Wednesday was Development Talks. The Swedes believe that the parents should be involved in their child's education and take an active role. So the students were all off school except for their 20 minute mentor talk with their parents and teacher. By Law the parents had to be given time off work to attend their child's talk.
It was a very interesting day. I am mentor to 16 grade 4 students, many of which do not speak English yet. So I was very thankful the parents all spoke English and could translate for me.
Our mentor class has 32 students and two teacher mentors. We split the class in half randomly, not knowing who any of the students were, and fortunately my teaching partner Linnea pick all the students who needed Swedish translation. This is fine for her since she speaks Swedish. It is funny how sometimes thing work themselves out.
During this talk, with the support of their parents, the student set 2 goals for the year related to their education and what they want to improve over the next 10 months. Then they must set a plan for achieving theses goals.
Next they set a goal for improving the school community. These goals include creating a caring environment, a safe community, leading by example, crating an engaging classroom environment and coming up with new ideas to improve the school. Needless to say most of my students picked either caring or clean. A couple go-get-hers chose leading by example.
Then they asked how the school can help them achieve their goals and then how their parents can help them achieve their goals. It amazed me that many of my students thought that the class was too noisy and they needed a calmer, quieter classroom. This I agree with, but what amazed me was that it was the chronic talkers that asked for this! Go figure.
The best part of mentor talks was going out for beers afterwards with the staff to de-stress. I was not drinking beer, rather just enjoying the company and went home about 7 pm. Several of them went to a different bar after the first and didn't get home till late and were pretty funny Thursday morning when they dragged themselves into work.
That's all for this blog
Chris
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