From Syria to Sweden with love
After a 40 - minute drive through the darkness I arrived at my new workplace, a middle school of 240 students, at 7:50 this morning. I met just under 100 new students today. Four classes of 13 - 15 year olds. All live in Norrköping, Sweden, but come from all over the world. When asked to introduce themselves only one of the four classes chose to also say where they came from.
Almost the whole class followed the formula: "My name is ..., I am 13 / 14 / 15, I come from..."
I'm not sure if it was just that the first person to speak, a smiling, curly-haired boy with very pale skin, was from Syria and chose to share this, or what. But everyone in this, the last class of the day, chose to share where they came from, and only one or two came from Norrköping.
Some had loud voices, some voices were so faint and quiet it was extremely hard for me to hear, especially since there was a constant chatter going on somewhere in the room.
Today was the first day back for the students. They were no doubt both excited and apprehensive. New classes, new teachers, and some new students too. We staff and teachers were back two days ago, on Monday. After workshops and preparations, today was when the school really re-opened. Today was the first day of the new year and for me it started with the intense and pretty unstoppable energy of nearly 100 13 - 15 year olds from all over the world: Syria, Somalia, Kosovo, Sweden.
We certainly are a mixed bunch in our art classes. One boy asked me why I came here from the USA. "That's the land of dreams where you get rich, isn't it?" he asked. What could I say? One person's dream might be another person's nightmare. I didn't say that though. Instead I said that I was happy to be here in Sweden and that it was extremely expensive and competitive in the USA. This seemed to satisfy him. I feel pretty sure that all of my new students agree that there are many places in the world that are a lot worse to live in than Sweden.
Almost the whole class followed the formula: "My name is ..., I am 13 / 14 / 15, I come from..."
I'm not sure if it was just that the first person to speak, a smiling, curly-haired boy with very pale skin, was from Syria and chose to share this, or what. But everyone in this, the last class of the day, chose to share where they came from, and only one or two came from Norrköping.
Some had loud voices, some voices were so faint and quiet it was extremely hard for me to hear, especially since there was a constant chatter going on somewhere in the room.
Today was the first day back for the students. They were no doubt both excited and apprehensive. New classes, new teachers, and some new students too. We staff and teachers were back two days ago, on Monday. After workshops and preparations, today was when the school really re-opened. Today was the first day of the new year and for me it started with the intense and pretty unstoppable energy of nearly 100 13 - 15 year olds from all over the world: Syria, Somalia, Kosovo, Sweden.
We certainly are a mixed bunch in our art classes. One boy asked me why I came here from the USA. "That's the land of dreams where you get rich, isn't it?" he asked. What could I say? One person's dream might be another person's nightmare. I didn't say that though. Instead I said that I was happy to be here in Sweden and that it was extremely expensive and competitive in the USA. This seemed to satisfy him. I feel pretty sure that all of my new students agree that there are many places in the world that are a lot worse to live in than Sweden.
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