Read time: approximately 16 minutes

This week

• Tuesday, 11 November stayed overnight at a hotel close to the Oslo airport for an early morning workshop
• Wednesday, 12 November facilitated a teacher workshop as part of their professional learning day; traveled to Oslo to run some errands: picked up business cards from the Fulbright office and a book a bookstore had ordered for me
• Thursday, 13 November traveled back to the Oslo airport to pick up Jeremy, my partner!
• Friday, 14 November traveled back to the Oslo airport to fly to Paris for the weekend with Jeremy, to visit his cousin, and his cousin’s family

In graduate school, I had a professor who told us that one of the goals of his class was “to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.” He basically wanted us to examine teaching from new angles and thus make it strange. He also wanted us to take what we might not think to do in classrooms—because they were contrary to what everyone else was doing yet moved toward more equitable classroom spaces—and make those practices familiar.

Since leaving that class and graduate school I have thought about the phrase often, especially that first part, to make the familiar strange, particularly when examining what I take for granted. This week I had four experiences of making the familiar strange and that’s what I want to write about: being American, my apartment, visiting Paris, and teaching. 

This week, my husband arrived in Norway for a three-week visit! Hooray! Since we met and started dating in the summer of 2002, there have been a few times we’ve lived apart from each other: in the second and third years of our relationship he lived in Atlanta and I lived in Jacksonville, Florida; when I taught for a couple summers in Brooklyn he stayed in Atlanta; when I started at Michigan for graduate school I moved to Ann Arbor, his hometown, while he stayed in Atlanta. But we have never lived this far away from each other in geographic distance (4623 miles) and/or time (Norway is 8 hours ahead of Mountain Time). Despite not seeing each other for four months, we fell back into our rhythms, which felt nice. The time away has even allowed us to stop and evaluate negative rhythms and patterns we had fallen into and help us work toward moving them permanently out of our relationship.

What felt strange when we saw each other was how, in just four months, I had lost a handful of my American habits but noticed in his actions—and the actions of other Americans at the airport. The first was the kind of space Americans take up. In my What Does it Mean to be American? To be Norwegian? workshop, I talk about how Americans seem to require more space, and I think this reflects how big our country is and how much space we have, especially in Colorado, where we live. If you live in a city on the East Coast like Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, I think you might have a different concept of space. But even in those cities, Americans don’t necessarily like to be very physically close to strangers. Europe isn’t like this. I noticed when I lived abroad in Morocco in college and when I’ve traveled in Japan, Thailand, and VietNam that other people outside the US aren’t like this either. Americans don’t walk as close to strangers on the street or wait in line as close to each other. They talk a lot louder. They take up more space even just by their auras. When I was doing a Slang workshop at a school a few weeks ago, a student told me at the break that just watching how I moved and talked gave her an understanding of American culture and my Americanness: Americans require a lot of space. When my husband and I sat down on the train to Halden, my town, we sat at one of those places where there are four seats facing each other with a table in between the two sets of seats. There wasn’t anyone else in the other two seats and my partner just threw his backpack on the table. I kind of flinched at this moment. I have never seen a Norwegian person do this: they tuck their backpacks above the seat or basically behind their legs when sitting. It made sense that my husband did this because he’s American, but it gave me a start when I witnessed it. 

When we got to my apartment in Halden it was really cool to show my partner what he had only seen virtually. My apartment is huge, even by my American standards, and it was fun to share it with someone else. But what I noticed when talking to my partner inside my apartment is that because the ceilings are so high and the walls are so bare, my voice echoes. I have lived in this apartment for four months and have even had a few people over a couple of times and I have never noticed that this happens. I guess I spend more quiet time in my apartment than talking to others, and it was just interesting how my perspective and experience changed when putting just one more person in the space.

On Friday, I traveled back to the Oslo airport for the fourth time this week. Lol. Nothing strange in this familiarity. Jeremy and I were spending the weekend with his cousin and his family. I studied abroad in Paris in college and have been back several times since and I have always loved being in Paris. But this is the first time I have been back to Paris after spending a significant amount of time (like not just vacation) in another country that’s not the US before coming to Paris. When I first moved to Norway and didn’t yet know simple phrases in Norwegian, my mind would reach to French to say things like ‘excusez-moi’ or ‘merci.’ But now, after being in Norway for four months, ‘unnskyld’ (I’m sorry / excuse me) and ‘takk’ (thank you) come to me first. In Paris, I noticed reaching for these Norwegian words, even though I absolutely know the French ones and actually think more in French than Norwegian. How weird, I thought! French has become the less used and unfamiliar language for me! After a few days I was able to almost exclusively use French, but I kept wanting to use takk instead of merci. It made me think that perhaps the one-syllable word is easier to say, or that because takk is more phonetically similar to thanks I kept reaching for that. But it was weird. I’ve been learning French since I was 14 (so 30 years now!) and wanted to keep saying takk!

It also occurred to me on this trip to Paris that the French I learned is 30 years old. And there are some words and phrases that will always be usable and relevant, but language is always changing, and I’m not regularly exposed to French, so I am unfamiliar with its slang, but also even with common phrases that are changing. I was talking with my cousin’s 15-year-old daughter, and she was saying something about something being a coincidence. But she used the French word ‘azar’ and I was like, whoa, what? And she said it’s a synonym for coincidence. I had never heard this before! And I know from some French accounts on Insta that I follow that you can say common phrases differently from how you learned in French class, but here was a real live speaker of the language being like, yeah, say this instead because that’s what we say now. I know we do this in English and that language change hits every language, but it was a little disorienting, and super cool, to be experiencing it in real time. It made me kind of long to live in France for some more time to buff up my language skills!

Earlier I noted that I’ve been in Norway for four months now. And because I only lived in Paris for one semester, the amount of time I lived in Paris 24 years ago and the amount of time I’ve lived in Norway are getting closer and closer. It makes me a little sad that in a few months I will have lived in Norway for longer and will be much more familiar with Norwegian life and culture than Parisian life and culture. It was also really interesting over the weekend to examine Parisian life from my collected Norwegian experiences, rather than just the one American perspective I always bring to the country. For example, I’ve gotten so used to Norwegian austerity and the ways that Norwegians are reserved around people they don’t really know that I almost forgot, although I was looking forward to, French people not being like this at all. Jeremy, his cousin, and I went to the same bar twice: once Friday night and once Monday night, and the bartender recognized us on Monday night. I was like, I’m already a regular in this bar! We shared jokes! He was so friendly! On the way out he was like, try this new shot I’m making! Guess what’s in it! That was incredibly fulfilling because I’m always looking to meet new people and make connections.

If you’re a regular reader here you might also remember the squeezable brie I found at my Norwegian grocery store the other day? When we were packing for Paris I got very excited in telling my husband about this cheese and that we should bring some for his French cousins. He was like, are you out of your mind? Absolutely not. Do not even mention it to the French. What is happening to you? He said this all in love. So I didn’t bring it. I was so glad I didn’t bring squeeze cheese! How embarrassing that I had even thought of it! The French adore food, and I know this about them, but just a few months in Norway and experiencing and eating Norwegian food in all their austerity had made me forget this very integral part of French life! What is becoming of me?! I’m glad I was reminded this weekend!

Finally, let’s talk about teaching. On Wednesday, I conducted a workshop as part of a teacher professional learning day. The teachers requested the How Systems of Oppression Persist workshop, which is a workshop I have only done before with students. When I talked to the contact teacher for the teacher workshop, I tried to find as much information as possible about the teachers and why they had selected this workshop. After all, I wouldn’t do the same workshop for teachers that I do for students: the teachers have a different level of language acquisition and ostensibly a different understanding of oppression in their society and the world. The contact teacher mentioned that the teachers wanted to better understand from an American “who studies this kind of stuff” why the US is the way it is now, with censorship and racism and guns and how Trump could become president again. And I got really excited about this request because yes! I study this stuff! And yes, I have been looking for more Norwegian teachers to be interested in learning more! Because I’m curious about how that will shape their teaching! And sometimes when I’m invited to do the Systems of Oppression workshop I feel like the teachers are just checking off a diversity box and then moving on. But these teachers wanted background information to help them build knowledge! It was exciting to realize these things, and then I was like, oof, how much time do I have? I recognized that if the teachers wanted to understand the foundations of systems of oppression in the US and to use this knowledge to learn more about the world and shape their teaching, I would have to go all the way back and teach about settler colonialism and chattel slavery and trace that to now.

I opened the workshop as I do all workshops: with a little introduction about myself and then we went around the room so I could get names. The intro question I asked them was, simply: what are you hoping to learn today? This helped me get more information about their learning goals, and I could tailor some of my framing and comments per their desires and requests.

We only had two hours, so I planned for the first hour to talk about settler colonialism and to trace attitudes toward land and people of color as foundational to the ills and systems of privilege, power, and oppression of contemporary society. Then I wanted to spend some time on, and how do we teach these ideas to students, because you’re not just going to give them the information that I was giving to the teachers because, again, different audience: most students are existentially threatened when they learn about systems of oppression, especially if they don’t think they experience them, because they are designed to be invisible. So just telling them they exist isn’t pedagogically sound. Students have to come to this knowledge on their own, so I wanted to recommend some strategies.

At the end of the workshop, as usual, I had learners fill out an exit ticket / learning survey on what they had learned, were still thinking about, questions, and what supported and frustrated their learning. And teachers were learning! Which was so cool, especially because this was the first time I was offering this workshop and when you teach something the first time you just are never really sure of the scope and sequence. But it got me thinking about why teachers need to know this information. Like, how might this information support their teaching, if I was recommending not to just give the same lecture to students as I was giving to teachers.

It occurred to me that the teaching suggestions that I had offered: to listen to where students are at and then respond accordingly, requires a lot of content knowledge and the ability to listen and respond to students. For example, in the student Systems workshop, we define ‘oppression.’ As the teacher, I need to be able to hear what students are saying when they define oppression and offer examples and affirm, extend, and/or redirect. If a student tells me they are oppressed because they are white (which happens in the US and in Norway), I need to first understand that because white and whiteness are dominant identities in Norway, but also that whiteness is a dominant global identity, this child is not being oppressed. But they feel oppressed. And I know why they feel oppressed: they have been taught to believe that rights are a zero-sum game and that others getting more rights mean that they’re losing theirs. But rather than just shutting down the kid, which doesn’t help them understand their own positionalities, I need to know what kinds of questions to ask so that I can help them understand what they don’t understand about history and about themselves.

So I have to understand whiteness and how to maintain relationships with students and be familiar with the pedagogy to build their learning. These three things make up pedagogical content knowledge (pck): knowledge of content, knowledge of students, knowledge of pedagogy. PCK is a specialized kind of knowledge only teachers need to have. But I also realized that it’s not just having PCK, it’s also about an orientation to listening that’s open and inquisitive, listening not just to prove myself right, but to respond appropriately to the student and help move them to understand what they don’t understand—what has actively been hidden from their understanding. This makes me think that in my own teaching, I might need to focus more on making distinctions between the three kinds of knowledge to support preservice teachers’ learning to teach. 

I’ve also never been in a teaching situation where I get to teach something in a secondary classroom, and then I get to work with teachers to build parallel knowledge to teach that thing in the secondary classroom. Actually, maybe we did this in last spring’s Teaching Composition class when we designed the assessments for the students? It’s caused me to start thinking about those parallels. I am not sure there’s a unit-by-unit equivalency that we could do just because you would never be able to teach in teacher prep every unit you might do in secondary, but I wonder what practices I could do in my prep classes that would make more evident the relationship between what we’re doing in the space of teacher preparation and what could happen in secondary. And thinking that perhaps we’ve already done this in the Teaching Comp class makes me think that it’s even more beneficial to partner with a secondary teacher and get teachers-in-training moving between the university and secondary classrooms more often. But there is also something different about the kind of teaching I’m doing in Norway: here I am the teacher in the secondary and teacher / teacher-in-training settings, whereas in the US I’m in the secondary teacher’s classroom with the teachers-in-training, but I’m not secondary teacher. And the secondary teacher plays a different kind of teacher educator role that I do. I wonder if and how we could blur those lines. I’m appreciating how this experience in Norway is making lots of familiar things strange, especially those I’ve been doing for a long time.