Dreher High School

The gym at Dreher High School

So, today has been an adventurous day! We've been to Dreher High School, which is a high school with approximately 1150 students and 70 teachers (that's half the amount of teachers we've got in a school the same size!).  The school has approximately 58 % black students - I don't like to refer to groups of people as "blacks" and "whites", but they do that all the time here. It has been a day of many reflections, but all in all I would have to say that a 17-year old in DHS is not that different from a 17-year old in Rælingen vgs :) However, there are things that I have seen today that I think are really great, and that I would like to try out at home, and then there are things that I find strange and also a bit saddening.

A big difference between high school and videregående skole is of course the fact that the high school students are divided into classes based on academic achievement. We've had discussions about whether or not this is a good thing in Norway as well, so it was quite interesting to experience it in real life. And I would have to say that there are pros, but there are definitely cons as well. What is good about organizing classes this way is of course that you get to adapt the level of what you are teaching to a more academically homogenous group. However, after having attended both AP English (Advanced Placement - the highest level), English Honors (the middle level) and English CP (College Preparatory - the lowest level), I would have to say that this seems to be a system that gives lots of opportunities to the students with the best academic achievements, but which puts students into categories that I'm not comfortable with. My observations today are not, however, completely transferable to Norway. The main reason for this is that South Carolina still struggles with huge inequalities between "blacks" and "whites".

So, for our first class today we had AP English - 18 students, 1 African-American! Second class was English Honours - approximately 50/50 "blacks" and "whites". Last class was English CP - 19 students, 1 white! Just to give you an example of difference in academic level: In the first class the students started off with a test. This test was a mix of both very advanced vocabulary and writing an argumentative essay - all in 40 minutes. Their homework for next class was to read 7 (!) essays and analyze them. (I hope some of my students are reading this...:)) However, in the English CP class they started off learning how to make correct sentences by adding capital letters, commas and full stops... 

The class I felt most at home in was the English Honours class. The teacher in this class had the students work much the same way that I do. They did different things, but what I really enjoyed were oral presentations on literary analysis held by the students. These students are continuously reading books and the teacher told me that she required her students to read at least 75 pages of a book a week. Imagine!!! I am grateful if I can get my students to read one book per year!!! (Not talking about school books here...)

At lunch. I felt I was in "da hood":)

Another thing that is an obivous difference between Norway and the US is the fact that the teachers have their own classroom here. This means that when the students enter a classroom, he/she steps into the teacher's area and is his/her "guest". Once again, there are pros and cons, but the idea of having my own classroom where I could keep all my stuff and not having to drag everything all across the school is very alluring. The assistant principal, however, pointed out to us that there are great challenges connected to having all the students changing classrooms at the same time because unwanted situations escalate easier. But this is not an unknown problem in many Norwegian schools either... Another downside of this "teacher's classroom"-organization is of course the lack of cooperation between the teachers. There didn't really seem to be any arenas suitable for teacher cooperation and interaction. However, this is the land of individuality, so I'm not very surprised by that.

There is so much more I could say about what I've seen today, but I'm going to stop here. I have to prepare my presentation for Hammond on Thursday. Tomorrow will be packed with lectures at USC, and I am sure that is going to be really interesting.