I’ve now visited 18 schools in Finland. (Or 19 if you count the one in which I slept for two nights, as all I observed there were kids eating, sleeping, and playing pool.) Setting up observations has been easy when my advisor has given me a contact person. Other observations have taken a bit more effort to schedule, and I was never able to get into some of the schools that I would have liked to learn more about.
My final school visit was arranged through a chance encounter. I was leaving a building at the University of Helsinki when I saw a man trying to enter the recently relocated education library. I told him that the books had been moved to the main library, and I asked what subject he taught. Math and physics! Oh! So before I knew it, I was on my way to visit his school, Yrkesinstitutet Prakticum, a vocational high school for Swedish speakers.
Approximately 5% of Finns speak Swedish as their first language, a remnant of the hundreds of years during which Finland was part of Sweden. All Finns study both Finnish and Swedish in school, and signs, food labels, websites, etc. are written in both languages. Families may choose to send their children to either Finnish or Swedish language schools. I previously visited a Finnish primary school that had a Swedish school within the same large building, but I had never visited any classes there. I’m still struggling to learn Finnish, so I didn’t want to throw any more languages into the mix! Continue reading