I talked a little about the school in my last blog post, but I'm going to describe it a little more. It is an 8th through 10th grade school, and the classes are very small. This school is designed to be for kids who need more a practical education, and when they leave this school, many choose to go to the practical high school where they can choose to do mechanics, carpentry, and even hair styling. There are around 60 kids in the whole school. There are two teachers in every class, which is one of the things that makes this school unique. There are a couplethings that I have observerved this week that stand out to me as being different than in many schools back in the States:
-First, the students have block schedules, similar to those in college. They don't have the same schedule any day of the week. And all of the students spend their Wednesdays not in the "traditional" classroom, but rather out in the community or at the school building in what are called stations, either learning about farms and animals, camping and being outdoors, doing a film and photo class, or doing electrical projects. This is the only day of the week where the students have no academic classes such as math, English, Norwegian, etc. (In Norway, these are called Theory classes). This Wednesday, I got to observe and help a student in the electrical station. This day, the students were building an electrical "game" of sorts. This "game" was along the same lines as the board game Operation. The students had a wire twisted in whichever they wanted on the top of their base, and a wire wand to go over the wire obstacle. If the wand touched the wire obstacle, the game would buzz. The students had to build the base for their game and build the electrical system for their game-which included connected the proper wires in the proper spots, using hot glue in some spots, and a sautering iron in others. I was helping a student make his, and I was more than impressed with how well he knew how to use the sautering iron!
-Second, the students have longer breaks built into their day. Each day, the students have two five minute breaks, two 10 minute breaks, and a longer 30 minute lunch break built into their day. During these breaks, all students are out in the hallway area, with many of them gathered around the ping pong table in some friendly (but pretty intense) competition. Students also seem to have a little bit more freedom within the classroom setting. I noticed this while observing my very first lesson at Stagnes. It was the first class of the day, about 30-45 minutes into class. One of the kids grabbed his backpack, and started making a sandwich right in the middle of class! I don't know why, but I thought that was kind of funny. In the next few days of the week, I noticed that the kids are allowed to eat when they want, and many of them have a small snack or sandwich half way through the morning.
-Third, there is no such thing as school buses or school lunches. If the students need to take the bus to school, they take the city bus. And there are no school lunches like in the States. The kids all bring their own food from home.
While I really enjoyed my practicum this week, I think one of the hardest things was the language barrier. While mostly everybody at the school speaks English, all of the classes except for the English classes are taught in Norwegian. While observing in these classes, most of the time I had no clue what was going on. The only exception was maybe the math lessons I observed. While I couldn't understand the language being spoken, I could (for the most part) follow along with what was going on on the board. The teachers have all been really great, and either speak in some English, or one of the teachers will come over to me and kind of explain what is going on. They will also teach me a couple words in Norwegian here and there, but I am having a really hard time remembering them by the time I get home!
Today, I spent my day observing the music classes, which was really awesome for me. I had told the staff at the school that I play piano, so they felt that was a natural class for me to be in, and I agree. While the teacher spoke a lot of English in these classes, even when he would talk in Norwegian, I was able to follow along with what was going on in class, which was nice! I had a blast in these classes, listening to the students play drums, guitars, and the piano, playing some pop songs. Not only did I have fun, but all the kids seemed to really enjoy the class as well!
The teachers are all also really encouraging me to go and talk to the students so that they are forced to use their English, as many of them don't use their English outside of English class. They are all calling me an "expert" which is weird for me. The teachers are looking for me to correct pronounciation and even intonation of words, and one teacher even had me try and explain the difference between the word "tree" and "three". This has been hard because I don't think about most of that when I or others speak, so I'm having to be more aware of it. I will also have to put my "expertise" to use in all of the English classes at the school, where not only do they learn the language, but they learn about English speaking countries as well. My first day with my supervising teacher, she had me in her English class giving some comments after the students gave oral presentations (in English) about an English speaking country. This was hard because all of the students did so well! In the coming weeks in that class, they are going to be talking about immigration, slavery, and the civil war. My supervising teacher has asked me if I would be comfortable helping her teach since she figures I may know a little more about the topic than she does! That means this weekend I'll be brushing up on some of my civil war history so I'm prepared!
One thing many of the students, especially in the tenth grade where I will be spending a good chunk of my time, are really getting a kick out having me try and pronounce words in Norwegian. They think it's pretty funny when I butcher the words-especially those with the letters that we don't have in English, or those which I need to roll my r's, which I cannot do! And they could have me saying swear words for all I know! I would have no idea!! They also spent some time teaching me some Norwegian slang sayings and asking what we say in the U.S., and if you're every wondering how Norwegians say that someone is "stuck-up", they say they are "tall on the pear"!
I had a really great first week, and I can't wait to see what the next 14 weeks bring! 
The view from Stanges is pretty spectacular! Wouldn't be a bad place to work and go to school everyday! One of the highlights of the week happened on Thursday, when the sun made it's first appearance since November, finally peeking over the top of one of these mountains! Everyone at the school got very excited, exclaiming, "The sun is back!"
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