Study Tour

Okay, so it's been a while since I last updated this blog, and it's been a really long time since we went on our short study tour to Western Denmark. That mini-vacation was from Feb. 5-7th and it was a lot of fun. DIS does short and long study tours that combine learning outside of the classroom and touristy/fun things to do. Since I'm in the PCD program, the "studying" for us consists of visits to schools, social work services, and children's museums or other sites related to kids. For students in the medical practice and policy program, they might visit hospitals and community clinics. So it's tailored to the program you are in at DIS. Our short study tour was to Western Denmark, so we explored Odense (the small island between Copenhagen, which is on Zealand, and Jutland, the largest island of Denmark), and Jutland, specifically Arhus, Kolding, and Skanderborg. The point of the short study tour was not only to get hands-on experiences of what we were learning in the classroom, but to get to know each other, because we are all in the same core course, Children in a Multicultural Context. And it worked; by the time we got back I really felt like I had bonded with some of the people in my class, and when we had class the following Monday, it felt good to know every one's faces and names instead of just two people. It really helped me to gain a good group of friends.

We had to get to the bus at 6:45 am on Thursday, which was a pain in the ass, because it meant that I had to wake up at 5 and leave my house by 5:45 the latest if I wanted to get there on time. Luckily, I took a shower the night before, which saved time, and Michael drove me to the train station (I was ready at 5:30, because Michael is a ridiculously slow driver, he likes to have wonderful conversations while driving, so a 5-minute ride to the train station, never takes just 5 minutes with him). So I show up at 6:45 like I'm supposed to, but of course our bus was a good hour late. Luckily, our tour directors (Helle, our CMC teacher, who my friends and I love and would secretly go gay for because she's gorgeous in that natural pretty way and is super nice, and Jen, a part-time intern who we also love) bought us Danish pastries! We got them from Saint Peter's Bakery, one of the oldest in CPH, and cheapest and most delicious pastries ever (they have a 12 kroner special everyday). Since we got to the bakery 5 minutes after it opened, we got warm delicious pastries, which definitely made up for having to wake up at 5am. Finally on the bus, we made our way to Odense, where we split up into two groups to go on our academic visits. I went to Bogelund Preschool in Verdenshuset ("the ghetto" because it's where refugees live, more on that later). It was a wonderful experience. Besides the children being absolutely adorable (it's a preschool so the kids are between the ages of 3 and 6, the 3 year olds were so small and soo cute I almost cried!), the pedagogue who talked to us was extremely insightful and informative. She talked to us about the issues the teachers face: 99% of the children are immigrants, many are of refugee status, from low-SES backgrounds, so the two major challenges that face them are language (they do not know Danish before coming to school), and social problems (the children come from challenging backgrounds, many of the kids fathers are torture survivors from Iraq and Iran, several are Palestinians affected by the war, and the children watch the violent images of their home country on T.V.). Because of the stereotypes of the children and of the neighborhood, no one from outside the area sends their children to that school. Due to the strict language requirements of the Danish government (their motto is: you're in Denmark now, learn Danish) the teachers have very strict language requirements they have to follow. Thus, all projects and school activities incorporate language in some way, including through meals. The school also has language pedagogues that come twice a week to provide extra support and services for the children, and they also have an Arabic interpreter. Thus the most difficult challenge for these teachers is the cultural issue: many of the parents do not work (either because they cannot due to resident status, or the mother is pregnant, or the women do not work because that is their cultural norm), so at home the children speak their native tongue. This means that they are not practicing and using the Danish language at home, which can make it difficult for them to learn Danish if they only use it is at school. So the school also relies heavily on parent-teacher conferences and they make sure that the parents are involved in their child's education. An example is that they teach the parents how to pack a lunch for their child. The teachers have action plans on every child that tracks their social, motor, language, and cognitive developments. Thus, the teachers work extremely hard because the children need a lot of support. Yet the Danish government cut the funding for bilingual resources.

The refugee visit was extremely helpful in understanding the multicultural issue in Denmark. It's interesting that the Danes call immigrants "bilingual" because in the U.S. that just means that you speak more than one language, it has nothing to do with your race. I really liked how the school implements egalitarianism and inclusivity (a prominent theme in Danish education) by using an inclusive pedagogue practice to make sure that everyone is included and everyone is seen and heard. I also liked how they incorporate language into every activity that they do, so that they are teaching in many different ways, since one method may not work for every child.

While that was our only academic visit for the day, the rest of the day was fun. We had lunch on our own and then met to go to the H.C. Anderson museum. We saw the house that he was born in, and we went to this children's theater, called The Tinderbox, which is part of the museum. The kids get to play dress-up, put on all kinds of costumes, get their faces painted, and then act out Anderson's fairy tales, in this magnificent room, that looks like a storybook that came alive. So much imaginative and creative play! Then we went to the other part of the museum that included Anderson's original works, including a copy of his fairy tales that were given to Russian children during the Siege of Leningrad, when there wasn't enough food to go around (people were eating wood shavings!). The Russian government thought it would be nice to give the children fairy tales to take their mind off of the nightmare of what was occurring, and many kids stuffed the books in their shoes to keep them warm, or ate them.

We stayed at a hostel in Kolding, which was pretty nice, and then the next day we split up into two groups again for our academic visits. I got stuck going to the Dept. of Social Work at the University of Arhus, which was a complete waste of time. We should have gone to the actual dept. of social work, or a community center, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Also, the woman that was supposed to talk to us about children and family services in Denmark, had the flu, so her colleague was there to talk to us. Except that this woman was the director of the International Social Work program, and knew nothing about children and family services in Denmark, so she proceeded to talk to us for an hour about the structure of the social work program at the University. This was of course no help to us since we are already in college in the U.S. and were not transferring to the Univ. of Arhus. Luckily, Helle realized our extreme boredom and ended the lecture early, took us to the cafeteria, and bought us coffee! We love Helle.

We then had lunch on our own in Arhus, and then went to the ARoS museum, a gallery of contemporary art. We only had an hour there, which was definitely not enough! The inside of the museum looked like the Guggenheim in NYC. Danielle and I ran around trying to see everything we could. We saw an original pop art of Marilyn Monroe done by Andy Warhol, needless to say I almost cried from excitement, it was a 2 x 8 of her! We walked quickly through some strange contemporary art, including jars of horse body parts (grossssssss!) There was an interesting piece called Fucked, which was of a couple who had barely escaped every type of disaster you could think of: "despite all the problems and accidents that the couple have had to go through--of which the latest is the notion of the impossible: to have a piano dropped on one's head--one place is still unscathed, namely their hands, which come together as a picture of a love that can never be killed. Matelli's work can also be seen as a modern version of Adam and Eve's expulsion from Paradise" (brochure). We also saw a light installation(9 different rooms of installations of light and sound) and a very large piece, called The Boy by Ron Muek (?) which is incredibly life-like. It looks like a giant person. Amazing.

Later we went bowling, and then went to our hostel in Skanderborg. Our hostel was gorgeous! It was on the lake and we got upgraded to the cottages! Little wooden cottages that had a full kitchen, and a loft, and a little living room with a suede couch and flatscreen tv! And it smelled like fresh wood, like they had just build the cottages, which reminded me of this dollhouse I had as a kid that our family friend Alva made for me. It was absolutely wonderful, and all of us wanted to come back for a weekend! Across the street from our hostel was the Museum of Occupation, which, according to Danielle's blog, "the town was used at the German Air Force base camp, and where we ate at our hostel used to be the Officer’s Mess Hall. The museum itself had barracks with artifacts inside" like uniforms of the Danish soldiers from WWII.

The next day we went to Den Gamle By, literally the Danish version of colonial Williamsburg, so it was really cute, and the buildings were super old! We had a fabulous free lunch at Prince Ferdinand Cafe, very fancy, and the headed home for CPH!

It was a wonderful study tour!