An ordinary school

I have already written about my view of the school I visited this week in Portuguese, but as not all of you understand it. There it goes some of it in English. No pictures though. You will have to check them on the other post. I also added some extra comments due to the text I read on Finnish education. If you are interested, here it goes the link  http://www.oph.fi/english

This week I visited a small city regular Finnish school. We went with our mentor Pirjo Kananen, as she works there as a Finnish and Literature teacher. I visited the school with two classmates, Fatiu, from Nigeria and Liping, from China. We enjoyed the visit and all students and teachers were nice and welcoming. I would like to write here my impressions of this visit, so that you can also know more of a “regular” Finnish school. I wrote with quotation marks because it is not regular for the standard of a public school in Brazil. This school is located in the city of Ruukki, a rural area near Oulu, with students living distant from school, mostly in farms. There are buses that take the students to school and back home.

I am going to list here firstly things that somehow called my attention and that differ from Brazilian schools.

1. First of all, as I already said, we were very welcome and while walking through the school, seeing the students and meeting some teachers we could notice an environment of freedom and tranquility and also a sense of unity and respect.

2. The students were relaxed in class and calm even when alone in the corridors. It was amazing seeing them because even being on their teen ages they behaved well and respected teachers and themselves.

3. This is a religion class being taught for 13-14 year-old students. In classrooms there is no exact shape and teachers and students can change it in the most comfortable way for themselves for the moment. In this sense I agree with the statement from Education Board that says that school is centered in the student and its needs. Although it is not a reality to the patterns we have studied during this Let Program, it certainly addresses to the students’ needs and moods, as for example, in Brazil there would not be accepted students sitting on desks, as we saw in arts class, this somehow gives a sense of choosing.

4. As in upper secondary classes the students can choose their field of interest and the school is small, there might happen that there are not many students for a specific class. Instead of having a teacher in school for just a few students or worse not having the class, they arrange distant learning classes, this way the same teacher can teach for two or more different schools.

5. One smart idea was to build the neighborhood library adjacent to the school. This way, the students benefit from the library together with other people in the community. It is a very nice and organized place. It is in the library that the students have access to computers for their own use and when they feel they need, while in school time.

6. There is an IT room where teachers can make use of computer so that each student has its own computer. Besides this all classrooms have a data projector, computer, TV, radio, speakers and the old transparency projector and another projector that projects from books, pictures and so on. Teachers rarely need to use the board nowadays.

7. The groups are very small ranging from 10 to 20 students. When there are more students there is the aid of an assistant teacher.

There are some similarities too as the students still copy topics in their notebooks, teaching is basically the teacher transmitting information based on a textbook. It is possible to notice a care for the students’ well-being and that the school environment is of quality.

This quality comes as a result of investing in teachers, in the school and in the students. Government makes a lot of investment in material, meals, structure and infra-structure. What amazed me was to know that there are no any national testing, school ranking and inspection systems for schools.

This was what called my attention when visiting the school and I hope you enjoyed knowing a little more of Finnish schools. I certainly enjoyed it. This was a nice and instructive visit. Thank you Pirjo.