First Week of School

It is official, I have a Norwegian job! I went to work a couple of days during the previous week. Thursday and Friday were teacher work days. Lots of meetings and a bit of time for planning. As the year 10 teacher this year, I am also in charge of the year 10 class room. This means setting up the room, decorating, assigning lockers and desks, etc. The students stay in their classroom for most of the day and teachers move to them. It is certainly going to be strange not having my own classroom this year. Since we don't have classrooms, all the teachers have a desk in a workroom. This is also a bit of a change but hasn't been bad so far.

This past week was my first week at school with students. My normal schedule this year is quite different than I am used to. I have pretty full days on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays are short days though. Students have science only 2 times per week, one double lesson (1 1/2 hours) and one single lesson (45 minutes) each week. I think that is going to take some getting used to!

It was not a 'normal' week though. Monday I spent the first part of the day with my year 10 students, getting to know them, talking about rules and expectations, things like that. After lunch we took the entire middle school (about 55 students) to a local park for the remainder of the day. It turned out to be a really nice, sunny day and the students all seemed to have a good time. Tuesday was a regular day, which for me means a double lesson of year 10 science at 1pm and an after school meeting. A pretty easy Tuesday! On Wednesday, we took the middle school out for their forest day. This involved a 12km round trip hike toward the Bymarka area outside of town. Bymarka is the recreational area nearest to Trondheim. In the summer months a lot of people go hiking in the area. There are also a few small lakes that people go swimming in. In the winter months people ride the tram up and go cross country skiing. The hike up is quite steep but very pretty once you get out of town. The view from the top is supposed to be wonderful. It was really foggy on Wednesday though, so our view was not too great. The students all seemed to have a good time. I was exhausted by the time I got home that night! Thursday and Friday were also 'normal' days. Thursday I have two lessons in the morning, single science lessons for year 9 and year 10. After that I am done for the day! Friday is a bit busier for me, I see my year 10s for religion, supervise study hall for year 9 and then have a triple lesson of home economics with my year 10s. We made rice krispie treats this week! Next week will be a normal week and I will actually see all my classes and be able to start my lessons. The students have been great so far and my class sizes are wonderful! My biggest class has 19 students. They come from all over the world, though many of them have at least one Norwegian parent.

On the way up the hill!

One of the lakes we passed on the way up the hill.

Pretty country side. This was about 40 minutes form the top of the hill.

The "view" from the top. We were actually in the clouds at this point in time.