Etikettarkiv: #teaching

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The ninetyfirst åsic- To help students understand and find connections is what teaching’s all about!

For two weeks I have had the wonderful opportunity to be among students and teachers at #Pitman Middle School in #New Jersey, #USA. I have been monitoring instruction in many different classes and seen many very good examples of teaching. My main focus has been ESL-teaching and I have seen examples of that both in primary schools and in adult classes of different kinds. Some of the adult students were part of a program for parents and were taught in classes with students from many different countries. They were preparing for a test and if they’d pass the test that would help them qualify for being American citizens. Other adults I met learned language for their own good, so to speak. They had different private reasons for taking the course and were taught in a smaller group within a local college. In every one of these differents setting and with every single teacher I have noticed high quality and a good knowledge both in what an ESL student needs and also teaching and instruction in general. When in class, I can see that many of the teachers have the same idea as I have, i.e to teach through themes or concepts rather than details. Today, since it is Halloween here, I have noticed that younger kids in primary schools here learn about the local legend #The New Jersey Devil. According to the legend he was the thirteenth child of a worn out woman who didn’t want her child. She cursed him and said ”to the devil with him!” and since then he is haunting #the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. The story is told this day since this is his birthday.

All teachers and students seem very into the idea of Halloween, even if not all schools celebrate with costumes and dresses. One of the classrooms I visited today, a classroom where Spanish is the main subject, focused on the differences between Halloween and the Mexican tradition for Dia de las Muertas  (the Day of  the Dead). The American kids get a chance to comment on what is similar or different when they compare these two holidays. The teacher help them along the way and try to get them to precise what they mean. She asks questions like ”How do you mean?”  ”What would you have thought if a loved one came back to life?” The point for the teacher is to explain that the Mexican Holiday is not at all scary or horrific, but rather a nice way of remembering your loved ones who passed away. The teacher then connects to the American people’s connections to the date 9/11 and the kids all get a chance to share the stories their parents have told them about 9/11. The idea is to show the kids that by remembering and talking about sad or scary memories, those memories get a little easier to talk about each time. Then she wraps it all up by saying THAT is what the Mexicans do when they celebrate THEIR holiday. They stick to the nice memories of a person and cherish those memories in a more happy manner, although they are dressed or disguised into skeletons etc. I was very happy to get the chance to see this lovely explanation of what the different festivities are all about. To help students understand and find connections is what teaching’s all about! I have written in Swedish about the importance of this in my tenth åsic and in my seventyeighth åsic. Those of you who read Swedish are of course welcome to read and for my English readers I plan to translate my blogposts gradually when I find time to do so.

Thank You and Farewell #Pitman Middle School

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The eightyeighth åsic- Kids vs Adults, a comparison shows that FAQ are very different

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Today I visited a few new classrooms where I haven’t been before. It was very interesting to again note that kids and adults do not ask the same kind of questions. Generally speaking I would say that kids like to know, for real, what it might be like to live in Sweden. They ask personal questions formed from their own point of view and seem happy to get an answer.

Some adults may have a real interest, too, BUT the interesting thing is that they tend to repeat each others questions. Check what adults have asked me the last week:

  1. Are you Irish?
  2. Is this your first time in the US?
  3. For how long will you be here?
  4. Have you visited other states in the USA?
  5. When does school start in Sweden?
  6. How many school days are there?
  7. What subjects do you teach?
  8. How many students are there in each class?
  9. What kind of grades do you use in Sweden?
  10. What American singer would be THE most famous, Elvis or Michael Jackson?

There have been a FEW more questions, but the above questions have tended to come back. Now look at the questions kids have asked:

  1. Do you celebrate Halloween?
  2. What cellphones brands do you have in Sweden?
  3. What clothes do you wear in Sweden?
  4. How far from China is Sweden?
  5. What does the Swedish national anthem sound like?
  6. What do the houses look like in Sweden?
  7. How old are your daughters?
  8. What music do you listen to in Sweden?
  9. What famous Americans are popular in Sweden?
  10. Are there IKEA:s all over Sweden?
  11. What sports do you do in Sweden?
  12. Do you eat the same food as we do?
  13. What kind of farms are there in Sweden?
  14. What do you grow in Sweden?
  15. What does the trees look like in Sweden?
  16. Does The Swedish House Mafia really come from Sweden?

Kids tend to want to know about things out of school more than the teachers do.Teachers tend to ask about school related topics. I find that most interesting. Another thing I find interesting is the way no lesson where I have been involved has been at all like the other. I have asked the kids what they wanted to know and that has lead to lessons that differed very much from each other. Being in a situation where I can choose what to share or not from what the students like to know, has thus been just like I prefer to work, i.e in a group oriented manner. I will miss this school and all the kids next week when I go home. They are all very open and welcoming and I have a great time learning more about this NJ school.

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The eightysixth åsic- Höstlöv, höstlov, hostlov, Fall Break!

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Four different spellings means four different things, of course they do, but let’s take a closer look at it!

  1. höstlöv= autumn leaves→ when days get colder and leaves change colours from green into more colourful yellow, orange or red
  2. höstlov=fall break→ when Swedish school kids have a week off while teachers either go to conventions or work with their local projects, or get a chance to get some busy time back.
  3. hostlov= a coughing  ”break” meaning that the planned ”höstlov” would be a week when you had to stay in bed because of coughing… 😦
  4. Fall break=höstlov
  5. Ö→In Swedish we have three different letters that you can’t find in English. They are å, ä and ö.

If I would use a computer keyboard here, in the US, I would need to find some solution to writing the Swedish letters, which would cause problems since I’m not that much of a computer person. Instead I tend to write ”Swedish” with the computers I find here, but replacing the å, ä and ö with a, a and o. There! See??? Already we have a chance to mix them up, since å and ä are not the same as a and a… So how would one tell whether the intention is to write å or ä? Knowing what reading is about, one might pretend to be Sherlock Holmes and try to find out by checking the meaning of the words around…or perhaps being Swedish might be of help…? Check these two chunks of Swedish, but spelled without the å or ä:

  1. Ett far kan braka.
  2. Titta en bat!

Let’s say you don’t know Swedish at all… Then you would think it’s something wrong with the grammar in the first sentence, I guess… or you would just assume that this person has missed out a word of maybe is dyslectic.

The first sentence may mean several things in Swedish, but knowing Swedish properly means knowing whether you would use ”en” or ”ett” (comparable to the use of ”a” or ”an” in English). A Swedish person would know that if ”far” in the first sentence actually is correct (meaning ”father”) then there has to be ”en” rather than ”ett” if written with correct use of grammar. Suppose this person assume it is a father then… On to the problem with ”braka”… That word is a verb and you would mainly use it to describe what happens if a construction of some sort break apart, such as if a tree falls over a shed in your garden, you would say that the tree fell over the shed: ”skjulet brakade sönder”. The use of ”braka” might also suggest the sound of something, not necessarily something nice… Suppose you lunch was beans… After a while you really have to fart… If that happens and you can hear a sound, you would in colloquial or dialectal Swedish say ”han brakade” meaning ”he farted”. Then, what happens with the first sentence is that you have different options now, right? Either the meaning is ”en far kan braka” meaning ”a father can fart” or we need to doublecheck the meaning of the word braka… Is there any chance for that word being spelled with either å or ä??? Oh… as a matter of fact, both would be possible to use… ”En far kan bråka” means ”a father can be messing/fighting”… ”En far kan bräka” means that the father makes the sound of a sheep. Would a father to that? Yes, maybe if he plays with his kids or something, but it is more likely that we didn’t guess right when we picked either å or ä here… So then… What next??? I suggest for us to go back to the noun… ett far… We already know that ett far is not how we would say in Swedish. We would say ”en far” if it HAD meant father…but suppose it doesn’t? ”Ett får”= a sheep, YES!!! A sheep can bleat= ”ett får kan bräka”. Guess what??? This is what you and I do in a matter of SECONDS when we read a text!!! I think that’s amazing! Don’t you?

Let’s repeat the concept…by checking the second sentence!

”Titta” means ”look”… ”en” means ”a”… bat is a word in English, but not in Swedish. A Swedish speaking person has two options here. One is to assume that the word ”bat” means the currency they use in Thailand and then also assume that the person who wrote it has missed an ”h”  in ”baht”, but more likely is for the person to read between the lines and understand that nobody would comment on Thai currency in that way and rather suggest that the ”bat” has to be spelled with either ”å” or ”ä”. When picking one of these this time it’s easy! Why is that? Well, there IS no such word as ”bät” in Swedish, so problem is solved with ”båt” meaning ”boat” and the sentence will be ”Look, a boat!”

By reading between the lines, one can get a lot of language learning, don’t you think?

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The eightyfifth åsic- ”HALF&HALF” or Completely Wrong!

I don’t drink regular milk since I have a lactose intolerance. For my visit here in the US I had to make sure there would be something to replace my usual products with and today it was time to fill the fridge again. After we got back home I wanted to comment on ”milk” in general and since ”my” family here drink something that they call ”HALF&HALF” (a mixture of milk and cream as I understand it). I wanted to know what that was. So I asked…and they both laughed. I didn’t quite get what’s wrong, but i found out soon enough. They repeated what I said and I still couldn’t get it. I said it again, ”HALF&HALF”. Then they said: ”We don’t say that!” I couldn’t understand, because on the box it clearly says ”HALF&HALF” and that was what I said, over and over again. Finally I ASKED them what THEY said then… They said, too: ”HALF&HALF”, but their sound of the ”A” was as far from mine as the distance from here to Buckingham Palace! We all laughed and made fun of the different pronunciations and what would happen if you loudly would shout out in the store HERE, but with my pronunciation: ”Dear, please go and get some ”HALF&HALF”!!

My reflection is that if my friends hadn’t pointed out that we in fact used different pronunciations for the expression, I wouldn’t have noticed. I know that may seem weird to some of you, but different accents don’t ”bother” me anymore and I know my own accent is a strange mixture of different accents. A few people in school last week suggested I’ve got an Irish accent, which I enjoyed, since I have never been there… 😀

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The eightyfourth åsic- Fika as an ice-breaker is never wrong!

There are many times I have marvelled over the word fika and how it doesn’t seem to have any translation in many other languages. Today was another of those times! 

This morning at the ”Sweden Day” at the school I visit I shared the concept of FIKA and explained what it is to the members of the staff. I was surprised that so many seemed to like the idea of FIKA and that made me think of a completely different situation some years ago. I talked to an American woman, who was married to a Swedish man.

This woman had learned by being in Sweden what fika was, and her idea of it was pretty much like the one I wrote on the whiteboard today (which I share above). As we talked we realized that the two of us had talked to Americans about the concept of fika, but in different parts of the country. I have only met people on the East Coast and she had just talked to people in California about it. Both her friends and mine had to some extent started to USE the word fika in the American English. What I now hope for, is for both the actual WORD and also the CONCEPT to spread across the continent. That would be amazing!

One of the teachers who had fika with me this morning, came back to the classroom after a while and asked me how to use the word in a sentence if he wanted to invite someone for a fika. So now, let’s spread it! There are different ways to invite, depending of the situation, but in English you can say like this if you like:

  • Do you want some fika?
  • How about some fika?
  • Are you up to some fika?

Fika can mean just a cup of coffee or tea, or it can mean coffee+ a sandwich, or it can mean coffee+a bun, or it can mean, coffee+ bun+ cake+cookies+ tårta, which is a Swedish kind of cake with no frosting/icing, but more likely whipped cream. The funny part is that fika also can mean ALL of the mentioned categories… There are really SO many different connections to the word in Swedish that it is very difficult to explain. Instead it is necessary to see the phenomenon as something ELSE, but ”having coffee”. It is a chance to SHARE with friends. What do we share then? It is not just the COFFEE, but thoughts, ideas, gossip, memories, jokes… Having a fika with someone is paying attention to that person, having a good time together with someone for a while. That is why I want the word to spread… So please, help me ”spread the word”… 😀

TILL MINA ELEVER är här en liten ”språkruta”:

Ska vi ta en fika? Hänger du med och fikar? Kom så fikar vi! Nu skulle det sitta fint med en fika! En slät kopp (= kaffe utan något fikabröd till) fika räcker! Vi ses på fiket! Vi hinner kanske med en språngfika om vi skyndar oss? Jag har fikarast mellan nio och tio varje morgon. Men jag brukar kvällsfika vid TV:n också. Stina kör långtradare och hinner inte med så långa raster, men ibland stannar hon på ett långtradarfik. 

 

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The eightysecond åsic- Second Day in an American Teacher’s Hectic World

At home I don’t teach English, but Swedish as a Second Language. This evening I had the great opportunity to visit an adult learner’s group in Spanish at a College not far from where I am. The students were all taking lessons in Spanish, but volunteered to talk to me about what the conditions are for adult learners at this level in the school system. I found our conversation most interesting and will share their viewpoint with both my students and my teaching friend at basic level of English.

Earlier today I first met with a few children with special needs. I shared with them a few thoughts on what it is like to live in a country where we have monopoly money and a” fairy-tale-like” reality with a king…

I also had a chance to contribute with Swedish words in grade six while they were taking a Spanish lesson about furniture in different rooms of a house. Then I discussed with a group of eightgraders why so many Swedes left Sweden a hundred years ago.

I then had a nice and long chat with one of the teachers who has been a resident of Pitman almost all her life, apart from a short period down south. She told me all there is to know about the little town and I was happy to learn all that first hand, rather than read about it.

On Friday a few of the teachers have planned for a Sweden day, where the students will be getting a whole lot of information about Sweden, but also try some typical Swedish activities. I will contribute with a slideshow about Sweden and explain why the Dala horse is a symbol for  Sweden. The collaboration with an art teacher at this school also led to an idea where we let the kids know a little about how one can paint a typical ”kurbits”.

Tomorrow we’re off to Atlantic City, my teaching friend and I. We will study ESL as the NJ authorities wants it to be. I look forward to that very much. I don’t need anyone to rock my cradle! I am exhausted, but I’m having so much fun! Teaching is my life! ❤

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The eightyfirst åsic- Learning Among Friends

My first minute at school in Pitman

 

Yesterday when I took a walk to the school where I will spend the coming two weeks, I was surprised to find a welcoming greeting outside school. This morning when I arrived for my first day there, I was even more surprised to find another sign welcoming me to my school visit. As if this wasn’t enough, I have felt overwhelmingly welcomed by each and every one of the people I have met in Pitman Middle School. Both students and teachers met me with warmth and generosity.

There are plenty of things I noticed that are different from what I am used to. Even if I now teach adult students, I can miss teaching younger students especially if I meet such nice kids as the ones I met today! Many of them were making impact just by being themselves in their regular surrounding. 

Both students and teachers I met today seemed eager to know more about Sweden and that made me happy. I had anticipated a more anonymous role in this school, but I am very, very happy that it turned out to be so interactive, because it makes it really interesting. I will thus have multiple chances to explore the very soul of this particular school and get a chance to understand the nature of the school system in NJ.  The many opportunities to share thoughts and reflections from my experience of teaching with my new friends in this school will be like a treasure to get back to later when there is more time. Now I merely need a good night’s sleep in order to be fit for what tomorrow may bring of new experiences.

Last time I visited a school in NJ I marvelled at the dress code. I then wrote in Swedish, but I have summoned up that text in English as well:

Miniåaseri – A slingback would kill me!

 

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The eightieth åsic- Sharing teaching experience with friends abroad or from abroad

The coming two weeks I have the opportunity to join an American teacher in her everyday teaching routines.  I look forward to my two weeks in the NJ schools. I learn a lot by sharing experiences, note what is similar and what is different. Teaching is not at all the same if compared between different countries, not even if compared between different classrooms!

Several of my adult students are teachers from the start and when they meet me in the classroom they notice that a lot of things in my classroom differs from what they are used to in their own countries. When that happens, I always listen eagerly to what differences the students have noticed and then the student and I discuss what the different school systems have in common, too. Usually we  find that just getting a glimpse of something is not enough to draw conclusions from .

By speaking to teachers from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, China, Iraq, Somalia, Ukraine, Latvia, Kirgizistan, Russia, UK and the USA, I have been trying to get a picture of in what way there might be a difference from the Swedish school system on one hand and that of those mentioned countries on the other hand. By experiencing a school system first hand I learn more than by speaking. I hope during my stay here in NJ, that I will not only get a chance for comparison between the two school systems in general, but also a chance to talk to teachers and administrators. Hopefully we will all share good examples of teaching and instruction.I look forward to meeting new teaching friends.   If you like to learn more, please learn more in following ”åsics”! You are of course also welcome to read some of the already published texts.

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The seventyninth åsic- Three different perspectives

Yesterday I spent eight hours between a young Indian woman and a middle-aged American man. The three of us were seated in the same row during a flight between London Heathrow and Newark, NJ, USA. We had very little in common, but made friends during the flight and talked about different aspects of life. Since we came from three different continents, three different societies, it was very interesting to share viewpoints and thoughts. We all had three different reasons to travel to the USA.

The young Indian woman was going to reunite with her husband after two months apart. The young couple were newly wed and had planned to start their life in the USA. Since they were both engineers and he already had a position in a company the three of us started to talk about HER options in her new country. The American man currently works as a lawyer in a big national bank on Manhattan and he travels frequently abroad to make agreements with other banks, companies or financial departments in countries worldwide. Me, the Swedish teacher, between the two of them, found it most interesting to learn more about possible futures for engineers in NJ or what bank lawyers think of life, at the same time as I was comparing their English accents. We were all three genuinly interested in each other’s stories, so it seemed anyway. Meeting people like that, sharing thoughts and ideas, is very rewarding, I think. It is a perfect way of learning, since you are doing it for fun and you are motivated, since you very much like to understand that other person. Sharing moments like that is important to me.

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One hundred and fiftyfirst åsic- February at its best?

Being a teacher means planning ahead of time and trying to find as interesting topics as possible for one’s students. I try to combine both methods and genres with something that students may find useful for the moment. One such topic that I keep working with every year in January and February is winter.

Cherry Covered in Winter Coat

My adult students may sometimes come from countries near ours, such as the Baltic countries or maybe Germany or the UK, but most of them don’t. Instead they started their lives in a country far away from Sweden, where there is no snow and where the Swedish winter may seem both everlasting, too cold to be outdoors in, dark and difficult to deal with. I try to find texts that are very different. There are lyrics from songs on winter topics, extracts from books, short stories, movies, chunks of news, weather reports as well as newspaper articles of different kinds.

Does it matter what whether it is outdoors to talk about winter? I’d say I have been lucky this year, since the weather has been very varied. I had the opportunity to talk about extremely cold weather and the words connecting to glistering snow, as well as the boring cloudy skies in a slushy morning when the ploughmen have not yet driven by… I have also had the chance to share with my students some of the typical winter songs or words one may need to label typical winter activites.

It doesn’t matter what the weather is like. The more varied it gets, the better for my purpose at school! Using here and now as a resource for teaching makes learning more hands-on for students. Students find their learning meaningful if they can use their new vocabulary already on their way home from school. Who wouldn’t? Learning things that are supposed to be put away for later, tend to be boring very quickly, whereas useful phrases and vocabulary for instant use makes the effort worth while.


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