take out your gaffel or kniv

It is Sunday morning.  The skies are blue and temperatures are hovering around 7⁰C (45⁰F) outside.   As I sit here enjoying my cup of tea reflecting back on the week, I think the word that comes to mind first is calm.  This past week was one of the calmest I have had since moving to Sweden.  Life is starting to settle down.  It is not settling down in a boring way, but settling down in a manageable way.  I can now tell you which classes I am teaching on any given day without looking at my schedule.  I am now able to post homework assignments on the school website without much hassle.  I now know which route I should take if I need to get to the bus station.  And, I can now easily find milk, bread and chocolate at most grocery stores.  Life is settling down in a good way. 

My morning cup of a tea in none other than a Moomin mug.
It doesn't get much better.  Yup, I still miss Finland

Even while things become more routine, my Swedish experiences continue to be varied and pleasant.  Tuesday evening is a great example.  On Tuesday after school, a family who I met at church invited me over for dinner.  They live about 10 minutes away in a nice residential part of town.  As I biked up to their house, the mother opened the door and called out, “Jenny, we live over here!  Come on in.”  One of their daughters gave me a tour of their home, and then the whole family sat down for dinner in the back porch.  They are a family of five: mom, dad, two girls and one boy.  We enjoyed some delicious carrot pie for dinner, with ice cream and fruit for dessert.  After dinner, they showed me a photo book of their most recent trip to Africa and we sat around chatting.  All in all, it was a really lovely evening.  So nice to be able to spend time with a family.   

Life at school is continuing to go well.  My sixth graders had their first science test this week.  The students were giddy with nerves, and showered me with questions before the test.  Ms. Marshall, is it hard?  Ms. Marshall, what if I can’t spell a word?  Ms. Marshall, my dad is a doctor so he taught me extra organs—can I write about those on the test?  Ms. Marshall, I just lost a tooth—can I go to the nurse?  It was obvious that students wanted to impress me on this test as most papers I received where covered front and back with all the bits of information that students studied.  Some students even went out of their way to color-code the organs on the test with their markers. 

This is the work of a sixth grader who speaks English as a
second or third language.  Even more impressive is the fact
that most students' papers had this level of detail.   Wow.

Shortly after giving the test, the realization that I must now grade all the papers quickly set in.  While grading in general takes a lot of time, I am finding that grading when you are not accustomed to the grading system is even more of a challenge.  After an hour-long meeting with the academic coordinator on Friday afternoon, I think I am finally grasping the Swedish grading system.  On a test, students do not earn points; instead, their work is assessed with a rubric.  On each section of the test, students can earn an A, C, E, or F.  The final grade for the test is not an average of all the grades that students got on the test, but rather there are benchmarks at A, C and E.  Basically, students must get all E’s or above to get an E, all C’s or above to get a C, or all A’s to get an A.  So, for example, if a student gets A’s on four sections of the test and an E on one section, then they get a D overall.  Or, if a student gets A’s on four sections of the test and a C on one section, then they get a B overall.  Or, if a student gets A’s on four sections of the test and an F on one section, then they get an F overall.  I still have not heard the rationale behind such a system, but would be very curious to know why the Swedes developed this grading scheme. 

Here is a diagram explaining the Swedish grading system.

Students will be taking a test next week in math, so we spent some time reviewing for the test this past week.  While reviewing, the students took it upon themselves to teach me a bit more Swedish.  While most of the words they have taught me are correct, on Friday (under the direction of another teacher) the students decided to have a bit of fun.  They taught me that a “gaffel” is a pen, a “kniv” is a pencil, and a “hjälm” is a piece of paper.  As I used these words during class, students smiled and giggled so I suspected that either my pronunciation was way off or something else was up.  Later, the teacher who put the class up to these shenanigans informed me that gaffel is a fork, kniv is a knife and hjälm is a helmet.  On Monday, I am planning to teach a lovely lesson with a fork, knife and helmet.  Stay tuned.