Wonderful days in Mariestad, Sweden
What a marvellous time we all had in this small town on Lake Vänern in Sweden! We all enjoyed the warmth from the Swedish March-sun, as well as the warmth from the hearts of our Swedish hosts. The topic of the 3rd workshop was „Problemsolving“ and was based on the results of the previous workshops in Blansko (Czech Republic) and Barssel (Germany). Each of the 8 participating countries sent 6 students to the workshop – and guided by the Swedish students - they were supposed to solve different problems. Beginning with some ice breaker games they were soon aware of the ability to communicate in English with the students from the other countries. The students were led to different lessons in „Tunaholmskolan“ in Mariestad to gain an impression of what it means to be taught in the Swedish school system. Sweden always does quite well in the Pisa-studies. As well as the foreign students got the possibility to inhale the atmosphere of an absolute conflict-and stressfree teaching and learning in this school. On the second morning students and teachers were brought to the „Balthazar Science Center“ in Skövde and they were confronted with different tasks at different levels. Again they were expected to work very intense together to solve the problems there. In the afternoon they could relax in the Skövde Arena and do some swimming or water sliding. On the third day the student had the afternoon on their own in the city to mingle and get to know each other better. And so they did. After the movie evening they hang around in the youth hostel and played games or talked or communicated by facebook or other social media. On Thursday the groups prepared some presentations of the days in Mariestad and about what impressed them and the expectations they had come to Sweden some days before. The results of this work was presented in the evening to the rest of the group and the teachers. On the last evening the students worked together by preparing taccos together and we all enjoyed the farewell dinner. When it was time to say „goodbye“ I could slightly see some tears in some of the student's eyes. |
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