Day 3

Or should I say, Day 1. 8:30 I was at the school, being picked up by my supervisor Lena in the central hall. Within half an hour, I had met the principal, the heads of the IB program, several science teachers, a school pass was organized, I knew where the coffee machines and the different classrooms were and I was ready for my first lesson observation. Are you still with me? Things tend to keep going _smoothly_ here.
First lesson observation: Cecilia taught a pre-IB class. It was early in the morning (9.05) and the students just have had Easter break, but wow.. what are these students quiet. When the teacher talks, you listen, and take notes. No disciplinary measurements needed from the teacher's side at all. I must say I was pretty amazed.
Second lesson observation: 10.15, Lena teaches an IB class muscle contraction & nervous cells (action potentials etc.). It is a class of 9, they sit down, open their notebooks/MacBooks, she starts writing on the whiteboard (seriously *writing* on the witeboard, using up all of it, and it is about 3 meters long, wiping parts and using the space again...) and the students take notes without comment. Learning as it seems, is the student's own responsibility, and they tend to take it very seriously. When Lena wants to check their understanding, she asks some questions, when students need something clarified, they raise their hand. It all runs so... smooth (I'm starting to see a pattern here).
After this lesson, there was a break, in which there was time for lunch. A school lunch: dinner. You can take as much as you like for one coupon. I noticed the students were not handing in any coupons and asked why: 'oh, the lunch is free for the students', free school, free lunch, why don't we have that.
I am for sure switching my dinner to lunch time, groceries are expensive and I really don't need two hot meals a day (and I really don't fancy cooking for myself that much).
Third lesson observation: 13.25, Cecilia teaches another pre-IB class and thank god, she asks me to sit in the back because these are a hand ful, according to her... So I took place in the back, and watched how she got the classes attention to start the lesson, within three words they were quiet (hand ful of whut?). She too taught using the whiteboard, and the students started taking notes.

The intrinsic motivation seems to be very high in these scholars. I have hardly seen any disciplinary measurements taken. The classes I observed today were all taught in more or less the same way, the teacher talks / explains using the whiteboards, students are quietly taking notes. Sometimes the teacher asks questions to check for understanding, then continues explaining the topic. I wonder if they ever use differentiation in their lessons (give different tasks to different levels) or how they cater for differences in needs of different students. This I hope to find out on Friday, as tomorrow there won't be any classes for me to observe!

After school today, I decided to have a walk around town. First, I fueled up at a coffee shop (systrar & bröder) with kladdkaka (it was VERY good) and cappuccino. Then, I started walking passing teaterparken, the opera, another park, into & through the triangeln shopping mall (nothing too special there), via Södra Förstadsgatan (one of the shopping streets) to the Regementsgatan. Currently I rent an appartment in one of the streets crossing the Regementsgatan, I only had to walk back to that street, 2 kms down the road. All in all a very nice stroll around town. When I came home, Stella proposed to go fetch a bike for me at her friends place (payed the rent with Dutch liquorice, awesome deal!) close to the turning torso.


So now that this day is over, I can really say that I am all set for the three weeks to come!