Silje fumbled in the dark when the school received 50 Ukrainian students – an idea changed everything.

– I felt like a failure after every single thing we tried. This isn’t working, I thought.

Early in 2022, Engerdal municipality, located in the northern part of Østerdalen in Norway, reopened a refugee reception center that had been closed. The small community was suddenly filled with Ukrainian refugees.

Together with two teaching colleagues, Silje Skogheim Lillestu was given the responsibility to welcome the children and youth and give them an introduction to the Norwegian language before they moved on to other municipalities.

She had worked with minority language students before. But not on this scale. 

Nearly 30 new students arrived at the school, and the number just kept growing. 

By the fall of 2022, there were over 50. They came, and they moved on; they came, and they moved on.

Today, Engerdal Primary and Secondary School is the school in Norway with the highest proportion of Ukrainian students.

– It’s difficult to teach when you don’t have a common language. And when new students are constantly starting, the classroom dynamics change all the time, says Lillestu.

A lonely dance

The students were divided into two groups: grades 1–4 and grades 5–10. The age range within each group was large, but the resources were limited, and the three teachers had to support each other. Lillestu was given the main responsibility for the older group.

She approached the job full of enthusiasm. But she soon noticed the difficulties.

– Even explaining something as simple as ‘tag’ is incredibly difficult when you don’t speak the same language.

One rainy autumn day in 2022, she was supposed to teach the students the «BlimE dance». BlimE is a  song and a corresponding dance that is performed simultaneously by approximately 400,000 children every year. 

Silje used a translation program to explain the concept: Everyone should join in; it was about community and inclusion, and in the end, they would make a video.

The students watched attentively. But when it came time to dance, only one or two stood up. 

Lillestu showed with her whole body that this was supposed to be fun, almost frantically explaining that they had to do it, that wherever they ended up in Norway, there would be a BlimE dance.

The few who had stood up sat down again. Two crawled under their desks, holding on tightly. In the end, she was standing there dancing all by herself.

The orange fruit

Today, Silje Skogheim Lillestu stands before the students with a confident presence. She asks them what they did during the break. One student raises both arms in the air.

– Did you pray?

A few students nod.

– Did you get any answers, then? Did they answer you?

– No, the students laugh.

She asks more about their break, before handing out slips of paper with questions. One student, for example, is supposed to ask the others, “What’s the name of the orange fruit that Norwegians eat?” The student who answers “orange” asks the next question.

Young, uncertain boys and girls, each with their own stories, but they have met here in Engerdal.

Lillestu stands at the front of the room like a Mother Norway. She laughs and jokes, explains words like “onion” and “poop,” throws in a Ukrainian word here and a Spanish one there. She uses the students' names frequently.

It’s hard to imagine that she was once new and uncertain herself. But by the fall of 2022, she couldn’t even bear to talk to people after the workday was over. She just wanted to go for walks, sit alone, and watch TV.

The dream of a good day

– Did you consider quitting?

– Yes, in a way, because I felt like I wasn’t doing my job well. But I’m as stubborn as a mule and told myself I was going to make this work.

The two teachers she worked with also felt like things weren’t going well. They had many conversations in the team room. The biggest challenge was the high turnover: How were they going to provide for both new and more experienced students at the same time?

They always ended the workday with a shared song lyric: ‘Tomorrow could be our best day!’

And one day, in late autumn 2022, something happened. Her colleague, Mats Lund, had an idea: What if they started an eight-week teaching program, with a new theme each week?

One week, they could learn about food, another about everyday life at school. This way, everyone would learn something new. 

If someone stayed longer than eight weeks, they could get more advanced tasks when the program started over. Eventually, these students could also begin participating in Norwegian classes.

The idea became a turning point.

– We still run the teaching this way. We’re proud of the program because it has worked really well, says Lillestu.

Had to lower the expectations

But even though some things improved, it was still difficult to teach students with whom she did not share a common language.

She realized that if she was to continue in her job, she had to change both her mindset and her teaching methods. Occasional moments of insight helped her along the way: for example, she gradually learned more and more Ukrainian from the students and realized how different it was from Norwegian.

– I realized that I had set expectations far too high, both for myself and the students.

She began to give shorter instructions. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

 – I couldn’t expect them to learn 40 words in one day. I had to think more along the lines of, if we’ve spent the whole day learning that a chair is a chair and a pencil is a pencil, that’s fantastic, she says, adding:

– We have to simplify everything we do, and when we think we’ve simplified it enough, we have to simplify it even more.

Friday is medal day

Today, she starts every teaching week by writing the words of the week on the board. The students fill in the words in their notebooks. Throughout the week, they have various exercises, including dictations. 

On Friday, there’s a vocabulary test: no one gets grades, but 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places are announced, and medals are awarded. All done with humor and good spirits.

Because there have been fewer minority students in the older age groups lately, the students are now divided into three groups instead of two. This makes the age range smaller, and it is easier to teach, according to Lillestu.

At the same time, some students are staying longer. Recently, refugees from countries other than Ukraine have arrived at the Engerdal reception center. These individuals often don’t have guaranteed residence permits, and it can take time before they are assigned a municipality to live in.

The student who has been in Lillestu’s class the longest is still there after a year. The one who stayed the shortest left after two days.

Altogether, she has gotten to know over 250 young people.

The real goal

– Do you talk to the students about what they experienced before coming to Norway?

– I feel that it’s outside of my role to ask, but sometimes they tell me. One student fled with his parents in a car while bombs were exploding behind them. That makes an impression.

In 2023, a year after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, the class watched a music video by the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra and artist Emma Steinbakken, which marked the event.

– It’s not easy to see students cry. But we must always remember where they come from. Many still have family and friends in a country at war. Then it’s good enough that we’ve learned what a chair is. There are more important things.

For Lillestu, ensuring that the students learn perfect Norwegian is not the top priority.

– My goal is for the students to feel safe and have a good school day. That’s also the goal of our school.

A gift from Ukraine

Through social media, she often receives messages from former students. And recently, when she was at a football match in a neighboring municipality—Lillestu is also a coach in her spare time—a former student came to visit her.

He brought a gingerbread-like cookie wrapped in cellophane. On the cookie were engraved Norwegian and Ukrainian designs. It said, “To Norway, from the city of Odessa.”

– When I experience things like that, I get emotional. Then it feels like I’ve achieved my goal: that no matter what the students have been through before, they have at least felt safe and good here in Engerdal.

She describes her job as her passion. From feeling desperate and powerless, today she stands in front of the class and loves what she does. Her Ukrainian is far from perfect, but she uses it anyway; she shows the students that it’s okay to try, even if you don’t always succeed.

That’s what she did with the BlimE-dance. But today, it feels like the ground beneath her is more solid.

A mental shift

– Back then, I thought I wasn’t doing my job well. Now I think I am. I’ve changed mentally: If a lesson doesn’t go exactly as planned, it’s okay. There will be new chances.

On World Teachers’ Day, October 5th, Silje Skogheim Lillestu turns 33 years old. She still has many working years ahead of her.

– Where do you think you’ll be in 30 years?

– I hope I’m still here at the school, working with refugees. Or wait… maybe I’ll be in Ukraine? My colleague Mats and I have said that we’ll go visit when the war is over. And since we’ve had well over 250 students from there at our school, we have quite a few people to visit.