By golly! How about that?

Well, we have almost finished our fourth day here in South Carolina, and it has been another day of many impressions. As on Monday, we spent most of our day at USC for lectures. Today's topics were writing and politics.

So, for our first session we had the pleasure of getting to know Dr Victoria Oglan, who gave us a very interesting lecture on writing. She has been a teacher for 40 (!!!) years, and she has a great passion for getting students to write more. The way she has made her students more interested in writing is by using a workshop method. This is a bit complicated to explain in a blog, but one of the things she introduced to us was the "Writer's Notebook". A "Writer's Notebook" is simply a plain notebook that eventually becomes a collection of different texts produced by its owner. The way she uses this notebook is to give her students 15 minutes of each class to write something spontaneously. They are not to focus on spelling or grammar - just to get thoughts on paper. Here are some examples of tasks she would give her students:

- "Write down a list of things you might want to think about later"

- "Play with words you like!"
- "Familiy stories that you know orally - write them down!"
- "Write down snippets of interesting dialogue that you have eavesdropped on"

Dr Oglan's lecture was very inspiring and I really liked her motto: "Learners are teachers and teachers are learners". It will be my goal to remember this and try to live by it when I teach.

After lunch today we had a fascinating lecture on "Politics of the South" by Dr Smoak. She is a "native" South Carolinian, and gave us a very candid update on some of the background for the political situation in the southern USA today. We all know that this part of the country is ultra-conservative, and after today's lesson I can better see how it has become so. This has to do with the geography and the colonial traditions in the South, the agricultural economy, racial issues (slavery), religious traditions and single party loyalty. Dr Smoak's main concern, however, is that things aren't moving forward in the tempo that they should. There is still too much racism and discrimination going on. It is still "The Good Old Boys" who have the power...

Due to the content of Dr Smoak's lecture it was extra interesting to listen to our next visitor, namely a local politician called Shell Suber. Mr Suber works as a professional lobbyist, and he also works as a campaign manager for some of the Republican candidates, for example John McCain in the last presidential election. To get his view on politics in the South was of course very interesting after our previous lecturer, and I would have to say he made a pretty good impression. He had nuanced opinions, and was less one-sided than I had expected. We didn't go too deep into e.g. the race discussion, but he seemed to be a fairly liberal republican. (I wasn't entirely sold after his visit... I know too many people of his kind to believe him 100%.)

When we were finished at USC we went to a store called "Educational Wonderland"', which is a huge store with lots of pedagogical teaching material. Most of it was elementary and middle level, but I found some things that I am really looking forward to using. From now on I am not going to grade my students' papers - they will now only get stickers that say "Way to Go!", "Admirable", "Awesome Work"¨and "Extra Special" :)

We also managed to stop by Barnes & Noble (bookstore) on our way back, and I got several books for Fredrik and Ingrid. They had these great books for children with lots of pictures and large sized letters. I also got a couple for my niece since she according to my sister "hates" English - so, Trine, the help is on its way to Kongsberg!

So this is it for today... If you are wondering about the blog title, it has to do with the language here. I constantly pick up on phrases and pronunciation that I love, and so today's absolute favorite expression is of course "by golly". Used for example like this: "Where're y'all from?" "We're from Norway." "By golly! Now, how 'bout that! Isn't that wonderful!" (Just to give you an idea:))

I might not be able to write tomorrow, since we are going to Hammond to give our presentations on Norway (really excited about that), and then we are heading off for the theater in the evening. But I will be back with another update as soon as I can. (By the way I have changed the settings, so that it should now be possible to comment on my blog entries.)