Roskilde 2025
Job Shadowing -trip
We spent an unforgettable week in mid-November 2025 job shadowing in Denmark, which was also preparing for Christmas. We arrived in Copenhagen on Sunday, November 9th, well in advance. Immediately after checking into our hotel, we headed to the city centre, where we bought some smørrebrød and then walked around the dimly lit centre of Copenhagen.
The Danes are clearly a Christmas people. Already in November, we got to jump into Santa's' sleigh and sip mulled wine at the newly opened Christmas market.
And then to VUC Roskilde!
On Monday we woke up early because that was when our actual job shadowing week at VUC Roskilde started. VUC Roskilde is a large adult education institution that offers lower secondary, upper secondary education and various support groups, for example, for autism and dyslexia classes. The school is quite similar to Eira's.
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Our hotel was right next to Copenhagen Central Station, from where it was easy to jump on the train and travel to Roskilde. In Roskilde we walked to the school and met the deputy principal and international coordinator, Sune Stick. He told us about the school in general and then showed us to the classrooms, where we started to follow the first lessons. Later in the day, Sune took us around more and showed us the wonderful facilities of the school. We were impressed by the school library, teachers' workspaces and music classes, for example. All the classrooms had timers and mobile phone holders on the walls.
Mathematics, Danish as a second language, and autism and dyslexia classes
During the week, Maria followed various maths lessons and Hanna followed Danish as a second language lessons for adults in basic education. We also followed the teaching of the autism and dyslexia classes. In addition to following the lessons, all the discussions with Danish colleagues were also particularly rewarding. We learned from the Danish language that the letter e can be pronounced in at least four different ways, depending on which other letters it is next to. The Danish as a second language teacher said that she always tells her students that “Danish is not Finnish, which is pronounced the way it is written”.
A very safe and predictable atmosphere is created in the autism classes. For example, the teachers always presented the structure of the lesson at the beginning, which increased the predictability of the lessons. The most important thing, however, was that the autism classes had their own autism mentor, Morten. He was also present in some of the lessons and helped the students in absolutely everything possible. In addition to him, there were other helping hands in the classes.
In Roskilde and Køge
In addition to the main school in Roskilde, Hanna also followed Danish as a second language teaching at the VUC Roskilde school in Køge. This school and its peaceful atmosphere reminded me of the old days in Kalliola. Maria was also excited to take the local train to Køge after her own Roskilde day, so in addition to Copenhagen and Roskilde, we were able to visit this third city as well.
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Roskilde is a beautiful old bay town. We were told that Roskilde is more of an “academic” city and Køge is a working-class town. Roskilde seemed to be full of lovely red-brick houses with arched roofs, while Køge had colorful old wooden houses. We were very attracted by the atmosphere of both cities, colored by the autumn leaves.
Finally to Tivoli!
Viimeisen päivän vierailu jouluun puetussa Tivolissa kruunasi reissumme!