My First School Visit

On Monday I traveled to Porvoo, a suburb of Helsinki, to visit two unique schools: Swedish language schools.

In Porvoo, there are approximately 2,000 Swedish speakers (historically, there are pockets of Swedish speaking people around Finland).  Therefore, there are several schools in the area that serve these children. Although the language of instruction is Swedish, they still follow the national curriculum and learn Finnish. The students also may choose to study a third language, which in the secondary school could be Russian, German or English.

My day began in the lower secondary school, equivalent to junior high in the United States.  I visited a math class and it was fascinating to see how when the students came in, the boys went to one side of the room and the girls went to the other.  I spent the rest of the class period observing how 14-year olds are 14-year olds no matter where you go in the world.

After math I went to English class.  The lesson for the day was expressing feelings.  There were only 12 students in the class (there had been 18 in math).  The teacher explained that the students in this particular class struggled with English so there were fewer there than in the other sections where the max is 18.  It was very clear that all of the students wanted to be there and were doing their best with the lesson - except for one.  He did not want to participate so he played with his phone, got up and walked around the room and interrupted other students and the teacher as they were talking.  There is no such thing as detention in Finland, so the teacher simply paid him no mind (nor did the other students) and went about the lesson. She explained to me that she would call his parents at the end of the day and they would deal with him at home.

I had really mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, I like that that parents are responsible for the child's behavior.  On the other hand, I am a firm believer in no one has the right to interfere with my right to teach or another student's right to learn.  I wondered how I would have handled this student in a Finnish classroom.

After English, the headmaster from the primary school picked me up and drove me to his school.  I am not an elementary person, but it was actually fun.  We had lunch in the cafeteria and I was suddenly someone famous and children would come say hello to me, ask me my name and ask how I was doing. They wanted to practice English.

I visited two 5th grade classes, one for English and one for Math.  I enjoyed both of them as I got to work directly with the students. In English class we worked on winter sports vocabulary and writing about different events at the Sochi Olympics.  In math, I worked with a smaller group of students who need more individualized instruction.  I enjoyed this part very much as I explained to my student that I was happy to help him, but needed to practice saying my numbers in Finnish.  He was exited to be "teaching" me and we got through several problems together.

I have been invited back in March to teach English lessons to the 5th and 6th graders.  I must confess, I am looking forward to it.