Parent profile

Marie, mother of Emil Class of 2013

Marie and her daughter Ella visited the college during the month of February and were lucky to spend a week here with Emil, visiting classes, eating in the caf, taking part in theatre week, and watching the sunset over the hill. 

Marie mentioned that, as she had already seen lots of photos of the college she wondered whether it was really necessary to visit, but her decision to come was based on two reasons. Firstly, her husband is an alumnus of Atlantic College, Class of 1980, and so well aware of the changes that students go through during their time in a UWC college. When he was a student he felt it very important that his father come to visit him so naturally now he feels strongly that the family travels to see the place where he has studied to make coming home easier for him. Children go through such enormous changes here that without having someone around who knows what it was like, reintegration can be difficult and lonely! Secondly Ella also wanted to experience the school, being in 9th grade at the moment and considering where she wants to do her high school. Marie confessed that she wanted to “physically experience this place, its smells, tastes and the feel of life on campus and was surprised how different that experience was to just seeing it on the photos.” 

Marie teaches pedagogy at university level in Denmark. It is a very broad field comprising not only teaching in schools from kindergarten through high school but also working with the marginalized; children with learning difficulties, substance abuse problems, children who have been taken into care etc, a mixture of social work and education. Her specialty is teaching language, culture and communication. Through language she teaches how to read body language so she is finding it particularly interesting here on campus trying to decode the body language of so many different cultures, to see how they express themselves and what similarities there are. One of the first things that are taught to her students in university is how to listen; how it feels to know that someone is really interested and listening to you. Emil’s father, Soren Christian, who visited in October, is a geologist who has been working in an industrial engineering firm specializing in drainage but is now actively pursuing a new career path.

When Marie was young she studied in a free school, based on the philosophy of the English school Summerhill, started by some people who had been in a concentration camp during the war. In this learning environment teachers and students were considered equals. Emil also studied in this school before joining UWC. The underlying philosophy of this school is that if you feel somebody is listening to you then this is a very important thing to know, that your voice has been heard, that bad behaviour is not innate but simply a response to a threat. Trying to understand each other was an important part of this learning process. “In Scandinavia this is considered to be a training in democracy. It is important to have people who are courageous enough to speak out, it is not considered necessary for everyone to learn the same thing and behave in the same way. We seek individuality.”

Marie is happy to see that the UWC movement as a whole shares many similarities and values with the free school she and her son attended in Denmark and finds it very touching to see how well so many nationalities blend in together. She feels that this is a natural progression in his education and that students are being well prepared to go out and take on responsibilities in the world where they can really make a difference.