Vacation

I am a BIG fan of summer! I couldn’t imagine my life without it. Not be able to sit outside in the sun, that would make me depressed. If I could, I would visit the Mediterranean Sea several times a year, enjoying the sun and the heat. Ohh, that would be lovely.

So how do I spend my holidays, always going away on charter trips? No me and my family loves to travel around Sweden with our caravan. Vacation at home, sunny and warm weather? Sometimes a very bad combination, everybody who has traveled in Sweden knows how it can be. One day the weather is just fine and the other the rain is pouring down. But why have we become “campers”? I can find so many reasons for that.

One reason is the freedom; we can go wherever we want. If the children decide that they want to visit Skara Sommarland that is OK. Travelling with a caravan doesn´t mean you have to book the vacation several months ahead, as you need to do with a charter trip. When our vacation starts, we look at the map and the weather report and follow the sun. Very convenient!

When you tell others how we spend our vacation, I get a lot of comments regarding the camping grounds. “How can you like that, all the caravans are so close to each other”, that is one comment I get a lot. But I don´t find this a problem. I am quite a social person, so I just find it fun to have a lot of people around me to talk to. Take out a chair and sit outside the caravan and just look at people is nice, I think that is comparable with sitting at a coffee house in Uppsala and be social.

But the main reason for us is our children. They love being away with the caravan. We went to Thailand last year, spending time with my brother and his fiancé. Later that summer we went to Lysekil with the caravan. When school started and they were supposed to write something about the summer vacation, they had troubles deciding what to write. Thailand or Lysekil, for them the experience was the same.

Maybe I am a bit odd, but I really like our vacation. This year we actually have booked a week, we are going to Öland. The reason we have booked is that we are going with two other families. Six adults and seven children, can it be boring?

And no, me and my fiancé don´t have matching training suite. That is not compulsory…..

Big brother is watching you!

A couple of weeks before Christmas I visited one of my oldest friends, she lives in London. This is a city with many cameras watching over you, did it make me feel unpleasant? No, because I don´t have anything to hide.

In Sweden there is a big debate whether you should have cameras or not in public places. Our personal integrity is very important, sometimes more important than the security of the citizens. We do have surveillance cameras in this country, mostly in public places like the underground and shopping centers. I think this is good, people may feel more secure when they walk in public places, especially in the evening or at night time. If you don’t have anything to hide, the cameras should not be any problem.

Most of the cameras today save the materials that are filmed. After a couple of days this material is deleted if nothing especially was “caught on tape”. This is a good thing, the material is only supposed to be used to catch criminals or criminal acts. If the material is used in a wrong way, as surveillance of citizens, or that private persons can watch these films, this is wrong.

But this is not the only cameras you may get in contact with, high speed cameras is another one. This is one type of surveillance cameras I really like. They actually save lives! Drivers really slow down when they see a camera, a fine is not fun to get. But one thing that hit me this weekend when I was driving down to Skara, why do you need a sign a couple of hundreds meters before a camera as a warning? If someone is driving too fast, let the person get a fine and learn a lesson. Take away the warning signs.

My opinion is quite clear, I think we should have cameras as surveillance, but we must be really careful with them, not letting the wrong persons get hold of the information.

Grades

For this fourth blog we were supposed to write about grades, do we like them or not? I believe it is a complicated question, depending on who you ask. Teacher will think one thing, students another thing and parents a third thing.

I have worked as a teacher for almost ten years now, first in “lågstadiet” and now at “högstadiet”. I can see a big difference between the jobs when it comes to grades. In my job today I am used to grading students, but how it is done? But after giving it a real thought, I think we should have grades in school.

When you have grades you really ought to find a good way to grade students, today we use IG, G, VG and MVG. I believe the steps between the grades are way too big, students can´t accept a G, in their opinion that is a “bad” grade. VG or MVG is the only grade that counts. So a better scale for the grades is something that I would like.

How do teachers use the grades today? Very different I would say. Some just looks at the test results, some will look at the whole situation in school, but how are we supposed to do? I think it is important to have very concrete goals for the students, showing what it is that they are supposed to learn. When you give the students grades you look at the goals and compare, how far did you reach? This is what you discuss with your students when talking grades. You can´t just give grades looking at test results.

Most parents want to be a part of their children and their school-day. Grades can be a part of the communication between the home and the school. Although you have teacher-parent talk once every semester, there is things that can be forgotten. As I work at “högstadiet” I am having talks with my students and their parents regarding all subjects. This can be quite hard sometimes, I am their math and physics teacher, and now I must try to give accurate information from all their other teachers. I don´t say it can be done, but sometimes it is very hard. Grades can help at this time, showing were in the development the students are.

So I eventually, yes I think we should have grades, not only for the older student, but also for the younger ones. Giving them at a correct way and not only pointing out the difficulties, but as a primary goal to show what the students have achieved. Looking at what you can, and not what you can´t is a good for everyone.

Climate change

Carbon dioxide, did you know that this gas is one of the major sources to the global warming of the earth? Carbon dioxide, that is what you exhale every second and what we in general call greenhouse gas.



In most newspapers today you can read about how we can do to help the environment, stop the global warming. These things are pretty easy to do. For example, reduce your warm water consumption, stop buying mineral water, use fluorescent lamps instead of regular lamps, taking your bicycle more. Do you think this is tough? You should do more.
If you really want to do changes, here are some ideas:

· Reduce your flying, aero planes combust their fossil fuel up in the atmosphere, increases the global warming. Every journey counts.
· Become a vegetarian. The meat production in the world generates more carbon dioxide than the world’s transportation.
· Buy a smaller house or apartment. The western world consumes a lot of energy just to keep our home warm. You can reduce the heat in your home, but most of the time that is not enough. Moving to a smaller house or apartment is much better.
· Live on the right place. If you live closer to your work you may be able to put your car in the garage more, cars produces a lot of carbon dioxide.

The way we live have created a high consumption of energy, most of that comes from fossil fuel. There are alternatives, bio fossil, but they are still very expensive and most of us are not ready to pay more for our energy.

But why have we let things gone so far? I think that it is because we can´t really see the changes yet. Of course there is less snow in the winter, but you can still travel up north and find cold weather and lot of snow. Our atmosphere is still quite intact, we don´t need to use extra sun protection as they need to do in Australia. This is just a few things, but I think when we start to “feel” the change, we will change.

Do I love TV-series?

For this week we were supposed to write about our thoughts about TV-series and our relationship to them.

When I started to think back to my childhood and what kind of TV-series or programs I loved, I hit me…. “Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter”, that is my first memory and one of the strongest. I was four or five years old when SVT started to send the show, and me and my friend never missed a part. My parents gave us paper and crayons so that we could follow, writing the letters and numbers. As a result of this I could read and write quite well when I started the first grade. I have seen the program today and I still love it as much as I did when I was five. The reason I love it is the fact that the viewer actually learns something, they had a thought when they made the programs back in the seventies.

Today, well there is one TV-series I totally adore, Midsummer murders. I know, it is probably just me and a couple of old ladies who watches that series. I have never missed a single episode, am I away for vacation I will set the video. There is just one problem with this series, SVT does only send it during the summers. How can they do this to me (and all the old ladies)?

I have tried to explain to my friends why I am such a big fan of “Midsummer murders”. I think I like it for two reasons, first of all, the language. I really like to watch films and TV-series from Britan, especially the Southern parts. I watch the episode and just dream away, seeing myself in the local pub. The other reason is the fact I like criminal dramas. Seeing how someone was killed doesn’t appeal to me, I want to know why.

What about the winter? I have to confess, there are some TV-series that I watch. “Desperate housewife” is one of them, of course people dies in this series, but it is not the main attraction. I can watch it peacefully with a nice cup of tea.

There is one thing I have to admit, programs about interior design, gardens and cooking… when these shows are on I really can´t turn off the TV. I just love them, and it got even better last week when “Leila på landet” started. This kind of TV-series appeal to me in the same way as “Fem myror….” did. I actually learn something. I do try the recipe, learns about my garden, what kind of flowers I can have etc. I do not have to feel guilty when I lay on the sofa watching TV; after all, it is educational.

Look at my garden, when friends say that I watch these shows too much, I don’t agree! I need help organizing things here.

So, as an answer to my question in the beginning, YES I love TV-series.

Being a child

I grew up in the seventies, born in 1973. That means that I spent the eighties as a teenager.

I remember my childhood as a long fun time. If I look back it seems that the most of my memories are from the summer. I can’t really understand why? Probably because that’s when you had the famous summer vacation! You spent your whole days out playing games with your friends, sometimes it felt like the whole neighborhood was out at the same time. We used to play football, “röda-vita-rosen” and “brännboll”. I can’t remember any rules; I asked my mother if I remembered wrong? Yes I did. Of course we had rules, they were not many, but most of us children had the same ones. We learnt the social rules by playing games together, boys and girls, young and old.

Even though I grew up in the late seventies/early eighties we had school, I can’t really remember being in the classroom. I do remember that we all went home after school, there was always some parents at home (mostly mothers) that could look after you. You were out playing with the other children in your neighborhood, not so tired.

Today, many of our children’s activities are very controlled by us adults. A boy, nine years old, can have hockey practice three times every week plus one match on the week-end. If that is the case it leaves very little time for spontaneous games in the afternoon. Also, the schooldays are getting longer and longer, children stay at “fritids” until very late. Some of the children are really tired when they finally get home. The computer, which is so naturally for our children but quite unnaturally for us, is one of the things they have energy for when they get home. We learnt our social skills from playing games, could it be that the children today learns that from playing games over the internet, chatting etc?

Of course we want our childhood for our children, but I think we have to accept that times are changing. The computer is something that we have to accept, our children learns so many things that we never could. But was it always better before? No I don´t think so. It is just how we remember it, you were free! No bills that had to be paid, no washing machines that had to be started. You just remember the good thing, of course we had bad days when I was young, you just don’t remember them as well as the fun ones.

If you grow up today you should be able to play “war” in the forest, play land-hockey on the street, and pick flowers in the fields. Maybe we have to consider all the rules that we have created to protect our children sometimes is stopping them. Okay, you may break your arm if you play in the forest, but it won’t kill you. Maybe we have to accept that accidents happen and let our children a little bit more free.

We complain that our children spent more and more time inside, but can it be that we have created this ourselves by all our rules?

Hello

This is my first blog ever, it will be used as a part in an englishcourse.