Welcome to...
Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium
A little background...
On Tuesday 24 May 2023, it was a bit cloudy in Copenhagen… But the weather didn’t discourage us, since we were going to visit our second Danish school! Thus, we took the Copenhagen Metro to get to the city’s western suburbs, and more specifically, the municipality of Høje-Tasstrup. Once arrived, we were walking from the train station to the school when we saw the biggest white hare we’d ever seen running in the middle of the street.
Once we had recovered from this fortuitous, cartoon-like encounter, we looked up and discovered Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium! A modern white building, with a lot of windows and a roof made of blue and white stripes. The inside of the building was quite similar: modern equipment, blue couches, white walls, wooden furniture… We didn’t have the opportunity to visit the whole school, but what we saw on our way to the administrative team’s floor created a modern, pure and welcoming atmosphere.
However, what was quite striking was the fact that the school seemed empty, deserted and silent. The pupils must have been in class or on holiday. For once, we discovered the school not through the students and teachers, but through the management team. It’s another way of discovering a school that has changed our habits! We were welcomed by the administrative team, who offered us a coffee, before being welcomed by the headmistress: Ida Diemar.
She’s a person who really cares about her students and tries to give them the best possible human and academic support. It was therefore a great opportunity for us to discover her school through her eyes and her educational project.
- Tuesday 24 May 2022
- Travel day 29
- 16th school visited
We can, we will, we dare!
Ready to discover Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium?
Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium is a Danish high school founded in 1974. It is located in Vestegnen, the western suburb of Copenhagen. This region is known for its cultural diversity and its dense population. Therefore, there is a well-established immigrant community in Vestegnen due to the economic opportunities and the availability of affordable housing in the area.
This socio-economic reality is reflected in the profile of students who attend Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium who have, for the most part, foreign backgrounds. Thus, this school tries to welcome them as best they can, to adapt and to meet their needs. The school team adopt the same strategy to provide an adapted education for students with special needs, for example, autistic students.
Therefore, one of the main characteristics of Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium is to be a safe place for students with foreign backgrounds and/or special needs where they do not feel like minorities as they do in the outside world.
If you need more background information, take a look at our page about the Danish education system!
A safe place for all students
Ida Diemar has been the headmistress of Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium for 3 years. She explained to us that her school is special because of the area they are located in. As explained before, in Vestegnen, there are a lot of citizens with foreign backgrounds and a lot of their children go to her school. Therefore, the school adapted itself to the socioeconomic profile of its students and their parents, not the other way around. The students and their parents are mostly born in Denmark, Danish is their mother tongue. However, they often have strong non-western cultural habits and beliefs that need to be taken into consideration at school. Indeed, in Denmark, these children and their parents are considered as a minority. Some of them can suffer from discrimination, but in a more general way, most of them suffer from minority stress. This kind of stress comes from the fact that a person is aware that she or he is a minority and is often linked to the stigmatization of minority groups.
Ida Diemar cannot act against this phenomenon outside, but she can do it inside her school. It is very important for her that her school is a safe place for every student. She wants students to feel welcomed and looked upon with gentle eyes. She wants that when a student walks through the school gates, he or she doesn’t feel as a minority anymore. She wants to take the minority stress off her students’ shoulders and enable them to focus on learning and graduating in a supportive environment. And she made her dream a reality…
To create and maintains this safe and comfortable atmosphere, she relies on several key points:
- Having small class sizes
To begin with, this atmosphere can exist because there is too many students in their classes. Ida explained to us that their largest class counts 28 pupils, but that in average there is 24 pupils per class.
This way, a teacher can communicate with every student, relate to everybody, and the student can relate to the teacher. This small class enables teachers and students to build a real relationship, which is not possible in other schools where the number of students per class is higher… At Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium, students are and feel treated as individuals, not as a group, their individualities, particularities and needs are acknowledged.
It is our experience that if you have fewer students, you can relate to them in another way. In other schools, they have 32 students and it is impossible to create a safe relationship.
Ida Diemar
Headmistress
- Chosing the right teachers
In order to build this king of teacher-student relationship, you need to hire the right person. Ida takes teacher recruitment very seriously.
She searches for teachers truly interested in students, whether they have special needs or a foreign background. Therefore, during job interviews, potential new teachers have to commit to creating safe relationships with their students.
When we have job interviews, that is the one thing that you have to sign in for: I want to create a safe relationship to my students. I want to pay them interest and I want to see them as a whole, not as only a student in my subject, but as a student in school and in Vestegnen.
Ida Diemar
Headmistress
What Ida expects from her teachers actually becomes an asset for the school. It has no trouble attracting new teachers and does not suffer from a retention problem. Indeed, by valuing these relationships and welcoming students with specific backgrounds, the school has something special. She attracted people who think beyond their subjects, who believe in the societal power of the school and are ready to support it.
- Hiring student counselors and psychologists
But the teachers are not the only members of the staff contributing to the construction of a safe atmosphere…
Indeed, the school counts more student counselors than most other Danish schools. That way, the school can offer individualized guidance and advice to a larger number of students. The main idea behind this is to make the students feel heard.
In the same idea, the school counts 2 psychologists when most Danish schools have none. At, Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium, there are also special classes for children with special needs suffering from autism for example. The school hired psychologists because due to their diagnose, these children need professional help. However, the school team realized that non-diagnosed students could also benefit from this kind of support. Indeed, some students have experienced things in their background that the school have to cope with if teachers want them to graduate. Therefore, this psychological support is provided for free to every student who needs it.
- Organizing theme days and debates
The organization of special workshops or theme days can also contribute to creating a supportive atmosphere. For example, they organize group discussions and debates, within a class or by bringing the whole school together, tackling topics like religion, behaviour on social medias… During these times, students can speak up and express their opinions.
But for us, the most interesting event is the day of democracy. During this theme day, students get to evaluate the school. They can make demands to buy new equipment, ask for more differentiation in class, everything they want as long as they are convincing and make the effort to justify their ideas. After that, the team staff get together to realize the most convincing ideas, within the limits of the school’s resources of course. The goal of this day is to make the students understand that they have a voice inside and outside the school, to train them to use their voices to defend what matter to them.
We want them to think: “I might be a minority, but I have a voice.”
Ida Diemar
Headmistress
- Instiling a sense of community
Ida explained to us that the students are very friendly and understanding with each others. They seem always ready to help or take the defense of someone, they are very supportive. This is maybe because they all experienced discrimination and suffering that they do not want to reproduce… But the school also has a role to play in this reality.
Indeed, everything is done to make them a big collective, a big group. There is a lot of teamwork, even sometimes during exams. For example, during their mathematics exam, students at Høje-Tasstrup Gymnasium have to complete a collective and an individual part. A similar structure is used during human and social sciences exam. Thus, students are often required to work together, to collaborate to achieve success together. In doing so, they learn the power of the collective. But this sense of community also exists because their teachers show them the way…
Indeed, there is a lot of collaboration between teachers in the school. They work very closely around the classes. To help a student with difficulty, all of the pedagogical team has to get involved, otherwise he or she drop out. Therefore, teachers demonstrate vivid cohesion and work together, help each others to lift up all the pupils of a given class as a functional whole.
I think that’s also one of our weapons. To show the students that we also stand united. Not against them, but towards them or around them.
Ida Diemar
Headmistress
The idea behind all this is to show the students they are stronger together. But even more, it is to show them that they belong even if they are a minority. It should not stop or slow them down.
Therefore, with the different members of the supervisory team, the many events organized and the general mentality in the school, students benefit from 4 main elements :
- Structure
- Healthy relationships
- Comfort
- Understanding
Since the media and politicians are saying what they are about students with foreign backgrounds. I think it’s my task to talk about all the good things that my students actually do because that is not a story you can read about. I’m the only one telling it.
Ida Diemar
Headmistress
Pexels / @Anna Shvets
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Pexels / @Polina Kovaleva
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A school adapted for children with special needs
COMING SOON !
A school focused on human relations and career aspirations
COMING SOON !
Pexels / @Cottonbro studio
Pexels / @Anete Lusina
Article written by
MARIE FERRAN
On the 12/29/2023
What inspired us
One of the strong suits of the school is to welcome and promote social and cultural diversity.
The school transformed itself to meet the needs of students with foreign backgrounds and/or with special needs. The main goal of the school is to make them feel safe and important and to not reduced them as parts of minorities. Therefore, everything is done to show students that the teaching team believes in them and that they are more than capable to achieve their dreams.
Another strength of the school is the support provided to children with special needs, for example, autistic children.
Indeed, all the teaching staff is trained to be able to accompany them in a way that fits their needs and capacities. The school even developed innovative teaching methods to help these children the best they can. In addition, these pupils do not seem to suffer from discrimination within the school, where differences are accepted and not pointed out. These students therefore have the chance to learn in a safe and supportive atmosphere.
The last thing that we loved the most about the school is the importance it places on nurturing relationships.
Indeed, it is the primary focus of the school, not to achieve high academic results, which is rare. The emphasis is put on the fact that students are first and foremost human beings. For them to grow, they need to develop and nurture healthy relationships with other students and with teachers. There is the same vision among the teaching staff who work together as a team to offer the students the best of themselves.
See you Høje Tasstrup Gymnasium!
Key words
Inclusion
Children with special needs
Relationships
Cultural diversity
Freedom
Denmark
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