Day Four

Today I experienced what a typical school day at Herning Gymnasium is like.  Louise and I arrived at school at 8:05 and went to the auditorium where us Orange students were introduced to some of the Danish students.  Each Orange student stood up on a chair one at a time while their Danish host introduced them.  Next, we broke into three groups where we presented powerpoints about American culture to some of the Danish students.  Katy, Ian, and I did our presentation on American government, which I think is probably an interesting topic for the Danish students to learn about because our government is very different from theirs.  Louise told me that she enjoyed our presentation and she hadn’t known much about American government beforehand.  In Herning Gymnasium, each of the three grades have around 300 students.  They are allowed to pick a course of study and then are separated into smaller classes of students who have all chosen the same course.  Louise and all of the other Danish students in the program are in the language program.  After our presentations, we attended our first class: Spanish.  For the majority of the class, the teacher spoke to us in Spanish.  I noticed that this class, along with the ones I later attended, was very interactive.  She spoke shortly about Mexicans immigrating into the United States, the topic they are currently studying, and then had the students do activities, involving reading a poem and answering questions as well as writing a poem, for the rest of the class.  Once Spanish class was finished, we headed to the auditorium for an assembly.  They have these assemblies usually once a week in order to inform their students on upcoming events and give them other important information.  At the beginning of every assembly, the students stand up and sing songs together.  During the assembly, we were introduced to the school, then, a band at the school played a song for us, which I thought was really awesome.  After the assembly, we went to our next class which was geography.  The teacher taught in English so we could understand the lesson.  Much like Spanish class, this class was very interactive.  She spoke to the students shortly and then had them make a powerpoint which they later presented to the class.  Then, after eating a quick lunch, we headed to a Chinese class.  The class was taught in both Danish and Chinese so it was difficult to understand what was going on, but Louise and Helena explained the different words they were learning.  This class involved a lot of speaking as the teacher would present different words and have the class practice saying them out loud as well as having the students come up in front of the class and perform some sort of Chinese dialogue.  According to Louise, the students aren’t given many tests in their classes.  I really liked the way the school ran.  I think it’s helpful and more interesting to do interactive activities that involving applying what you’re learning in class.  In Orange, I feel like classes are more centered around listening to a teacher speak while taking notes and taking several tests and quizzes to show what we’ve learned.  I think doing interactive activities helps people learn better and apply what they’ve learned rather than being forced to memorize information for tests, only to forget it later on.  They seemed to have a lot of freedom, also, which I think is important considering after high school we’ll either be going to college or having to be independent.  After the school day, Helena, Katy, and I went to the mall to get a snack in a restaurant called Café Fry, which I had gone to Saturday also.  Then I tried my first Danish ice cream.  Their ice cream is a lot creamier and they put this really sugary topping on it that I really liked.  Once we were done at the mall, we met up with Louise and headed to the beach.  It was pretty cold and rainy and windy so it made being on the beach a little uncomfortable, but it was still a cool experience.  My favorite part about the beach was seeing the bunkers from World War II.  It was amazing to think about how so many of them were constructed.  We climbed inside them and took tons of pictures, so despite the weather, it was a really interesting experience.