Friday, May 27, 2011

An eventful May



Wow, just a month left to go. May really flew by. This month I have had a great mix of fun and work. Fun things: Vappu (May Day), forest hikes outside of Tampere, a visit to the Pispala sauna, Finland's oldest, watched Eurovision for the first time in my life, celebrated the new batch of Finnish Fulbright grantees going to the US, and cheered on Finland's champion ice hockey team (with 99,999 others in central Helsinki). Work things: presentations in Mikkeli and Helsinki, visits to high schools and vocational schools in Tampere, and more teacher interviews. And writing, writing, writing. I can't say that I know what form this final product will take, but if I manage to articulate all that I've learned well, I think educators in the US, in Finland and elsewhere could find a lot to talk about. One of the reasons I love education is because it is so messy, complex, and important; and one of the most satisfying things I have been able to do is reflect on all I've read, seen, and heard with my American and Finnish colleagues over the past five months. I used to feel indifferent about educational exchange, but not anymore. It is about more than just me coming to Finland and learning how they do things here. It's also about reflecting on both systems deeply - with my American counterparts who have unique experiences and similar questions as I do, and who are coming up with brand new insights about education in Finland from their research; and with my Finnish colleagues who shed new light on both the American system they saw, and the FInnish system they know so well.

Ah well, I am getting sentimental already.



My fabulous Fulbright colleagues.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A school without any traditional Finnish surnames: A primary school in Eastern Helsinki has 532 pupils representing 22 different languages

From the Helsingin Sanomat

Somali, Finnish, Urdu, Finnish Finnish, Finnish, Somali, Finnish, Finnish, Persian, Russian, Somali...
These are the first twelve languages in the list of the mother tongues of first-graders at the Keinutie Primary School in Helsinki’s suburb of Kontula. Read more...

Spring in Finland


Celebrating Vappu (Workers' Day)




Greetings to you all. Finland is transformed now, white to green, white to blue. Here are a few recent pictures. Thursday we three Americans present our work in Mikkeli. This week I have been busy distributing surveys to students and teachers and trying to get an idea of one existing study on immigrant education that is only available in Finnish. I've been using Google translate to at least get some idea of what each section is about. I am finding that it hurts my head to read the English translation in the state that it is in, but it's better than nothing (and quite impressive what technology can do).