It has come to my attention that readers of this blog wonder what, exactly, I’m supposed to be doing in Norway – as far as they can tell, I spend all of my time hiking and eating salmon. This, I assure you, is far from the truth. I also spend a fair amount of time playing ping pong, and I frequently wander around, and not always in wilderness settings. Additionally, I spend some time working – in fact, this week was my second in the high school classroom and my first leading the Writers’ Workshops.

I’ll start with my job at the high school. I’m working at the Cathedral School in Bergen (Katedralskole in Norwegian), which is the oldest (it was founded in 1153) and probably most prestigious secondary school in Bergen – though a Norwegian would never say something as conceited as that. I’ve tried to ask about the reputations of the schools I work with, but everyone seems too embarrassed to tell me – the Norwegian education system is about equality, they say.

My impression is that the school is an excellent one, though I will say it has a conspicuous lack of immense multi-million dollar buildings. As far as I know, there is not a single robotics lab in the entire school, and neither is there a pendulum indicating the rotation of the earth. It seems that they’re trying to give students an excellent education with little more than good teaching and a rigorous curriculum – no LEED-certified super gymnasiums or immense hockey rinks anywhere. Poor bastards.

The most impressive part of the school is the headmasters’ office, which I wish I could have photographed. Luckily, you already have an image of this room in your head – imagine an large, well-lit room with tall ceilings. The walls are floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves filled very old books with Latin names, busts of illustrious Romans, and pieces of antique scientific equipment. The floor is marble with oriental carpets, and there is one immense Oval Office-esque wooden desk, and an even larger wooden table with several chairs around it. Behind the desk is an extremely Norwegian looking (i.e. very tall and healthy looking) man with blue eyes, white hair and a white beard. His name, according to him, translates to Bear Hunter. He speaks slowly and deliberately, with an intimidating vocabulary in what is probably his 4th language. He tells stories about being in the Navy, and, oh, feel free to drop by his office any time. I was about to call him the Norwegian version of the Most Interesting Man in the World, but I felt that this pop-culture reference was a bit beneath him. In any case, he is a very impressive guy, and if nothing else, he looks exactly like an excellent headmaster.

I’m working with an English teacher in a class of 11th graders. They’re a fun, diverse bunch, quite similar to16-year-olds in the U.S., but with better English. That, of course, is an exaggeration – their English is excellent for a second language, but still has a ways to go. One of them told me, for example, that when he immigrated to Norway, he had been stuck to the police station for hours waiting for a chance to register. I thought that was a bit cruel – they had let me sit in the waiting room rather than adhering me to the building.

I spend most of my time in the classroom wandering around between small groups answering questions and making sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to, but occasionally I do other things, like write a play about baseball expressions and then lead a discussion of sports metaphors in language. Or, perhaps, I’ll talk about why swearing in English will tend to freak out native speakers. Next week, I’m supposed to lead a discussion on Thoreau, which I’m thinking of calling Thoreau: A Weird and Ugly Loser Who Also Happened to be One of the Most Original Thinkers of All Time.

My work at the University is not quite so exciting. I’m attached to an introductory American literature course as a special writing assistant, and so I’ve decided to run a series of Writers’ Workshops in which student groups and I practice for the exams and learn how to give each other feedback. There are two of them per week, which I was thinking about calling WW1 and WW2. I have since decided that we’ll have to do without any acronyms. So far, we’ve discussed what the students want to learn and how they want to learn it.

We also had one exam practice session, in which I put up a choice of three questions about the three first texts in the course for students to write a timed essay about. In Writers’ Workshop 2, which is almost all exchange students, this went great. In Writers’ Workshop 1, however, this didn’t go so well – that workshop is almost all Norwegians studying to become elementary school teachers, and apparently none of them have read any of the assignments yet. This didn’t really bother me too much – what do I care if they don’t read? – but did amaze me. It’s the third week of a literature course. What do they think the lectures are about? Why did they come to a practice exam session?

All in all, however, the work so far has been interesting and rewarding, particularly at the high school. I feel comfortable in front of a class; I like teaching the kids about sports metaphors and Robert Frost. (These were separate discussions – there are not, as far I know, many sports metaphors in Frost’s poetry). Of course, it’s still very early – we’ll see how my thinking changes throughout the year.