has participated in different types of Erasmus and Comenius activities, organized and financed by the European Union, and the students also have had contact with other countries, such as Kenya. I am one out of two responsible teachers of the Zaragoza-exchange, and I have also organized this year's trip to Ringe in Denmark. In January I was in Chile to visit the school I attended four years of my childhood to explore possible collaboration also with them.

I have a passion for getting pupils and teachers from different countries to meet. I find it very inspiring when education becomes more "real" and see great motivational reasons to work with tasks that involve other countries and other pupils of the same age. I find that a contact with a peer in another country often increases the curiosity and the motivation to know more and to develope a language that is necessary to get to know more and keep in contact with a new foreign friend.

In later posts i intend to describe more in detail what kinds of tasks I do with my different colleagues in different countries.