Jalavapuisto Elementary School Visit

I had a nice two day visit to this school in neighboring city of Espoo (Helsinki-Vantaa-Espoo make up the urban core of southern Finland).  What a nice school!  Jalavapuisto Elementary ("peruskoulu" in Finnish) is a bilingual school, so they have two instructional programs going on within the school, one taught in Finnish and one in English.  All the students are native Finnish, but some are learning their curriculum in English.  We were met by two 5th graders who gave us a tour of the building. Over the next couple of days we spent time in many classrooms, from 1st grade to 6th grade.  My fellow Fulbrighter Nat and I gave brief presentations on ourselves and our schools, and the kids asked us questions about what schools are like in the US.  One thing that I noticed right off was the general sense of calm and cooperation within the building.  The teachers clearly take time to build relationships with their students, often referring to them as "dear", and the kids returned the vibe through respectful behavior.  All kids in Finland call their teachers by first names.  They all take their shoes off when they enter the building, and the day is spent walking around in socks, which made everything so much quieter and cozy in a way.  The way kids are taught in this school felt familiar to me as a US teacher, with a mixture of book work, project time, teacher led instruction, and classroom discussion.  But, there is a feeling of "family" in the school that settles over the whole experience like a soft warm blanket.  I'm hoping to return to this school in a few weeks when they do a week long project where all the kids work together in cross-age teams (1st graders and 6th graders together!) to learn about their community.  More on that if I get to see this.

Jalavapuisto peruskoula grades 1-6

Our tour guides showing us an astronomy project

Giving the kids a presentation on my self, Seattle, and my school

Students in grades 3-6 get to build things using wood and metal.  The kids learn to become comfortable with hand tools such as saws, drills, hammers, etc at a very young age.  They are careful about design, measuring and drawing everything before they start to build.

These kids are working as a team to build a "learning toy".

Much space at the front of the school is dedicated to the mountain of coats, snow boots, hats, gloves, snow-suits, ice hockey stakes, and sometimes xc skiis that the kids bring with them.