Out of my depth...

This week is turning out to be uncharacteristically busy, mainly due to my having to cover for the teacher who is away in England with some students (who M-H and I will be escorting back to Oslo in a couple of weeks). This involves me acting as jumped-up babysitter to a gaggle of 16 year-olds, persuading them to take an interest in the frankly dry material I have been left with by said teacher. In his considerate way, he set the students the task of translating the poem L'automne into Norwegian. These are students who have had French for ONE TERM. And I am girl who has been learning Norwegian for TWO MONTHS. And it's most definitely not AUTUMN. The problem was confounded by the fact that I was given the material I had to cover on the morning of the lesson. So, as you can imagine, I felt somewhat out of my depth. *Inappropriate lesson alert!*

Somehow I got through it, though it wasn't the most calm I have ever been, let's put it that way. But those two months of chaos at Grimsby Institute have really stood me in good stead! At least here I have a textbook...
This evening I went to see this year's Cannes sensation Entre les murs (The Class). The action takes place in a French inner-city middle school and focuses on one teacher's (mis)adventures as he takes on a new class and attempts to drag them through their school year. It really crystalised for me the stark differences in the teacher-pupil relationship between here in Norway and back in England. I certainly remember that when I was at school, I didn't even consider that teachers were in fact real people, with their own lives and their own problems. For me, to be a good teacher, you really have to be a good actor. Once you're stood up in front of the blackboard and the spotlight is on you, the pupils really have to believe that you are actually outraged that they are chewing gum in class, or that you are scandalised that they spoke without putting up their hand. Because your job as a teacher is to prepare them for real life, basically to make them into someone who can function and succeed in society. For this they need not just subject knowledge, but also the notion of respecting other peoples' ideas and being able to communicate with those around them. As a teacher I feel like I should be a model for them to follow, i.e. fair, consistent and tolerant. I don't think the intimate details about your teacher's personal life are really relevant. The most poignant scene in the film for me was when one of the boys asked the (male) teacher, "So... people are saying that you like men. Is that true?". The way he diffused the situation was just amazing, turning the question back to this boy and making him question why he really had an issue with the fact that he may or may not be gay. The film ended with this boy being expelled, much to the horror of his teacher, who, when he saw the boy's home situation, could understand why he behaved the way he did. He also knew that if he were expelled, there really was no hope for him. It questioned whether these sort of sanctions really work, because ultimately they lead him to the point of no return and he dropped off the face of the earth, as far as the teachers were concerned. The point I'm really trying to make here is that as a teacher you walk the tightrope between your role as representative of society's factory of good citizens, and appreciating that your pupils are as fatally flawed as you are. The comparison with Norway comes when I observe teachers here really acting as mates with their pupils, which undermines them when it comes to setting down guidelines for good behaviour or attempting to motivate students to work independently. An example of this is that some teachers give their class their mobile number so they can text them if they are ill and not coming to school. If ever that were a license to take advantage! A lot of the students at my school are really there for an easy ride; the expectations aren't there so they simply aren't motivated to work. The film was also made in the style of a documentary, and was actually largely unscripted. This meant that it was uncomfortably close to reality! The fact that all the action took place within the school walls (hence the French title I guess...) helped to intensify the feeling that what you see of the pupils is really only half the story, and the same of the teachers.

Winter's back... and so is the nudity

January is white again! We had a snow storm last night, which meant that this morning I stepped out into a veritable obstacle course on my way to work. Of course the bus was late, so I missed most of the Norwegian lesson Marie-Hélène and I had planned with Sigve (one of the teachers kind enough to endure our faltering pronunciation). The journey back was a little less eventful, most of the paths having been cleared by then by the ever-present snow ploughs.
The inhabitants of Marseille aren't quite so used to this kind of event, as evidenced by this video, which M-H showed our French class. They were fascinated to find out that people didn't go to work for two days, just because of a bit of snow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDnYL059PW4
As an English person it's quite hard for me not to feel a little bit excited at the sight of some real snow! Must keep childlike glee contained...

You might be glad to hear that I have been keeping my New Year's Resolution - I have been swimming a total of twice (!) since the last post. We go to a lovely new pool, which is absolutely huge! It exposes my country bumpkinness that I have never swum in an olympic-size pool... it is ace! Though very disappointing when you count the number of lengths you have covered in an hour. So far I'm not finding it too boring, the only downside is having other people there. Some of them think it's 'chat time' when they are swimming along. Grrr. Is it rude to swim under people to get past them if you can't overtake? I think so. But I'm definitely gonna do it now I have goggles.

I've got to say, the most interesting part of the pool is the changing rooms. After years of 'the knicker trick' (where you put your swimming costume on over your knickers and then cunningly remove them, ensuring no unsightly bits are revealed... just me?!) and tiny changing cubicles, it is refreshing to do things à la norvègienne i.e. just BE NAKED. Yes, in front of OTHER WOMEN! I don't know what it is about being British that stops us from admitting we have anything under our clothes. Many of us are perfectly happy to go out on a Friday night wearing next to nothing (as our European counterparts are constantly reminding me) and we are fascinated by everything bums and boobs (I'm thinking here of the popularity of programmes like Eurotrash and pseudo-documentaries entitled The Secret Life of Ladies of the Night or similar). But when it comes to our own nudity we are infected with a sort of 'action man' syndrome - as far as we can go is down to the blue plastic pants. I think this might just be true of women... I can't say I have ever ventured into a male changing room.
So I have been embracing the Scandinavian way, and I feel better for it! I think if we were freer this way in Britain, girls might have more of a healthy idea of what real women look like, instead of this 'make me younger/thinner/trendier and therefore happier' rubbish.

Godt nytt år!

Midnight sparklers

After an uncharacteristically great New Year's Eve and a lovely time in rural Suffolk, I was quite sad that the holiday was over and that it was time to come back to the cold north. But after a few days, it feels like I've never been away. And I remembered that being here is quite a lot like a holiday! Well, if your idea of a holiday is spending your days in the company of Norwegian teenagers, your evenings watching re-runs of Blackadder (and studying the subtitles, of course!) and as much of the intervening hours as possible on public transport and/or discovering bigger and better supermarkets, then I am in paradise! But, in all seriousness, it's good to be back. The teachers have entrusted me to plan some lessons for next week, on such diverse subjects as Gandhi, Geordie and gooseberries (the last one is a lie, but it begins with G!). Marie-Hélène and I are also very excited about our week in England coming up at the end of January. We are tagging along with a school trip in the interests of 'widening our experience of the Comenius project' i.e. having a jolly. And many more travels should be had this year. I would make it a New Year's resolution, but I think the idea is that they should be hard to achieve...
My actual resolution is a pretty damn massive cliché: to do some bloody exercise! I'm headed for Tøyenbadet tomorrow for a bit of a dip, and I'm hoping my laziness will permit me to get myself down to the pool once a week... we'll see! My housemate Asbjørn has been encouraging me by reminding me of all the 'humanity' in public pools - but I will have to ignore that and embrace the wee wee!
Other plans for my precious day off include... opening a bank account. My cup overrunneth! Red tape is my friend.

**Norwegian word of the day**
munnsår!
Which I learnt off the telly. It means 'coldsore' and, I am reliably informed, can be used as an insult (to call someone a pain in the arse)!

Now, get out of here, you bunch of coldsores, and let my frozen befuddled brain recover!