Newschool

Zagreb says hello to Oslo! This week, five psychosocial counsellors from Croatia asked us to show them how Newschool and Norwegian civil society works. We talked about collaboration, inclusion, and Norway’s best chocolate… before diving into a learning by doing experience. Congratulations to Venita for doing her first ever improv scene!

Can you and your colleagues help Newschool understand more about what's important to your well-being as a teacher? Yes? Please fill out this survey: https://tally.so/r/3jZxd1

Your input helps us apply for Erasmus+ funding, so that we continue creating free resources for teachers in Europe 🙂

Teachers Well-being Survey

Collaborative leadership for change and innovation in education - in a fun, interactive workshop :) In October last year, we had a course for a group of bright and passionate school directors. From Romania, they had big questions like: How do we reduce early school leaving? How do we improve our work with students from disadvantaged backgrounds? In interactive learning, our facilitator, Nikki Michelle Soo, empowered this group with tools and processes to find better solutions.

The course included a school visit with Espen Patsis-Torgersenorgersen at Lakkegata School. Thank you for a wonderful experience! This project was made possible by Inspectoratul Școlar Județean Covasna and EEA funding.

Our next course for educators is Teacher As Change Agent on April 11-15. More info here: https://newschool.me/teacher-as-change-agent

The whole Newschool-team together - at the same place, at the same time! Last Saturday we had our first full team meetup after extending our team. To have the opportunity to work digitally together across borders is really fantastic, but nothing beats real meetings between real people!

Great work from Nikki and Mitch last week and representatives from the school community in , . Thank you to Konin Munipality and EEA and Norway Grants for funding the Project "How Not to be Lonely at School" - using to increase student engagement and strengthen relationships.

Konin_Szkoła Naszych Marzeń Centrum Doskonalenia Nauczycieli w Koninie II Liceum Ogólnokształcące im K.K. Baczyńskiego w Koninie

As a part of the project ‘Together Closer’, we were visited by our project partners from Spišská Belá municipality, Slovakia and Expression two weeks ago. They were here to learn and exchange knowledge and experiences working with local youth in Spišská Belá. An amazing opportunity for us to learn and engage with this amazing group of people and also to meet with local organisations and schools in Oslo who share the same passion for non-formal education.

Study visits not only gives us the opportunity to get to know the participants and their project, we also get to know their culture better, and even our own, in meeting with theirs. Thank Pôjd - inšpiratívne miesto for coming to visit us!

This is a project funded by EEA-grants.

In the last 5 months we have expanded our team significantly! We’ve doubled actually, from 3 to 6.

Here’s our new colleagues:

Dag Ryland - Dag has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and is currently taking a master’s degree in Behavioural Science at OsloMet. Dag loves reading, cooking and travelling and he is especially interested in learning about how the human mind works, what makes us tick, and how our biases and blindspots affect our behaviour. He’s the most amazing person, and also responsible for our social media.

Nikki Michelle Soo - Nikki is passionate about helping people grow and develop. With a background in learning design and delivery, she also worked as a coach for many years. She enjoys performing live comedy improv in a team and also regular theatre. Born in Singapore, she grew up in Australia and is now based in Norway.

Hani Al-Hajeb - Hani is a specialist in insurance, accounting, and corporate finance with a degree in Business Administration from Beirut University in Lebanon. Joining us as part of the Praksisplassform NAV scheme, Hani will be working with Newschool in finance and accounting.

What do you think? Are we wired to create? Is it an innate ability we alle have, or just some lucky few?

Throwback to the Quest course we held here in Oslo in the middle of June. This Erasmus+ funded project aimed to develop skills in digital-learning and teacher-student online interaction. Incredible participants and collaborators made this a great week for learning!

This is a collaboration project with Roman Angel Appeal Foundation & Nicolae Grigorescu National College from Romania, Succubus Interactive from France and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona from Spain.

From Experiential pedagogy course in Piatra Neamț, Romania. 68 teachers participated in a workshop meant to illustrate the principles of experiential pedagogy - learning for the heart, head and hands.

Last week we visited the Museum of Education History in the city of Kaunas in Lithuania. The visit was part of the Travelling Museum project - an inspiring initiative in which the museum has converted a public bus into a mobile museum. Very soon they will embark on a tour of Lithuania, visiting 100 locations over the during of the project.

Our contribution was to design a facilitation guide and assisting with the training of the museum guides. Last week we had the privilege of presenting the guidebook and training the guides in person at the museum in Kaunas. Thank you to Lietuvos švietimo istorijos muziejus for the great experience!