My (Olle), and also YAM’s first visit to Skellefteå, in the district of Västerbotten in the north of Sweden, turned into an intense, beautiful, fun and developing week. First of all I really want to thank all the Trainers and participants for an amazing week filled with laughter (especially over the mischievous “youth” participating), good food, and interesting discussions back in September.
I must admit I didn’t know much about Skellefteå. The one thing I did know was that they have a very successful ice-hockey team that the whole town loves (I thought): Skellefteå AIK. Actually one of Sweden’s absolute best teams. So when I ended up next to the taxi driver when we traveled from the small airport to the beautiful hotel, I took my chance to ask him a little about the hockey team (which I of course thought his life revolved around). “So, how’s the hockey team doing then?” I asked him presumptuously with my obvious big city/Stockholm dialect. He didn’t respond immediately, but when he did, he said “I dont know…”
If you think the last paragraph ended abruptly, it was still nowhere near what I thought of the conversation when I sat there beside the only man in Skellefteå that didn’t build his whole life on that hockey team. Life never ceases to amaze!
During the course, the participants were deeply engaged in channeling their teenage selves – which is interesting since it challenges us Trainers to model different ways of approaching different kinds of young people in YAM. Even though this can sometimes prove challenging for the Trainers, it ended up to be very helpful since the participants – by enacting different types of situations that could potentially happen in the classroom – also put focus on very real difficult events that can occur in classrooms. The ensuing discussions were particularly fruitful since we all got to experience pretty rowdy and interesting “youth” (though we do notice, again and again, that adults tend to fall into extremes when they’re invited to pretend to be young people).
The Trainers and some of the participants lived (and the course was held) very close to Skellefte älv (Skellefteå river), a little bit outside the city-centre. The surroundings were magnificent. One morning when Sanna, one of the Trainers, took a morning walk close to the river she took a photo of an enormous fish head (!) near the shoreline, chopped, and ready to cook.
So, if you are into fishing big fish, meeting kind and fun people, having the laugh of your life because of grown up people acting hilarious when channeling their teenager selves, sleep and eat well; go to Skellefteå – Sweden’s frontside!
Post by Olle Mårtens, YAM Instructor and Trainer with some additions by Niklas Andersson