Being a primarily English speaker and not knowing much Finnish, I wondered how it would be not understanding anything that the teacher is saying. I really wondered if I would learn anything at all. Surprisingly I have learned actually a lot.
At first I couldn’t understand a thing, so I was always sitting quietly practicing Finnish. But after all, I have actually learned some things. There are a lot of little things that are so different that it makes the school experience so different. The student teacher relationship I feel is very different. In this school you usually have a class with a certain teacher for a very short few weeks. In US the usually thing is to have one teacher for that lesson the entire year, so that way it is very easy to bond with the teachers, given that there is a lot of time for a relationship to build. I feel like it would be hard to make a good connection with a teacher unless it is something that requires direct output from the student’s emotions and thoughts.
Homework is different here too. In US homework is always given every day. Here I have been given homework, but it wasn’t mandatory to do it. That is nice knowing that homework won’t be counted, but everything you learned will show on test days. The homework is very nice in Finnish schools, but my favorite thing about school, is that I can leave when I have a jump class. That is my favorite thing, because in American schools you aren’t aloud to leave unless you prove every day to the guards at the school, that you don’t have a lesson.
Many things are so different, that really the only similar thing about American and Finnish schools is the fact that it is school. Lunch is very different as well. We pay for lunch every day in US and here its free so that is nice. But the food isn’t as good as it is in the States. As I said in my last publish, in US we have 6-8 lessons for the entire year, and we don’t change teachers. The fact that you choose what you want and that your schedule can be very different is something I like a lot. So far I have really loved school in Finland and everyone I have met has been very nice.
