NWW Finland Fulbright

The main events this week were visiting the Jalavapuisto School in Espoo and the Fulbright orientation in Helsinki.

The Jalavapuisto school is a English-Finnish bilingual primary school, grades 1-6. We arrived and were welcomed into the teacher's lounge by Anu Kahri, a 5th grade teacher who had arranged our visit. To start the day Finnish teachers meet, drink coffee, and socialize in the teachers' room before heading off to their classrooms- this is a nice time for teachers to connect.

Jalavapuisto school

Two wonderful students from Anu's class gave us a tour of the building, Anu had provided them with a laminated list of stops for our tour. The school has two floors and about 250 students. Built in 1994, the school has an open layout with plenty of work and display spaces in the hallways.

Our Tour Guides

Student's model of the solar system in a display case

Hallway

Space in the hallway for students

Main foyer with a student putting on his skates

Class

The classes at the school had 16-22 students, students mostly sat on flexible furniture at tables with 3-5 kids/table. Students write either in workbooks or in standard notebooks containing graph paper. In Anu's class all of the students were assigned Chromebooks which were used throughout her lessons.

Below is a list of the most notable things that I noted while observing lessons at the Jalavapuisto school .

Students were o.k. sitting, working or listening to their teachers, they were mostly quite and respectful. They are given a lot of time throughout the day for free-play and I believe that this allows them to focus during class.
Students are accustomed to taking notes and all have notebooks in which they neatly do their work. It was clear that students benefitted from having a consistent place and method for recording their work. Teachers periodically collect and check these notebooks.
Classes were mostly a mix of instructions followed by students working either in a workbook or their notebook.

A typical classroom

Anu helping her students

Students working in notebooks

Video 1

Our Presentations

A bit part of what we have to offer Finnish schools is class presentations about our schools and the American education system in general. Students are very curious about our schools and surprised by how large they are. Another big difference is the role that sports play in building school spirit and a sense of community in American schools. In Finland sports are run by sports clubs that are not affiliated with the schools, this allows students to be on teams with students from different schools.

Presentation to 5th Grade

Presentation to 1st Grade

STEM Projects

Students from this school are entering a national STEM design contest. The students have to design, build and market a toy that is unique and that will have "lasting" play, meaning that kids will not get bored of it. The students had to draw out an individual design in their notebooks ahead of time and then the group decided which design they were going to build. Students were allowed to leave the classroom to work outside and to go to the wood shop if they needed materials or tools to construct their projects.

Students working on their toys

Student helping another group with their project.

Student visiting the wood shop to work on his project.

Video 1

Wood Technology

One of the core subjects in primary school is wood tech. Students learn to plan projects and use tools and machines to build them. Again, students have notebooks for this class and are well trained in using the notebooks to design and plan the construction of their projects

The Workshop

Students using their plans to construct name plates.

End Result: Name Plates

Teacher with a sauna ladle, a 6th grade project

Recess

Students have multiply breaks throughout the day to go outside and play. There is even an ice skating pond at the school and a few students suited up for a game of hockey. Others played on the icy hill which would have certainly been seen as a liability in the States.

Video 1

Video 2

Fulbright Orientation

The 2-day orientation included the following events.

General information about living in Finland and the Fulbright program
History of Finland, presented by Petteri Granat, History Teacher, Vaskivuoren lukio
Panel Discussion: Finnish System of Education (K-12)
Finnish System of Higher Education and Research, presented by Timo Korkeamäki, Dean of Research, Professor of Finance, Hanken School of Economics and Teemu Kokko, President, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences
Visit to the U.S. Embassy in Finland
Teacher Education in Finland, presented by Professor Jari Lavonen, Head of the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki
Tour of the Sibelius-lukio school, a secondary school that specializes in performance and music.
Tour of Helsinki landmarks, led by Emilia Holopainen.
Suomi 101 (Finnish language 101)

Senior dance performance at Sibelius-lukio. This is a graduation dance that all Finnish secondary school seniors learn and perform as part of graduation.

Video 1

Fulbright Teachers and Scholars

Tour of Helsinki Landmarks.

Suomi 101

Educa

During the weekend I had a chance to go to Educa, Finland's largest and most important annual training event for professionals in the education field, organized by OAJ, the Trade Union of Education.

Educa Education Trade Show

Other Pictures

Run on the frozen Baltic Sea

Cafe on the Baltic

I am feeling pretty settled in at this point. I still don't know the main Helsinki street names, I can't even pronounce most of them, but I do know my way around and am getting lost way less often. Although there were many noteworthy events this week, the highlight was meeting my Fulbright buddy Taru and visiting her school. I also visited Elsie's new preschool and took a train to Lahti for a ski.

Finnish Snowman

1. Elsie's Preschool: I schedule a visit to Elsie's preschool this week, it is a very nice space. Although the school has 3-6 year-olds in it, Elsie's preschool class will separate out to work on their academics. There's about 2 hours dedicated to academics a day, the rest of the time is spent working on art, making music, reading stories (together and independently) and playing. Notice that they spend from 12:00-1:30 in the park, rain or shine!

Elsie's Schedule

Pictures of the Preschool

Children working of Ceramics

Elsie's preschool table

All the tables

Playspace

Physical education space in the basement

2. Fulbright Buddy: As part of the Fulbright program I was assigned a Fulbright buddy, my buddy is Taru Pohtola and she is fantastic.

We first met for coffee over which Steve and I bombarded her with a slew of questions. Below is a list of a few of the interesting things we learned

Instead of semesters, Finnish secondary schools have 5 terms/year, each term is ~7 weeks long. Classes meet 3 times/week for 75min/class.

Students are required to take a minimum of 75 courses, lasting a term each. About 2/3 of these are compulsory and the rest are freely chosen. Students usually take more than this minimum.

Taru has visited schools all over the U.S. and has developed the following opinions from her visits.

There is more trust in the Finnish system. I have posted a picture below that is evidence of this trust. In many classrooms I observed teachers' wallets, credit cards, keys, phones, etc. out on their front desks.

Exhibit A (Phone and Wallet)

The teaching load is much less for Finnish teachers, however, they do have more scheduled collaboration time than there is in the U.S. Below is a picture of Taru's teaching schedule for this year.

Taru's teaching schedule

U.S. teachers develop more personal connections with their students, with only 7 weeks/term it is hard to develop these relationships in Finland. You do not see too many student-teacher high-fives in Finnish hallways.

3. Visit to Martinlaakson Lukio: Taru arrange for a visit to her school, Martinlaakson Lukio. This was our first official observation and it was very eye-opening, the school was run very differently than the public schools I am used to in the U.S.. Below are a few notable observations:

The halls were very quite, one explanation for this is that students are not required to be in school when their classes are not in session.

There were a lot of student work spaces, little study nooks scattered throughout the hallways.

Students keep to themselves and generally do not interact with teachers in the hallways.

Nook 1

Nook 2

Nook 3

Foosball nook (there were a few of these.)

There are matriculation exams at the end of secondary school and this is what most students are working towards, individual course grades are not as important, although universities do consider them when admitting students. There's a lot of self-directed learning and self assessment in Finnish schools. One teacher that is known around the country for his work on self-directed learning is Pekka Peura. Taru arranged for us to observe one of his physics classes.

Pekka keeps track of student progress in a very unique and modern way. He has all of his students entered into a Google Sheet along with 60 course objectives. Students work through the objectives and change the color of the cell for that objective according to their mastery of it, the colors range from green (I could teach it to a friend) to black ( I don't want to learn this.) If a student is having a hard time with an objective then they can seek out another student who feels comfortable teaching that objective.

Pekka showing me the class Google Sheet

A student working independently with his Google Sheet open.

Group hard at work

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

School lunch is a very big deal in Finland. Fins believe everyone should have a nutritious hot meal and this meal is free for everyone.

Our meal

Drinks, the brown one in the back is nonalcoholic beer.

Bread table, baked fresh on the premises

After lunch we visited Johanna Parvinen's math class. She runs her class in a very similar self-directed manned to Pekka's, students are given a sheet with all the objectives and they check them off when they feel that they understand them. Johanna says that she hardly ever presents a lesson in front of the class, maybe once every few weeks. Students learn independently, from each other, and one-on-one from the teacher.

Objectives check-off sheet

Johanna helping a student

The whole class

At the end of the day we walked passed an open-air classroom where they were holding an entrepreneur competition on this specific day. For the competition, the teams were given a scenario with a goal. This class was assigned a city on the east coast of Finland, teams had to come up with a business that would increase tourism for the city. Teams were given some virtual startup money and then had to come up with a business plan. During the competition teams made an initial pitch to 3 judges from industry, teams then went out into the community to pitch the idea to citizens (they went to the train station), lastly they came back and gave a final pitch to the judges. The whole competition was really something, very professional. Unfortunately I did not get anyone's permission to publish their pictures so I will have to leave those photos out. We also went to a student-written rendition of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at the end of the day, it was all in Finnish, that made it a little difficult to follow, again I apologize but I can't post any pictures of the performance.

4. Ski in Lahti: To cap off the week we took a trip to Lahti, a ski town north of the city where the World Nordic Ski Championships will be held this year. The trails were well groomed and the terrain was intense!