First day of Skola

Kevin and I began work this week.  Which is great, overwhelming, exhausting and different.  Maybe more so for me as I have been on parental leave for 15 months, but still for both of us.  For example it's 9pm and Kevin is asleep, has been since 8:30pm, something totally unheard of for him.

To some extent it is easy to say that teaching is teaching and kids are kids no matter where you go.  They all struggle to find themselves, understand the world, make it through their education and maybe even look cool doing it.  Teachers everywhere care about their students, stress about the difficulties, try to hold everyone together through the year and enjoy their vacations ;) 

There are cultural differences though, and often so subtle that they can almost be disturbing as a result.  You think you understand something, but not quite, and that is very unsettling for me.  For example, Sweden has released a new curriculum this year.  It is a significant change over past curriculums, grades are assigned as early as Year 6, the grading scheme has gone from G, VG, MVG to A-F where A is the highest and F is a failure, abilities (expectations) are laid out for each subject and topic. 

If you know Ontario education, pretty similar right?  And yet not.  First, grades as early as Year 6 (before it wasn't until Year 9), really? How do you know how someone is doing? How can you measure achievement to the parents? How do you ensure a child reads?  This is a system I will never be part of (as it no longer exists) so I don't know.  Next the grades themselves, A-F, pretty familiar, except they have an E here (which does make sense, so that's a total oversight of someone back home in North American education), and it's entirely a rubric based system.  You don't grade a paper and offer a percentage.  Students abilities are matched on a rubric, or better yet the assignment is prepared in such a way that a student aims for a particular grade they wish to achieve and that is explicitly stated.  Your final grade is not the average of all your grades, but the minimum level you reached.  So if there are 20 expectations and you receive A in 19 of them, but E in 1 your overall grade is an E.  This I have trouble with, probably because I'm a math and science person and averages just make sense to me, plus it doesn't agree with the Swedish ethos of lagom (not to big or too small, just in the middle).  Talking with two of the other new teachers they liken it to swimming or skating where if you could not complete all the skills you did not advance, but mentally it is taking me much more to adjust to.

But see it's just the small things.  I will still teach atomic theory, students will have homework and assignments.  I sure we will argue about forgotten pencils and if their dog ate their homework.  The tripping will be in the things I assume I know and understand.  Wish me luck!