Norwegian School: Spring Edition

June 03, 2018

Norwegian School: Spring Edition

Happy June everybody! I'm running out of Sundays, and wanted to make sure that I was able to get in one last school post before leaving. With less than three weeks of school left, I feel like I'm qualified to give the last, more nuanced differences between American and Norwegian school. As always, I need to give a little disclaimer that I've only had experiences with one Norwegian school and the three American schools I've attended, all of which were in the same town. So not all of these things may apply to other schools:) At the end of the post I'll sum up my week, but for now: here is the last installation of my school "series"!

Norwegians don't do snow days. This seems counterintuitive since it's one of the most wintery countries, but because of that they've figured out ways to make sure school isn't cancelled due to weather. Some days I do feel it might have made sense to cancel school, especially when more than half the class and the teacher are late due to weather-related traffic issues, but it is nice to not have to make up days at the end of the year.
In Norway they've somewhat recently introduced something called a fraværsgrense, which is an attendance limit. Basically, if you miss more than 10% of any given subject, you can't get a grade in the class. There are certain ways to avoid having attendance count like having a doctor's note, but it is a little annoying when you're sick enough to not be at school but not enough to go to the doctor. That being said, attendance levels have dropped significantly since they introduced the rule, so I'm not sure it'll be going away any time soon, despite having a pretty large opposition.
This one's a little trivial, but not everyone here uses a backpack, and you definitely don't need as big a backpack as you do at my school in Portsmouth. While we have textbooks for every class, I rarely ever take them home (only when I'm studying for tests really), and binders don't really exist. Many people use more tote-style bags, or canvas bags, and those who do use backpacks use smaller ones. Yep, there are a lot of Fjällräven Kånken bags.
Schools (not sure how many schools this applies to) use a program called Itslearning to document grades and such. My school in the US has a program that's sort of similar, but while you can only see grades on that one, with Itslearning teachers can publish notes, write messages, and have online tests on the program itself. It's kind of nice to have everything in one place, and having that sort of program really shows how much education in Norway has been digitalized.
I talked quite a bit about russetid in my post about Norway's national day, but that is, of course, a large difference between the school systems. Here is a video of teens reacting to the tradition! American graduation parties pale in comparison.
The next few differences are all about exams. To start off, no one takes exams in all of their classes. As a first year, you can only come up in one exam, and there's only a 20% chance that you'll come up at all. In the second year you're guaranteed to come up in one exam, either written or oral, but that's it. As a third year I'm pretty sure it's 3 written exams and one oral, but I'm not sure if that's just at Katta/the line that's offered there. Anyways, the point is that you don't have exams in every subject like we have at my school and I think most schools in the US.
That being said, exams are made by the state and are the same for all students taking them in the whole country. At schools in the US it's often the individual teacher that makes the test, and while they're usually weighted pretty heavily, you don't get a separate grade for the exam like you do here.
Because the exams come from the state, school here is usually very exam-oriented. It's important that the whole curriculum is covered, or you risk being unprepared for the exam. This unfortunately also means that there's not a whole lot of room for creativity, which is what I miss the most from the American school system. It does mean, however, that everyone comes away from the class having learned the same things, no matter which school you went to or which teacher you had.
The exams here aren't the last few days of the school year like they are for most American schools. Written exams are now over, and I'll find out if I have to take an oral exam on Tuesday. If I come up, I'll be done on Thursday and have nothing left. Even the third years who find out a little later are done about a week before school is over.
Because of this, the last few weeks are super chill, unlike the stress that comes with finals back in the US. We've already had a field trip, spend half of our classed outside "preparing for a possible exam" (aka eating ice cream and doing absolutely nothing), and will have more fun days while other people have exams. We're done with all our tests, and at this point are pretty much on vacation, we just have to show up to school but don't really do anything.
One last thing that I find interesting but didn't know where to put it in the list is the style of tests here. As far as I've seen, this applies to most subjects except for math and sometimes science class. Exams and mock exams in English and Norwegian (the only two subjects we can have written exams in other than math) are basically long-response, essay-style papers. We get a few prompts to choose from, and have to write a few pages on the subject. In English the prompts usually have to do with themes we've studied, and in Norwegian our mock exams were writing texts in the different styles we've worked on, like poem analysis, articles, and short story analysis. Tests in subjects like geography and social studies were short-answer questions where you get a handful of questions to answer in anywhere from a few sentences to more than a page. This is in contrast to tests at my school in the US which are often multiple choice, or short-answer as in a word or two. So basically, tests here are much more about writing.

In terms of this week, I've just been over here dying of heat in the 90-degree weather Norway has been cursed with the past few weeks and trying to survive by eating tons of ice cream and swimming a bunch. As I mentioned, we really haven't done much at school, and it's been too hot to be outside if you can't be in the water. I've been to the beach several times, and am going back today. On Friday night me and my friends slept over at Sarah's in a tent in her backyard. We played card games and hung out, eating tons of junk food, or course, and just trying to take advantage of the last days we have together. Next time you hear from me I'll have turned 17, so be sure to check back next week to read about how I celebrated my birthday in Norway!

Word of the Post:
å bade = to bathe/swim (not as in actually swimming, but what you do when you go to the beach/pool in the summer)

Pictures, some from the orientation last weekend and some from this week!