Trine Sønderholm Larsen

“I just had a morning meeting here this morning, and… I’ve been here for 13 years. It’s completely insane, but… Life happens. ”

Trine was born and raised on Møn, but has lived in Copenhagen for a number of years, where she studied to be an Occupational Therapist. Her family had always said that Trine should be a teacher, but the dream was to become an actress and, yes, anything but a teacher – and then an occupational therapist is also exciting. Therefore, the family was also a bit surprised when Trine after a year of living in the US came home and definitely had to be a teacher anyway. After 2 years of teacher training at Frederiksberg, she and her husband moved to Ollerup, where Trine’s husband had gotten a job, while Trine herself was on maternity leave from teacher training with her daughter. Her husband had read sports, and Trine knew nothing about Ollerup – but melted in, as she herself says, anyway.

“I think there is such a curiosity in me. If I lock myself in, I get nervous about missing something else, so I have a great need to be present. It happens very magically when you have a ‘now’ to relate to. ”

Trine has an unusually sharp eye for relationships, and she is not pale in admitting that she is adept at teaching. Teaching at a folk high school, where the curriculum is not set in stone, gives time and space to change course, seize the opportunity of the moment and change the agenda when something important arises. There is no reason to tell if you are not also able to get your message across – what Trine calls communication. To manage your learning space freely and unlocked, so that you can get the most out of the communication opportunities that actually exist – and not just the ones you had planned before.

It is important for Trine that you can be in the unpredictability and closeness that the teaching provides, but the most important thing is that the student comes from there with more questions than answers. To help students pinpoint the answers through questions, rather than conveying a pre-packaged view of life. In this way, the students get an opportunity to build their own perspective on their own prerequisites, passions and self-chosen life tasks, instead of the teacher’s. We are all different. And although teachers, as Trine says, do not always have the answers, they can help make students robust enough to search and find both the right and the wrong answers. The solution will probably come in the end.

“I have a favorite quote that you should include: What are we going to do with each other, because we are going to have something together? – It’s like that… My life question that I always have with me. You can’t go through life alone, I need everyone around me. ”