Danielle's May Sem Blog: School Visit- Hateigskole

Today we started our day out nice and early. We woke up and had some smørbrød (open-faced sandwiches) for breakfast. I was excited about this because I knew from my experiences at Skogfjorden that smørbrød is one piece of bread not two like how Americans eat their sandwiches. I felt very cultural knowing that.

After breakfast we walked to a small school in Reykjavik, about a mile away from our hotel. The school was very ordinary and different from schools that you would see in the states. The school consisted of around 400 kids, from grades 1-10. We arrived a little early so we walked around the playground, which had some small swingsets, a couple basketball hoops, and a soccer field with turf! When we entered the school, the first thing that I noticed was shelves full of shoes. I wondered why this was, and thought maybe they took them off because they were in gym class. But children than walked by and I noticed that all of them had their shoes off. When we talked to the Principal of the school, he stated that having them take their shoes off when they enter creates a more cleaner environment and also a more homely environment.

Here was all the kids shoes lined up when we walked into the school

Here was the school

We first were greeted by the Principal Asgeir Beinteinsson, who then gave us a tour of the school. The first classroom that he showed us was the dance class, YES a DANCE CLASS!! Asgeir, the principle had mentioned to us that he believes that the children should have different ways of learning such as dancing. In his school they also were required to take certain other classes such as home economics, art, tech ed, knitting and Danish. He had stated that these "exploratory classes" allow the children to have better motor skills, and also learn in several different ways. I thought that this was a very unique way of learning and teaching. I was quite jealous myself, when the kids were dancing because I wanted to join in. The song that they were dancing to was about how to play basketball. It was also interesting to see how both boys and girls enjoyed the dancing, however the boys and girls were still separated, because obviously boys have cooties! Another classroom that Asgeir showed us was the Home Economics. The students that were in the classroom were 1st graders, learning about Milk. I thought to myself how lucky these kids are to be learning how to cook at age six.

Here are some of the Kids Dancing

Here are some 1st graders learning about Milk

As we had our tour around the classroom Asgeir also talked a lot about how the school functioned and how school works in Iceland. One of the big differences between schools in America and schools in Iceland is that Icelandic schools have classes stay together for four grades. For 1st-4th grade the class will have the same teacher and then they will get a new teacher that will be with them from 5th-7th. The school we visited was grades 1-10. One thing that I really liked in the school's motto based upon respect, cooperation and happiness. This was something that would not be true in an American school, which really caught my eyes. Another thing that I found very interesting was how close the teachers can be with their students. We saw a young girl crying in the office, and a teacher picked her up and placed her on her lap and comforted her. I found this very cool, because as a teacher your one instinct is to help the student and comfort them, but that is not always possible. This could also fall into another thing I found super interesting which was how focused the school was on bullying. During the schoolyear they would conduct several survey's during the year asking the children if they felt bullied or knew someone who was being bullied. Not only would they ask the kids this, but they would also ask their parents if they felt that their kids were being bullied or not. With this Asgeir mentioned that behavior problems is something that they take seriously, and if the child has a behavioral problem that it is the parent's duty to fix that. In Iceland they actually have the parent's sign a contract placing them in charge of making sure their child is behaving properly.

Here are some more pictures I took!