Primary education

In my childhood, I liked to read. My mother told me that she used to read for me at my bed before I fell asleep. And she told me that sometimes she would fall asleep before I did. And when my father entered my room, he noticed that I was reading the book on my own as my mother was sleeping next to me. The interest in reading has stayed with me throughout my life and remains among my top ways of learning. Among books I read as a child were books about what Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse were doing. Thinking about why I liked the Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse comics, it strikes me that I liked the simplicity of learning by watching photos - not least the ones with colors. Visual learning inspired me to learn. Also, I liked the happy faces of the characters. And I liked the creativity that the author used to tell the stories. What I learned made me smile and laugh and helped give me more energy. Reading about Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse also inspired me to think more creatively.  My mother told me that when I was a child, I often sat in the kitchen, when I did my homework. I recall, for example, that I practiced maths in the kitchen: Learning to count, add numbers, subtract, multiply and divide. And sometimes, I asked my mother to look at my solution to a math problem. As I got older, I mostly studied in my room where I could better concentrate.

In the early part of primary school, I recall I often played after school, on weekends and during holidays with my best friend Morten. For example, I remember we played football and badminton together. We also played table tennis at the house in Elleparken, where Morten lived with his brother and parents. We also had a lot of fun playing around on bicycles and with remote controlled cars. During time after school and on weekends, I also recall having good conversations with neighbors.

About 3 years into primary school at Elsted school, a relatively large change happened. There were four classes at the age group, I was a part of, and it had been decided that there were too few students in each of those four classes. In other words, the average number of students per class needed to increase. So one of the four classes, the one Morten and I was was in, got split in three groups which were distributed to each of the other 3 classes. The result of this change was, for example, that my best friend Morten was transferred to a different class, class A, than the class I was transferred to, class C. Examples of other changes that happened as a result of this management decision were, for example, change of classrooms, change of classmates, and change of teachers.

During some primary education math classes, I recall that each student worked individually on math problems that reflected his or her level. When a student came across a math exercise that he or she couldn't figure out how to solve, the student could go to the place in the room where Kirsten, the math teacher, was sitting, and get tutoring on his or her math problem. This way of teaching / tutoring / coaching helped me to 1) improve my math skills, and 2) develop an interest in coaching / teaching / tutoring. I am proud to say that the way of individually tutoring students, which I remember Kirsten did well, has been part of the inspiration for me to later in my life coach young people and people of other age levels.