Read time: approximately 8 minutes

This week

• Monday, 13 April Had the morning in Colorado and then in the early evening flew to Iceland.
• Tuesday, 14 April I landed in Iceland and then flew to Oslo. Took the train home to Halden. 
• Wednesday, 15 April my last Norwegian language class. Also facilitated a teacher workshop at Halden VGS on effective assessment design. Workshop 3 of 4 in the series.
• Thursday, 16 April checked in with an instructor on the workshop I’m doing for her class (research methods). Finished prepping for next week’s workshops in Trondheim and Bergen.
• Friday, 17 April facilitated what I think are my last two Systems of Oppression workshops for 9th graders at Haugeåsen Ungdomsskole in Fredrikstad.
• Saturday, 18 April debriefed the week’s workshops and got ready for Sunday.
• Sunday, 19 April took a cross-country train to Trondheim!

I came back from the States this week and my workshops are winding down. As of right now, I don’t have any workshops scheduled in May and I don’t anticipate any bookings, so it looks like April might mark the end of my teaching here in Norway. I’ve been thinking more about things I want to take back.

This week was my last Norwegian language class. The class’s official last class is Wed, 22 April, but I will be on a plane from Trondheim to Bergen, on the west side of the country, so I won’t be in class. Last semester, I was in class almost every week and I think I could probably count on the fingers of one hand—probably fewer—how many classes I missed. It helped that there were two sections of the class that were offered because if I was going to miss the Thursday section, I could go to the Tuesday section. This semester, because there are only 8 of us I think, it’s only offered on Wednesdays. And I can count on one hand and maybe a couple fingers of the other how many classes I’ve made it to this semester. Which is a bummer because I like being a student and I like learning Norwegian. I almost didn’t go to class this week because I’ve missed so many this semester, but I followed the same advice I give my own students: go to class.

It was a hard class. Not just because I’ve missed so much class and was lost for most of it. This I expected. What I didn’t expect was my teacher’s attitude. She wasn’t angry with us, but she was clearly frustrated that we didn’t know things. She made comments about how my classmates and I had missed class. She sighed audibly in frustration. She said things like, you should know this or this is obvious. She spoke way too much Norwegian without offering other supports to help us understand. At one of our breaks I almost just left I was so frustrated and disappointed. 

I understand the frustration when students don’t come to class. I get that as teachers, we not only have to catch them up, but we also have to adjust our lessons so that we might have to reteach or review or go slower because there are people who show up who weren’t there last time (or the time before that or the time before that). We might have a tight syllabus and having to slow down or review or reteach messes up that calendar. 

But also, there are reasons why I’m not coming to class. For me as a teacher, I don’t need to know those reasons that students have, unless they want to share them with me. I just want them to come to class. This year I have had a good experience being reminded of what it feels like to be a student.

This week I also taught what I think is my last Systems of Oppression workshop to two 9th grade classes in Fredrikstad. I think they went well. I also wrote a draft of a manuscript for Communicare, a Scandinavian practitioner journal published out of the Center where I work. The Østfold Roving Scholar (my position) typically contributes to this journal, and this year I invited a couple other Rover mates to write together. I wrote a draft of the manuscript on the train to Trondheim and it was a nice opportunity to reflect on how I have run this workshop, the challenges of teaching about difference in Norway, but also how I have made adjustments over the year to produce a workshop that helps students understand how systems of oppression persist. 

In my teaching in the States, I don’t have the luxury of running the same topic for class two dozen times in a row, so I’m still thinking about what I can draw on in the creation and facilitation of these workshops that might shape my teaching next year. Multimodality in the classroom for sure, using texts and images. Lots of different discussion structures. But these things also helped to make the workshop successful. Maybe it’s about trusting myself, trusting that even if I haven’t run a workshop two dozen times I’ve been teaching for two dozen years and understand how teaching and learning work. Yes, of course there is still more to learn. But I would like to trust myself more that I know what I’m doing and so don’t have to overexert myself planning for class. I think this year also solidified for me how much I value building relationships in the classroom, even if it’s for a single workshop. Building community is important to learning!

When I was in the States my partner also suggested that we keep a sabbath every week, one that we create for ourselves, where we don’t do any work, but instead rest and hike and engage in hobbies. This sounds great. If I can trust myself more as a teacher and not spend an inordinate amount of time planning, I can rest restfully.

This week I also noticed that my friends in different countries respond differently when I ask them the question of how they are doing. My friends in the US tend to start by telling me how work is going. Not all of them, but most of them. My friends in Norway (and in other countries) tend to start by telling me about what’s going on in their lives. Because they have things going on in their lives besides work that they want to talk about! They have hobbies and goals and just other things going on! I want this for myself! 

This week, when friends and colleagues asked me about how things were going, I tried to answer with not work:

• I surprised myself with being confident enough to buy something new at the supermarket, was pleasantly surprised, and had dinner for the whole week with just that one purchase (I was looking for rotisserie chicken but they were out at the store so instead bought a bag of what I assumed were grilled chicken legs. Turns out it was four servings of legs and thighs attached to each other, that had already been seasoned and I just cooked them in the oven. They were actually pretty good. And I didn’t have to deal with the white meat that I don’t particularly care for in the rotisserie chicken!)
• My puzzle is really hard and I need to work on it. Do you know how many pieces a 1000-piece puzzle is? 1000 pieces! That’s a lot of pieces! I am making such slow progress and I’m traveling for most of May so I need to get on it when I’m at home! 
• I just finished re-reading The Joy Luck Club. And I really enjoyed it. I laughed. I cried. I had lots of feelings about my parents, especially my mom, and her immigration to the United States, and why she did it and why she stayed and what she sacrificed for me and my brother, and how I have lived up to her expectations and sacrifices. I want to read more books like this. Someone help me find more books like this. I texted my friend about this and together we commiserated about being firstborn daughters of immigrant parents. 

This week is a big week in Trondheim and Bergen! I’m looking forward to connecting with other researchers and talking together about our research! And I get to connect with people over shared meals and sightseeing! And seeing Trondheim! It’ll be my first time!

Thanks for reading; I’ll catch you next week!