The Frida Way – Communication and relationship building measures for “a healthy, inspiring environment for learning”

Course ID

Course name: The Frida Way – Communication and relationship building measures for “a healthy, inspiring environment for learning”.
Course organizer: Frida Utbildning.
Course location: Göteborg and Vänersborg (Sweden).
Period: from 15th to 21st May 2022.
International group participants from: Estonia, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Spain, France, Slovacchia, Italy.

Objectives

Experience

Frida is a learning organization which comprehends preschool, primary and secondary education. It was started in 2006.

As far as secondary education is concerned, the school offers two programs of education: the Social Scientific and the Natural Scientific. Frida High is famous for its policy of student self-responsibility. Their goal is to create skilled  “backpackers”, citizens with a strong sense of independence, who take risks and learn from their mistakes.

This is demonstrated by much scheduled individual study time, which allows the students to finish assignments they may have, or to book meetings with teachers to discuss their progress or their difficulties. To this purpose, each student shares an office with a few other students, in which he or she can study, rest and work.

One of the most important goals is to create positive feelings, through a nice learning environment, diversity of teaching methods, interdisciplinary projects, participation, relations based on trust, social openness (promoting cooperative learning, socialization, internationalization, travels and activities outside school).

We attended several lessons and seminars given by different teachers, tutors, principals and students, who explained in detail The Frida Way and involved the whole international group of participants in activities and debates.

The aim was to spread this innovative teaching method, providing ideas and good practices that each of us could employ with their students and share with the whole school staff.

The whole experience was extremely interesting, stimulating and fun; the international group was lively and eager to learn.  Coming into contact with this “outside the box” method was inspiring and gave us new enthusiasm for our job.

Last, but not least, we embraced the typical Swedish tradition of Fika, a moment in which you take time out of your day to pause and enjoy a hot drink and a snack, not just to savor a good cup of kaffi (the Swedish word for coffee). Fika is a ritual that’s important in Swedish culture, giving yourself a moment to have a break and socialize. It all comes down to Frida’s motto: sharing is caring!