Read time: approximately 13 minutes

This week I facilitated a lot of workshops! Which meant lots of travel!

• Monday and Tuesday, 20 and 21 October I did mad prep for the week and next week. 
• Wednesday, 22 Oct I was back at Kruseløkka Ungdomsskole in Sarpsborg doing workshops on How Systems of Oppression Persist and What it means to be American? To be Norwegian? From there I hurried back to Halden VGS to do our second teacher session on offering feedback to student writers. Then I caught a ride with a colleague up to the University to meet with my dialogue partner for Norwegian language class to record our midterm.
• Thursday, 23 Oct I was back at Kruseløkka Ungdomsskole in Sarpsborg doing workshops on How Systems of Oppression Persist and What it means to be American? To be Norwegian? Then I took the train to Moss because I had an early morning at one of the high schools in the area. I was looking forward to a run in Moss, basically up a mountain to an amazing overlook point. It did not disappoint.
• Friday, 24 Oct I facilitated three Systems of Oppression workshops at Malakoff VGS, in Moss before returning home for a cozy night that alternated between eating, reading, and napping. 

We are nearing November! The leaves have been flaming red, orange, and yellow since earlier this month, and many are starting to fall off the trees! We’re getting more rain and the running trails are muddier. My bright white running shoes show the work I have been putting in! (I ran 10 miles this morning as part of my half-marathon training, thank you very much.)

In looking at my calendar for the 17-week semester, I am about halfway through in terms of how many workshops I will be conducting this term. Teachers can still book, but I don’t anticipate many more bookings from now until December (I’ve decided week 50 will be my last working week if you’ve been keeping track of Scandinavian ways of marking the calendar). Some of my Rover mates (the ones who are the upper high school Rovers) are already booking out through March! So most teachers have also booked what they’re going to book for the term. 

To date, I have facilitated 22 workshops, meeting 448 students, probably about 25-30 teachers. From now until week 50 (the week of December 08), I have 23 more workshops scheduled. Probably roughly the same number of learners, plus or minus, as the first 22 workshops. Those numbers are exciting, right? When I taught secondary English, I would teach about 150 students a year when I worked in public school. In private school, I taught about 120 students a year. At Colorado State University, I probably teach no more than 100 students per year. So meeting 900-1000 students and teachers in one semester is a lot more people!

One thing I’ve affirmed about myself as a teacher from meeting this many people is that relationships are really important to me in teaching. All of my workshops, no matter what the topic, start with me introducing myself to students: why I am in Norway for the year, who am I and who’s in my family, where I live and have lived in the States (students are predictably amazed at how big the United States is—4 time zones in the lower 48?! They can’t imagine it), and my job in the US. Then, I have them introduce themselves to me. I ask them for their name and then to respond to a question related to our workshop topic. I know from teaching that examples are always useful, as is chatting with a partner, and so after I offer them a few examples I have them turn and talk to brainstorm their response to my question. As excited as students are to have a speaker of American English in their classroom, they are often nervous and self-conscious about their own English when they respond to me. They have made my kind of English bigger than it is back in the States: they have told me I sound like Siri, or that my voice would be great on a podcast. They are in turn fascinated and enamored and “star struck,” they have said, with the way I speak English, which doesn’t sound like how they speak English. 

After a few minutes of them chatting and me walking around, I ask them to introduce themselves to me. We work our way around the classroom, as I ask for their names and their ideas. I am learning a lot of names! And not just Norwegian ones! The students in the classrooms I walk into are the most racially and ethnically diverse group of students I have ever seen in one place—mostly because of Norway’s opening up their borders to immigrants and refugees plus that schools aren’t segregated by neighborhood, race, and class. I hear a lot of names of students from Ukraine, Kosovo, Russia, Iran. There are lots of names of students who are Muslim—they would be read as Black in the US, and also students who would be read as Asian in the US. I met a student this week from Egypt, another from China, another from Denmark. 

I am self-conscious of asking again for their names, so I try to be cognizant of who I ask to repeat and who I ask to spell their names when we go around the classroom. Sometimes it’s just a matter of their pronunciation—I hear it with my American ears and then they spell it and I’m like, oh! I know this name. They laugh when I try Norwegian pronunciations, but they’re excellent sports and help me work through. After all, my name is Naitnaphit and we work through that together as well. They love that I am learning Norwegian, and help me with my pronunciation, especially when I say Norwegian words that help explain what I am doing in the country. I write down students’ names and where they’re sitting so that later in the workshop I can refer to them by name. This has impressed every teacher in every workshop. They can’t believe I would go to so much trouble. But I stand by my method: I want students to feel seen and recognized. This starts with their names. And in showing them I’m trying to learn their names, I am also opening myself up to vulnerability: the students have to teach me the pronunciations of their names and the pronunciations of Norwegian words. We start the workshop by getting to know each other and disarming each other of what’s intimidating.

Because I value relationships so much, it’s hard to only be in the classrooms for one workshop, but sometimes I go back to the same school and students I’ve met and conducted workshops for will see me in the hallway or in the cafeteria. They’ll recognize me and either call me by name (!) or just come up and say hi. This feels awesome that they remember me. I ask them about how they’re doing and what they’re learning about now. It feels good for both of us to be recognized. I am glad to know that I have carried over this relationship building into my teaching in Norway. I am glad to know that this really is a teaching value for me, regardless of where and what I am teaching.

I have also been thinking a lot about my teaching in ungdomsskolen (8th-10th grades) and videregående skolen (11th-13th grades) (I think that’s how you make those plural—we are just starting to learn plurals in my language class this week). I left the high school classroom in 2016 and so am approaching 10 years since I have taught secondary students. Yet I teach teachers how to teach secondary students. Even though I haven’t been the teacher of record in a secondary classroom for almost 10 years. I am so self-conscious of this fact, even though I have been teaching for 22 years and taught secondary for 13 of those years. 

It isn’t just the amount of time that makes me self-conscious of how long I’ve been out of the secondary classroom. Think back to what has happened in and since the 2016-2017 school year (the first year I was in grad school). Trump has been elected twice, we lived through a global pandemic, we are living through the largest threat to American democracy in my lifetime, Moms for Liberty and other watch groups threaten the stability of our classrooms, censorship is on the rise, schools have been stripped of funding, deij programs are being disbanded and stripped of their funding. What does it even feel like to be a secondary teacher right now? This is why I work with partner teachers in secondary classrooms and try to pair every university preparation class I teach with a secondary teacher. 

But I cannot actually know what secondary teachers go through. Nor can I know from my 45 workshops a semester. But it’s been really fun to go into secondary classrooms and teach secondary students again. Especially when they are all English Language Learners, which I have never before done in my US teaching experience. Let me say that again: every student in every class I teach in Norway (secondary students, teachers-in-training, and teachers) is an English Language Learner (except for one teacher I’ve met who is American). In my own professional development last spring, I wished / wondered out loud about how to get more experience teaching English Language Learners. Well, my wish has been granted. 

It’s been fun to remind myself of strategies I used to use with English Language Learners and to hone those skills. It requires me to have way more visuals in my teaching. I have students take notes. I write stuff down on the board. The notes and the board work help students connect what a word sounds like with how it’s written and spelled. I don’t write abbreviations on the board so that students can connect the oral language to the written language. Students and teachers compliment me on my “clear board writing,” but it has to be so students can connect the sounds and the letters that make those sounds. 

I find myself asking students about which keywords we should underline in sentences and how to define words—things I don’t ask the university students I teach. I ask students which words are unfamiliar and need defining. I have to think about how to define words for students who know a lot of English words from the socials they’re on, but don’t know as many words we use in school. In my Systems of Oppression workshop, we have to define: oppression, ideological oppression, interpersonal oppression, institutional oppression, and internalized oppression. We talk about dominant groups. We talk about identities. I share contemporary examples of oppression in the US and make them share with me contemporary examples of oppression in Norway. We have to work systematically through these ideas. I’ve been asked to define the word “harm.” 

In the Slang workshop, they tell me about their slang and I have to find the words to explain the etymology of that slang. They’re amazed that their slang comes from somewhere. I have to explain why the n-word isn’t for anyone to just use, but to English Language Learners who live in a country that didn’t have legal enslavement of their own citizens. The other day I found myself explaining where “clock it” comes from. Haha even 6 7. We study language, we study history, we study contemporary instantiations of whatever we’re talking about. This week after the three Systems workshops at Malakoff VGS in Moss I fell asleep on the train on the way home. Then I fell asleep while waiting for my snack to digest so that I could go on a run. That turned into a 3-hour nap! The last time I was this tired was as a full-time teacher. And I’m not even the students’ full-time teacher! 

But it’s good to remind myself of the work that goes into teaching secondary students. It’s been really fun. It’s been really fun to remind myself not just that I love teaching, but I love the kind of teaching that I get to do: I get to teach learners more about themselves, more about others, more about the world. I get to teach learners about injustice, that it exists and how it persists, how to disrupt the systems that allow injustice to thrive. I get to teach teachers-in-training and teachers how to humanize students in the ways we teach writing, in the ways we offer feedback to student writers. I am literally living the dream.

Okay, the last thing that’s been on my mind this week, which feels kind of random, is my reading of James by Percival Everett. I’m reading it for book club, and have been looking forward to reading it, as I used to have to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in American Lit & Comp when I taught high schoolers. If you recall from reading Huck Finn, Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi River, mostly because Huck wants to go adventuring. James first follows closely the events of Huck Finn, then highlights James’ experience after he loses Huck in a series of unfortunate events. I am obsessed with this book, not just because I love remixes. But I love the way Everett is writing about language and the power of writing and just the whole story he’s created around James. I’m going to include some excerpts below that I just cannot stop thinking about (the two from Chapter 7 are two consecutive pages). 

If you haven’t read this book, especially if you’re going to NCTE in Denver in November, read this book. Everett is the Thursday evening keynote address that kicks off the conference. I am so sad I’m going to miss him and want notes if you are able to get to his address. (I have been wanting Mychal Threets to be at NCTE for like 10 years and I cannot believe that they’re going to keynote as well this year. And Robin Wall Kimmerer? Queen. You’re killing me, Denver NCTE.)