Short Tour!
Today was the first day of our short study tour. All DIS students are traveling for three days with their core courses and visiting various sites related to the course topic. My core courses is visiting various schools! Today we visited two different schools on the island of Funnen; a Friskole and then a Teacher's College for a Friskole. A Friskole is much like a private school in the states in the way that parents have to pay for their children to attend. However, the school that we visited costs the parents $150 a month. The schools also receive funding. The Friskole is based of the theories of Grundvist and Kund. I will not go into great detail but to say that motivation, imagination and creativity are seen as incredibly important within the classroom. We were each assigned to speak with a 9th grade student for about 45 minutes. I was impressed with his knowledge about the States and his mature understanding of his own surroundings and nation. The Teacher's College was also a great visit. It was a blast to talk to future educators that were our age! They go to school there for five years with the third year being a student teaching year. I sat in on a "nature class" where groups of students were taking the class to various ecological systems around the campus; a pond, a meadow and a compost bin. The students explained that in their classes are less about memorizing facts and more how to teach the information to their students. I really like this concept especially because it is such a big contrast to the way St. Lawrence approaches teaching educators how to communicate in a classroom.