The week of April 9 was very special at Pleasant Valley as the school hosted a group of around 30 Danish students.
The visiting students go to an international boarding school, Skales Efterskole, in Denmark. The school is home to 9th-10th graders with students from 14-18 years old.
As an international boarding school, Efterskole embraces a common educational focus on enlightenment for life, general education and democratic citizenship. Compared to public schools in Denmark, the Efterskole schools have a choice of subjects, teaching methods and educational approach. They offer a wide variety of after school activities which dictate their varying start and stop times of school.
One of the things that is unique about Efterskole is the teacher-student relationship. Teachers are responsible for both teaching and supervision outside of school hours. Most teachers are also responsible for floors on student dorms, resembling an RA in college.
This means that teachers and students are together all day from the time the students wake up until they go to bed. This often creates a close, personal and informal relationship between students and teachers.
PV student ambassadors were excited to take part in the experience. Danish students got to shadow them during classes, observing the different subjects and teaching techniques used at PV. More importantly, they got to share lunch time at the PV cafeteria. The food, seating arrangements and lunch room environment were a big jump from their regular lunches. The Efterskole has a private chef who prepares a variety of meals for the students, much different than what PV students are accustomed to.
Though they didn’t come during America’s football season, one group of ambassadors hosted a two-touch football game at Crow Creek Park to help the Danish students understand the sport.
Other ambassadors took their visiting students to the girls’ home soccer game against PV’s rival school, Bettendorf.
Senior Bella Hernandez was one ambassador who went to the game. “Taking the international students to the soccer game was important because this was something that is prevalent to their culture too. It was great to have an activity that we had in common and be able to bond about something we all enjoy,” she said.
Many Danish students requested to try popular fast food restaurant Raising Cane’s, which became a fast favorite for the newcomers. Other musttry locations included Whitey’s, Atomic, Chick-fil-A and Texas Roadhouse. Danish visitors were bewildered by the huge portion sizes, amount of dye and use of ranch at local eateries, often comparing them to restaurants in Denmark.
10th grader Christine Maj said, “The dyes used in the ice cream at Whiteys would have been illegal in Denmark. And they always gave you more scoops than you asked for.”
In Denmark, it’s not common to say anything more than necessary with servers or cashiers. But it’s very common in the US— especially in the Midwest— for people to casually chat with everyone, even strangers.
Maj shared the differences she noticed on her visit, “It’s hard to pinpoint specific things that are different in America, but a few very noticeable ones are plastic straws, the fact that you can drive a car at 14, the limited amount of public transport in smaller areas, also tipping culture, which is not really done in Denmark and of course free water and free refills of soda.”
The experience was fun for both Danish students and the PV community as a whole, providing an opportunity to get to know the international students. It was also a learning experience as students from both countries got to learn about each other’s daily lives and culture.
With how exciting this trip was, hopes are spreading across the Valley that there might be future opportunities, either for PV students to travel to Denmark or for another group of Danish students to visit PV.
