Photos from Espoo

Many thanks to the coordinators and teachers in Espoo for hosting me and showing me around this week. I was able to see some schools in a city with quite a lot of immigrants. I was by far most impressed with the mother tongue instruction that happens - by law if there are 5 students with a common native language, they are entitled to native language instruction. The teachers I met were quite impressive, and I was impressed as well with the fact that the municipality is able to find teachers for the many languages that are taught.

Espoo is a cement and asphalt kind of place, but like everywhere in Finland, well organized and well run. Nokia headquarters are located here, and the city runs more than eighty schools. One things I enjoy a great deal about Finnish schools is that they are small - basic schools are usually around 300. And, by the way, principals always teach, even if it is just one class/week.




The first school I have seen with graffiti. Beautiful on the inside, though:






The library - Adrienne, I have a lot to tell you about libraries in Finland!





Student in Persian language class.



A lot of Espoo looks like this.




I visited mother tongue instruction in Espoo. On this Tuesday afternoon, students were learning language and literacy in about 15 languages, including Persian, Kurdish, Spanish, English, French, Somali, and Arabic. Participation in these classes is voluntry, but fully funded by the education department, with the belief that if a student is proficient in his/her native tongue, he or she will have more success with Finnish acquisition and academics overall.




From S2 (Finnish as a Second Language) class. This is the teacher's edition of the grade 3 Finnish language text. It was written for and used by native Finnish speakers. This S2 teacher uses it because she thinks it is superior to the materials available fo S2.




An S2 classroom. Group sizes are 10 and under.




Some grammar points that I don't understand. They were presented to a group of 5th grade S2 students.




A second grade classroom.