new ideas and new do's

This week we have been getting a lot of expose in our area of work. Today I went to the University of Gavle. It was two blocks from my host family's house. Actually my host mother works there in the Math department, but on this day she was going out of town. I met with the Dean of students who told me a lot about the school, specifically the teaching department. University is free in Sweden, except that you do need to pay for books and accomodation. This University had about 13,000 students with half of them actually attending the campus and the other half doing distance learning. She told me that the school has been changing its teaching program as per the government. Normally education students take 1 1/2 years of general courses, followed by specialty courses based on what area of education they are interested in. This was similiar to the USA. But now they are starting to reorganize the program so that you start off specializing right away. Where before a highschool and a preschool teacher would take similiar classes to begin, now they will be separate. They will separate into 0-5 years, 7-9, 10-13, 13-16, and 16-19. To me this seemed a very small window and I wondered how limiting that would be for getting a job. She said that there is shortage of teachers in this area, but I dont think I personally would like to be that limited in what ages I could teach.



She said that schools do a PISA evaluation which compares them to the rest of the world in education. This gives them direction on what courses to offer students interseted in education. Another difference I found out about in education is that schools here don't do as much testing. So in Sweden there is no WKCE, but she said that it was coming.



After meeting with the Dean, I had a brief tour of the campus, and then met the lady in charge in international relations. She was in charge of helping the international students at the university. She also had two children similiar in ages to that of my students so our conversation really steered towards that. I learned that it is custom in Sweden to have the same teacher for three years (1-3, 4-6, 7-9). She couldn't believe that was not normal and asked me how students adjust to so many teachers. She also told me about how each student at her son's school gets weekly goals which tell which pages they will have to do each night for homework. They have to do some planning on Monday and have to tell what they learned on Friday. I thought that was a very good idea. I asked about homework and it sounds like we have a similiar amount. Her son received 3 pages of Reading homework a few nights a week and the same with Math. He also had his English language homework.

In the afternoon I decided to do like the Swedes do and get my hair dyed blonde. Many people here are blonde haired with blue eyes, so I fit in great. I knew I was blending in when I stopped in H&M afterwards and had a transaction with no English spoken! We finished the night with a symphony performance at the concert hall a short distance from my host family.