Posted in Journey entries on Nov 29th, 2008 No Comments »
Outside a preschool in Rostock; the former Eastern Germany has a very strong government-funded preschool system.
I was fortunate to be able to visit with the sister and nephew of a friend in Port Townsend. She’s been in Germany since 1992 and her son was born there, in Rostock. She is a university senior lecturer [...]
Posted in Journey entries on Nov 26th, 2008 No Comments »
Estonia is wired. Every park, café, restaurant, hotel has free wifi connections. The state government sees the value of technology in the schools and there are SmartBoards and document projectors connected to the teacher computers in many of the classrooms.
The school I visited is not a typical Estonian school, but the state determines the curriculum [...]
Posted in Journey entries on Nov 26th, 2008 No Comments »
Finnish Education: a contrast to expectations
There were several things I was expecting to see in Finland, and found quite the opposite in some cases. To begin with, I had expected a largely monocultural country, but found a great deal of diversity, especially in the city and in the suburb we visited to the east of [...]
Posted in Journey entries on Nov 15th, 2008 No Comments »
Braedstrup Folkeskole, grades 0-9
Braedstrup is a government-run school and follows the national curriculum. Even so, they have opportunities for students to pursue interests and are able to be flexible when visitors come, opportunities appear, or crises happen. There are three buildings for Braedstrup: the “little” building where the children in grades 0-2 have [...]
Posted in Journey entries on Nov 12th, 2008 No Comments »
ØE US Elections unit
Many of the students at Østerskov were interested in the United States election. They read the newspapers in the morning and see what the media has published about the debates and the final statements from the candidates. There were short biographies of the two major candidates the weekend before the election, [...]
Posted in Journey entries on Nov 11th, 2008 No Comments »
Each teacher group has planning every other week. They spend a total of eight weeks in block time planning throughout the school year in planning, compared to the total of five weeks at a rate of 45 minutes per day in our school district. They also have breaks during the day (see the blog, [...]
Posted in Journey entries on Nov 11th, 2008 No Comments »
Daily Schedule at Østerskov Efterskole
7:00 wake up
7:15 teachers go around knocking doors and wishing students “godmorgen” (good morning)
7:30 students meet outside for PE activity:
running, hill climbing, jumping jacks, pushups, crunches
7:50 breakfast, shower, room cleaning
8:30 morning meeting
8:45 room cleaning
9:00 lesson 1—(electives on Mondays: bicycling, crafts, drama, roleplaying
10:10 break
10:25 lesson 2 (electives continue [...]
Posted in Journey entries on Nov 4th, 2008 No Comments »
The second week of our visit at Østerskov Efterskole, their week 44, the tenth graders went off to visit potential highschools and trade schools, while the ninth graders studied the Middle Ages. Students and staff were encouraged to dress the part, and the costume room was opened for use. Students signed up for “families,” which [...]
