15 Nov Wild animals, world-renowned waved eagle & Report from Hong Kong
Dear reader,
We have made it through another week of afterschool at Ranum. The main news of the week is about a successful fundraiser for animal welfare in Namibia, a motivational talk by world champion, wave biter and amazingly charismatic guy Casper Steinfath and finally a story about a trip to Hong Kong that ended abruptly.
Run for (expensive) life
It's great what they've accomplished. Greater than they could have imagined. We'll take it from the beginning.
During an after-school year at Ranum, cultural subjects undertake many different initiatives to help the countries, people or organisations they will be visiting. We are generally very good at this, but right now we have to highlight Wildlife Conservation - Ranum Efterskole College (click on the link to go to the Facebook page). The Culture Department travels to Namibia to work on wildlife conservation. In the past, we have collected pledges, among other things, and this year the team decided to find sponsors who made contributions based on how many laps they ran on our new running track. It turned out to be an excellent idea. They collected 49.119,75 kr. It's a great result, and they're proud of it. "We were hoping for half that, so we're really proud of both our students and their sponsors. We can't wait to tell our baboon, cheetah and of course human friends about it," says Carsten, who is the lead teacher of the cultural subject.
Read more about the project here.
Waves that motivate
He has been to Ranum a few times. The first time he was not very old, and at that time he had not yet become world champion in SUP boarding. Nor had he crossed the Skagerrak on a custom-built board, but he has all that now. And much more.
Casper Steinfath is Denmark's most skilled and probably best known surfer. But that wasn't the only reason he was there: he gave a rousing talk about daring to fail, finding inspiration and motivation - and not least, how to set a goal and achieve it.
Entitled "From water scare to world champion", he took to the stage in the banquet hall to talk about his life's challenges and achievements. "You have to dare to fail, and I hope my story can help build a passion and maybe push some boundaries," Casper Steinfath described after his talk.
If you want to know more about Casper, you can read about him here: https://www.redbull.com/dk-da/athlete/casper-steinfath-2
Riots in Hong Kong
It may sound like a headline from a news media. That is partly what we are here, and the headline is also relevant in our context. On Thursday last week, Headmaster Olav Storm and our Chinese teacher, Ning Xu, went to Hong Kong to talk about our afterschool. Here's what he had to say about the trip.
We are visiting our friendship school in Guangzhou. Top 20 students in 8th and 9th grade. Grade are invited by the school head to discuss motivation for their own learning and give recommendations to their approx. 2000 peers. The students are in charge, there are journalists from the young people's own newspaper and radio station. A preliminary study showed that about 86% of students spend 90% of their free time studying and that 14% of them are seriously stressed. The students have many good ideas and the headmaster is very proud of the process and his students.
It was the first update to come home. Read on below.
Ranum Efterskole College visits Qingyan Overseas Chinese Middle School and enters into a cooperation agreement on the exchange of students, teachers and management.
The school specialises in experimental technical learning, sports and has a line where students can train to become pilots. I tried a simple simulator and ~ am better at steering a boat. Tonight we fly to our friendship school in HK, and are excited about the situation there.
So it went the following day.
The situation in HK was quite pressurized, we arrived at 01 and had a parenting at 8, and were at the airport again at 10. There were no riots in the streets, but plainclothes police and barricades everywhere. Schools and universities and public transport were closed, so the two school visits were cancelled in the morning. The people we met were stressed and very sad about the situation. We are now back home in Denmark and hope for a more peaceful future for our friends in HK. It does not look good..
And afterwards Olav chose to go home. The situation was not to tell about Ranum in Hong Kong.
Oso / project week
This week, students have started their project writing for 9th graders and 10th graders have started OSO. Therefore, there is talk:
- Subject selection
- Problem formulation
- Use of sources and choice of materials
- Manufacture of product
- Submission
It will be interesting to see how the next week goes - and what the final products will contain.
And the winner is...
We had our PVA competition. The winners were announced and celebrated - see below who won the prizes.
August Christensen won best 3 photos / photo series with these great shots from Venice.
Christian won the title for the best video.
He was diving in Egypt, and it looked like this.
The best article (out of the two submitted) was written by Catarina Bruno.
The article titled "The Turkey that I Like" can be read here.
And then we came to the best of the best.
The prize, awarded for the overall best performance, is a GoPro camera. Rasmus Stoltenberg won with this almost professional video.
Events next week
OSO, project week and bridge building are the headlines for next week. It will be a short week, with students already leaving for the weekend on Thursday at 2pm. There will be time to come home and recharge your batteries and see your family and friends who are waiting to hear about all the afterschool stories back home.
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