Dear parents,
Please note that the After School Recreation Centre (SFO) is opened during the summer holiday weeks 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 and 32 – from June 28 to August 13. The price per child per week during the summer holiday is DKK 400.00.
Due to the planning in the SFO, it is important for us to know before the end of April, if you wish for your child/children to attend the SFO during the summer holidays.
Purpose: A
two days introduction to the international upper secondary school education – IB for students in the 8th classes.
Contents: You will get an impression of what it will say to be an IB-student; there will be an introduction to the IB-system and
meet present IB-students. You will be taught of some of the IB-teachers.
Dates: March 15 and 16, 2010
Time: The days begin at 08:05 and end at 14:00.
Place: Skovvangen 10, The main entrance by the info-screen, telephone 7633 9600.
Transport: Bus number 5
Cantina: You can buy food and beverages in the cantina. It is open all day. The lunch break is from 12:15 to 12:45.
Further information:
Contacts: Hans-Kurt Gade, GA@kolding-gym.dk or Mel Malone, MM@kolding-gym.dk
Responsible: Karsten Skov Mogensen, KM@kolding-gym.dk
Once again the school parties have come to an end, and the teachers and I wish to thank each one of you for a couple of very nice evenings. It is always a pleasure to meet under more informal circumstances, where we have a chance to talk with each other in a less structured manner.
It is impossible to avoid that a huge project like our school parties with between 800 and 1000 guests each evening will cause some disturbances in our everyday life and daily routines, but I do believe that everything has gone without problems, and that it has been an eventful week for us all to remember.
So thank you very much for your participation and your good spirits.
On behalf of the teachers,
Simon Mosekjær
For More Information Contact: Cheryssa Jensen, Promotions Representative
Office: 88 20 21 10, Mobile: 27 99 75 84, E-mail: cjensen@upwithpeople.org
Families in the Kolding area will have the unique opportunity to bring a bit of the world into their own homes between November 8th and November 14th when an international cast of Up with People arrives in Kolding as a stop on their 2009 world tour.
Host families are being sought to keep one or more students from the 85-member Up with People cast which represents 20 countries and more than 25 states. “It is a great opportunity to experience other cultures while sharing your own,” explained Cheryssa Jensen.
The opportunity to stay with local families during their stay in each community is a centerpiece of Up with People’s 22-week program. The giving goes both ways…while families share their traditions and local attractions; the cast members share their experiences and cultures.
Local host families are asked to provide a bed, local transportation at the beginning and end of each day, as well as breakfast and most dinners. During most evenings, cast members will be home with the family to participate in their activities and interests.
In addition to many wonderful experiences with their new “son” or “daughter,” each host family will be invited to a special Up with People Show on Friday, November 13th.
Host an Up with People Cast Member
“I can honestly say that the dozens of families who have opened their homes to me during my time with Up with People is one of the most meaningful and memorable experiences I have had,” said Cheryssa Jensen. “I still stay in contact with many of them and I believe they will become lifelong friends,” she added.
“Those with smaller children or young teens in their home often find that the Up with People cast members are wonderful role models and provide a glimpse into other countries, cultures and traditions they might not often experience in Kolding,” Jensen added.
Local families in the Kolding area are being sought to host the cast members between November 8th and November 14th. Those interested in hosting are encouraged to contact Cheryssa Jensen on the Kolding Advance Team at cjensen@upwithpeople.org or by calling 27 99 75 84.
Up with People’s visit to Kolding is sponsored by Aperian Global, Business Kolding, Kolding Realskole, and The Cosmo – International School of Southern Denmark.
Up with People is an independent nonprofit, [501(c)(3)] organization without any religious or political affiliations. It provides young adults an international and intercultural experience that teaches service leadership and uses the performing arts to deliver messages of hope and goodwill throughout the world. Up with People exists today to spark people to action in meeting the needs of their communities, countries and the world while building bridges of understanding as a foundation for world peace. For more information visit www.upwithpeople.org.
More than 400 million people around the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seem, try to. It would be charitable to say that the results are sometimes mixed.
To be fair, English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies a buzzing insect, which at times can be rather annoying; a comfortable means of travel, unless you accidently have chosen one of the low budget companies, which will try to rob you blind with extra charges and fees for this and that; and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel, hiding his most private parts from sight, is clearly asked to be mangled.
As non-native speakers we have to learn that in English one tells a lie but the truth, that an American who says “I could care less” means the same thing as someone who says “I couldn’t care less”, and that a sign in a shop saying ALL ITEMS NOT ON SALE, doesn’t mean literally what it says – that every item is not on sale – but rather that only some of the items are on sale.
Most writers of the messages below, which we hope that you will enjoy just as much as we have, were not about to let a little ignorance of English stand in the way of communicating. In fact, it would appear that one of the beauties of the English language is that with even the most tenuous grasp of the English language you can speak volumes if you show enough enthusiasm – a willingness to make do. And the authors of these signs, which were all produced for the Olympic Games in Beijing, China, surely had a willingness to make do.
Proximity, flexibility and manoeuvring room are the key words for classroom management
What is really important and decisive for whether a student participates in the classroom teaching, talks to the student with whom he or she shares a desk or is lost in reverie?
The answer to that question is the distance to the teacher. And that is why it is utterly important how a classroom is organized and furnished.
Classroom Management
The better the organization and furnishing of the classroom, the higher the quality of the teaching and the students’ participation. Professor Fred Jones, who is one of United States’ leading experts in classroom management, which is the art of controlling a class of students while teaching, says that “To place the students’ desks in a good way from the very beginning is the cheapest form of classroom management ever invented.”
The distance between the individual student and the teacher is of great importance, if the teacher is to be as close to the students as possible, when he or she needs to write on the blackboard or show something on a whiteboard. If the teacher has a desk, it should never be placed between the students and the blackboard or the whiteboard – whether board might be in usage in the classroom in question – but it should be placed at one of the sides of the classroom or even amongst the students’ desk, so that the distance between the students and the board is as minimal as humanly possible. At the same time the classroom should according to Fred Jones be organized in such a way that the teacher can move around freely between the students and with only a few paces can reach any of his or hers students.
Move the desks
Professor Fred Jones
“The best teachers are those who move around amongst their students, not only when the students work individually, but just as much when it is the teacher, who is teaching or explaining a given matter”, Professor Fred Jones emphasizes.
But it is not always that easy
The ability to move freely around the classroom, while one speaks, engages and motivates the students, is an ability which needs to be trained. And it is imperative that each separate teacher is conscious about the typical pitfalls. The American Patrick W. Miller has written several books about the teacher’s body language and unconscious behaviour, and his studies show that teachers unconsciously station themselves closest to the students, they like the best. For that very reason it is important to be aware of how the teacher moves about in the classroom and to make sure that he or she moves as much as possible and is familiar with the shortest route from one end of the classroom to the other. That secures the highest degree of flexibility and attention from all students to the teacher and vice versa.
But one thing is classroom teaching, another is group work. When the students are engaged in group work it is obviously an advantage to place the students’ desks in smaller groups reflecting the work groups. When the group work is over and done with, it is crucial that the desks are returned to their previous stetting. This rarely happens according to Niels Egelund, who is Professor and Leader of Denmark’s Pedagogical University. He thinks that the organization of desks and chairs in rows just like we know it from churches and the like is the best one, when the students’ attention is to be directed at the teacher.
Classroom Management
“I observe so much teaching that I have stopped counting, and I do believe that the students in around half the classrooms, which I visit, are constantly sitting in group work formations. If each school and each teacher was sufficiently aware of and attentive to how much the students disrupt each other with both verbal and non-verbal communication, when they are sitting in group work formations all the time, they would never allow it. It is rather problematic that this group work formation of students’ desks is used as a common standard”, Niels Egelund adds.
Due to the fact that classroom organisation and management should depend entirely on the subjects and contents of the teaching at hand, the possibility for quick and flexible rearrangement of the desks and chairs is important, when classrooms are being organized. And we need to take the organization of the classroom into account for each single lesson, even if it means reorganizing the desks and chairs several times a day, and even if we need to use the first five minutes of every lesson to do so!.
“It is without doubt worth the effort”, Niels Egelund confirms.
Read more about Professor Fred Jones’ methods at http://www.fredjones.com and/or watch this video.
In the introduction to Classroom Management by Fred Jones, the students call themselves Mrs. Garcia’s Freedom Writers thereby refer to the book and film by the same name.
Erin Gruwell
Assigned the thankless task of teaching English at a gang-infested high school at Long Beach, a 23-year-old teacher Erin Gruwell, played by Hilary Swank, resorts to unconventional means of breaking through to her hardened students in the best-seller film The Freedom Writer’s Diaries: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. The film is based on the novel The Freedom Writer’s Diaries by Erin Gruwell.
The students at Long Beach High School that the young, idealistic teacher tried to move had been written off, and her chances of succeeding scoffed at, but Erin Gruwell wasn’t about to go down without a fight. Long Beach is a place where a new war is waged with each passing day, and when the hardened students who walk those dangerous hallways sense an outsider attempting to understand their plight, their cynical resentment threatens to keep a deadly cycle in motion.
Some of the "Freedom Writters" from the Film
Despite the initially hostile reaction she receives in the classroom, Gruwell uses the writings of Anne Frank and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo to teach her students not only the basis of the English language, but compassion and tolerance as well. Later, when the time comes to tell their own tales in a project specially designed to explore the daily violence that the majority of students have grown numb to, the barriers that had once stood so strong gradually begin to crumble. When the only chance for survival is to befriend the person who was once your mortal enemy, the world is opened to a whole new realm of possibilities.
In week 11, from Monday the 15th to Friday the 19th of March, there is an introduction course for students in 8th classes.
The course at IB – International Baccalaureate – at Kolding Gymnasium is either Monday and Tuesday or Wednesday and Thursday.
Further information is available later.
Bullying can be stopped if students, parents and teachers work together
The Cosmo and Kolding Realskole have a moral obligation to reduce bullying. Furthermore, the charter agreement lay down by the school board specifically states that the school strives to “provide a safe physical and emotional environment”. At school, teachers are doing their best to keep an eye open for potential bully situations and if possible stop them before they take place, though this is not always possible.
That being said, parents also have an obligation to help stop bullying, and we are not able to help and take action, unless we are informed by the students and/or the parents, so please inform the class room teacher, if there is anything we should be aware of.
If bullying occurs, we will have a serious talk with the student or students, who bully, and thereafter the parents will be informed. Should such an incident arise a second time, we will consider suspend the student in question for a shorter period, and if the bullying does not stop hereafter, the final step will be to expel the student from our school.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me…”
Do you remember that old nursery rhyme? Honestly, it wasn’t true when you were in school, and it isn’t true now. Teasing, taunting and other forms of bullying can cause serious emotional harm to children, and it may last much longer than a bloody nose or scraped knees.
Before the summer holidays a 12-year-old Danish boy committed suicide by hanging himself in a tree after having been the victim of excessive bullying from other students of his own age. Due to an Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, popularly called ADHD, this young boy proved to be an easy target for bullies at his school, and according to the Danish newspapers “…these bullies drove him over the edge of what he was able to endure”.
Even though the dead boy’s mother was well aware that he was having problems at school, she was totally taken by surprise by her son’s suicide. The dead boy was due to move to a new school, where his brother had already moved, because of the persistent bullying. The school has been criticised for not having done enough to stop the incessant bullying.
What can we do to prevent something as horrible as this from happening ever again?
Before trying to answer that question I believe it is necessary to explore what bullying really is and how we can stop bullies and bullying at school?
What is bullying?
Bullying can be defined in many different ways, and even though many countries do not have a legal definition of bullying, it can generally been seen as peer abuse. The reasons for bullying might be many; but most students have a tendency of bullying those who are in some ways different.
Bullying is every intentional act aimed at harming others, through verbal harassment, name calling and use of foul language, physical assault or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation, threats or the like.
A definition of bullying can be when a person is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more persons. The negative actions are, when a person intentionally inflicts injury or discomfort upon another person, through physical contact, words or in other ways.
Electronic bullying also known as cyber-bullying
Bullying can also happen on-line or electronically. This form of harassment is known as cyber-bullying. It occurs when someone bullies through the Internet, over mobile phones or via other electronic means of communication. Examples include sending mean-spirited text, e-mail, or instant messages; posting inappropriate pictures or messages about others on blogs or on websites; using someone else’s user name and identity to spread rumors or lies about someone and finally lying to hurt internally and externally.
Some facts about bullying
A rough estimate made by the Danish Children’s Council (Børnerådet) says that 7% or every 14th child will experience being bullied once a week.
According to the survey from the Danish Children’s Council:
Other facts about bullying:
Stop bullying
Please help us to stop bullying by informing us about any incidents that might be classified as bullying.
Please bear in mind that it is very important for the students to remember to bring their lunch every day. They all have rather long school days, and we see a clear difference in their concentration before and after they have eaten.
They are sometimes able to borrow money from a teacher, if they forget their lunch, but of course they like their own lunches better, which are healthier and more nutrient than the food which they are able to buy at the school.