Sweden: Primary and Secondary Observations (Map Mates Update)
As part of the partnership between Classroom Bridges and Map Mates, I’ll be sharing Becky’s blogs here too. Check out her recent visit to Sweden below!
[Original post and images on Map Mates by Becky Searls]
While in beautiful Gothenburg, Sweden, I had the opportunity to visit 2 schools: 1 primary and 1 secondary. The primary visit was with a great veteran teacher, Unni, at Gamla Påvelundsskolan (“Old Påvelunds School”).
Unni has been teaching in the Swedish system for over 20 years and has a wealth of experience to draw from. She has taught all grade levels K-9 and served as a part time administrator. Her students absolutely adore her and call her by her first name, as all students in Sweden do with their teachers. My impression after shadowing Unni for a morning is that having her as a teacher is a lot like having a wonderfully caring grandmother as your teacher. She has retired 4 times but continues to return to the classroom as a long term substitute, which is the role she is currently filling.
As a side note, it’s interesting that due to Scandinavia’s (in particular Sweden’s) fantastic parental leave policies, when a sub is there for a maternity leave of absence, they may have the students for up to 18 months, which may span multiple school years, as in Unni’s case. She was wrapping up the students’ 2nd grade year and will be with them until April of their 3rd grade year next school year, since primary teachers generally loop with their students for the first 3–4 (sometimes 6) years. That really drives home how incredible the parental leave policies in this part of the world are!
Unni welcomed me and gave me a quick tour of their school, which is in the midst of being rebuilt. Even their temporary school was very modern and well designed with up to date furniture, technology, and spacious classrooms.
Once Unni’s second graders arrived they started the day with some silent reading to calm down after their P.E. lesson, and then she announced my visit and I spent some time introducing myself, showing where I was from on the map and explaining my project and answering questions they had for me (what’s your favorite color? where are you going to go this year? what’s your favorite country? and a million other insightful and mundane questions, like any second grade class would have. Coincidentally, this was the day I ended up losing my voice?) Unni translated for me since students begin formal English lessons in 3rd grade in her school (although many already understand and speak it at some level due to travel and media exposure).
After our Q&A, students spent about 20 minutes working on adding to their end-of-year portfolios, which was fascinating to observe in my opinion. They all went and got their cubby drawers from various corners of the room and then proceeded to sift through their work and add it to various year-long learning portfolios documenting their progress with math, science, writing, etc. This process was entirely self-directed and Unni simply helped them with a few logistics (e.g. difficulty with getting a years’ worth of hole-punched pages to line up in order to bind them for the final product). Otherwise, students were very independent in adding to their collections of work. I also learned during my visit that students in Sweden do not receive traditional grades until about 10th grade, and so progress is shown through these bodies of work and that parent-teacher conferences include and are led by students who also set goals for their academic progress. Awesome!
The final part of my visit was an unexpectedly fun glimpse into the school lunch system in Sweden. I was invited to lunch along with Unni and her class. She explained that all students eat the hot lunch provided by the school (this is compulsory) and I was pleasantly surprised to note that there were no less than SIX veggies in addition to a fish entree. Students served themselves, which is a reform in the last few years intended to encourage more student independence and responsibility — by serving themselves, Unni explained, if a child does not finish the food on their plate it is fair and expected for teachers (who eat the same school-provided lunch alongside their students) to ask them “Why have you not cleared your plate? Nobody has served you anything you do not like or did not ask for. Do not waste!” I also noticed several students getting up to serve themselves a second helping of peas, potatoes, or fish. So refreshing to see children voluntarily consuming real, fresh food! It really puts into perspective how inappropriate some of our cafeteria options for our students are in the US — pizza, chips, soda, candy, and ice cream? How will that help students focus and learn in the second half of the day??
…Keep reading more about Becky’s visit to Sweden schools on Map Mates here!
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