Let's go picnic!!!

[It's a post talking about the picnic that happened on 15th of May.] 

I.S. 1 decided to go picnic together – a farewell party for Niko, who is going to leave Kalajoki and join Oulu ice hockey team. Xiang believes that creating different learning spaces can inspire dynamical communications, hence she is more than willing to go out with I.S. students. Everyone was going to bring their favorite snacks to share. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly (smile), one hour before we left for the park, Niko said that he couldn’t come because he was sick. But Johanna had made a mega-fine cake with mega-delicate decoration on top for him!!!!!!

Cake made by Johana!

So, we changed our plan to stop by Niko’s home before heading to the park! Xiang also cancelled her “treasure hunting” game which was planned on their way from lukio to the park. (Xiang knows that she would be too flexible to survive in German. Luckily that she is in Finland. She often changes her plans when students give their suggestions. Fortunately, her students always respect her decision when she has to face many different suggestions, which greatly saves her life.) 

After having the delicious cake with Niko in front of the gate, we marched to Plassi Park. Sun shines in front of us and leads a bright way to the Park. On the way there, Xiang learned that she could do many things better, for instance: she should have known when to be inclusive and when to be exclusive in terms of creating the learning environment; she could have bought and brought a picnic cloth (but she is living a life under budget for her future dream, please do understand) … She also hopes that her students can learn their own lessons by talking to each other. 

Ready to have cake with Niko!

I.S. students are always the best. We sat in a circle and started to share our snacks and drinks. At the same time, they divided into 5 groups to discuss questions prepared by Xiang:

1. Describe your favorite school day in the past one year. What made that day very special to you?
2. Where do you look for inspirations (in terms of connecting your experiences, expectations, perspectives and strong desire to try something new)?
3. Imagine you are running into a burning house to save a child. On the way to the child’s bedroom, you discovered that there is a Picasso on the wall. You could save and liquid that, use the 75 million dollars you get from that sale to save many more children than one. If you can only save one, Picasso or the baby? Tell us why.
4. If you have the chance to design a classroom which is inspirational, connecting, and encouraging, what are the most 3 important things you would like to have?
5. Are you currently obsessed with some book, TV series, Podcast, website, people etc. that you would like to recommend to the rest of us?

Here you may find our discussions:

The picnic lasted until the rest of us felt exhausted. :) It’s a beautiful day. 

We set up a new restaurant!!!

Three I.S. students, together with Xiang, took part in international pop-up restaurant and international afternoon, which was organized by City of Kalajoki and Kalajoki Christian College last Sunday. They planned to sell Chinese dumplings in hotpot style. It wasn’t well planned and organized, but they were still eager to set up the small business. The ideas of taking part in this pop-up restaurant event in hurry were:

1. offering Chinese food experience to local people as authentic as possible;
2. experiencing restaurant business by set it up from scratch; and
3. seeing how much profit we can make so as to help with further planning, operation, pricing and marketing etc.

The net profit will go to their shared account for their Dublin trip in April 2020, if there is any. 

Xiang was excited and happy to see three lovely but tired face in front of Lukio! After a piece of biscuits without water, they quickly transformed into startup working mode (very Chinese Factory style). The restaurant was named after Xiang’s name. Alina and Taru started to design and make the signboard while Santeri was sent to shop for materials for hotpot. Dumplings preparation work had been done by Xiang in the early morning. 

Alina and Taru are making poster. Photo taken by Xiang

After making the signboard and collecting all the other needed supplies, they moved to Christian College and set up the booth in front of entrance. Alina and Taru were preparing the food ready for cooking. Santeri was assigned to sell, take the orders and run all kinds of errands at the same time. Xiang started to make dumplings. Taru soon joined the dumplings making production line.  It was quite amazing to see everything going smoothly, even though it was a bit cold when sun hid behind the big cloud and Santeri complained about his shoe ties occasionally. Aliz was also here helping her family with their Hungarian restaurant. Her constant pop-up to our restaurant booth brought us lots of happiness. 

Making food at the table. Photo provided by William

Happy faces. Photo provided by William

A glance of our menu on the poster! Photo provided by William

It was quite an enjoyable feeling to see local grannies, who are willing to try exotic food and young people, who brought their own containers for food. It also made us feel warm hearted when our own families and friends stopped-by and tried to support our “business”. Our next-stand Thai lady shared spring rolls to all of us and William bought us Ethiopian snack. 

After one and a half hours’ preparation and 3 hours’ hard working, we earned 20.55 euros. Xiang decided to give each helper 5 euros for lunch since she was too demanding during the work and didn’t take care of their wellbeing. She also bought the left-over food. In the end, only 10.15 euros will go into the bank account for Dublin trip. YEAH!!! 

It sounds like a joke but it’s a good experience, which was shared by everyone who participated. Whatever we experience, teaches us a lesson. More importantly, we learn our own lesson. 

Some thoughts about Finnish education after VESO Day

There are two things intertwined together, which deepens my understanding of how societal culture and values are embedded in educational practice. It also validates why I didn’t want to work at “education export” business between Finland and China. On the contrary, to understand the differences thoroughly and comprehensively gets more important and urgent.

One thing is, I finally went to get a new pair of glasses from a local glass shop. It’s quite expensive compared with the one I got in Beijing nearly 2 years ago. Unfortunately I stepped on it. :( The one I got in Beijing was about 25 euros. I got it the day I tested my eyesight. Cheap and quick! Though one of my friend who has his own glasses business in south China told me that there are lots of profits inside glass business. In general, there are always unbelievable profits in all kinds of products or services we are purchasing nowadays. In modern economy, “market” and “government” are two hands working together and making us accept the price of the commodities we paid for.

Therefore, I reluctantly accepted the price I paid for the new one in Kalajoki. It costed me 206 euros after a 35% discount. After one week, I got my new glasses! It took them one week to make one for me!! For those two reasons, I added much higher expectation to this new pair of glasses. I started to feel that it is pressing my backside of my right ear root and it is asymmetry. I started to feel headache and then I didn’t want to read anymore but watching Netflix. OMG! Life is much easier while watching Netflix. I don’t need to use my brain but laugh, cry, angry and laugh again…

The next day, I participated the VESO day with the other teachers from Kalajoki Lukio. Veso day is a teachers’ training day, as I understand. We were discussing how to build a better learning community for everyone in our Lukio. It turned out to be quite FUN and thought provoking!!! This is the other thing what I mentioned in the beginning. In spite of my inability to understand Finnish, they still welcomed me to join the training. In the first 2 hours group task, my group mates had to discuss the 10 topics with me in English and none of them are language teachers. Since I was taking the notes, they had to translate everything back to Finnish when we needed to transfer the notes onto google documents. In the last session, I even had a personal interpreter through the whole discussion.

What amazed me most in the VESO training are concepts as follows:

• differences
• differentiate learning contents, methods and evaluation for different learners
• individuals
• personalities
• introvert and shy
• students’ own preference
• overcome teacher’s own bias
• respect and appreciate
• equality

Some questions raised by other teachers, which sound very interesting to me:

• How to differentiate introvert and shy?
• How to teach introvert/shy students who are willing to participate group work?
• How to embrace different kinds of personalities other than teach only what we want to see?
• How to connect the knowledge to real world, especially individual’s own reality and future?
• What are the minimum/essential things we expect students to learn from this course so that some of they wouldn’t feel stressed?
• How to raise students from their seats?
• What are students’ learning methods and preferences?
• Do we give good grade/feedback just because students look nicer?
• How to work with difficult students, like perfectionist (How to teach enough is enough)?
• How to bring students to their own potential?
• How to link and bind the projects to normal school learning?
• How to emphasize on locality, roots and history?

The emphasis on individuality and the support to each individual in Finnish school is quite beyond my understanding. I come from an extremely standardised social and educational system. In terms of education, there is only one way to evaluate nearly every student in the whole China: the annual national college entrance exam. Nowadays some provinces gain certain autonomous in the exams, which means students only need to compete within their own province. This exam is the baton of the whole 12 years schooling every Chinese student receives. Very tiny amount of people can bypass it if they are either genius or have a special father. If you don’t fit into this system, it would be your own problem. It’s a crude “survival of the fittest” competition. Most of us started the competition when our mother decided who she was going to marry with. That’s one of the reason why marriage is heavily interfered in order to create the best surroundings for the next generation.    

Whereas, Finland is creating a system in which everyone works towards the best of themselves. In addition, they even provide support to perfectionism students in case they stress themselves out. Teachers are struggling to teach students what “enough” is. Oikesti???!!!

 Let’s go back to talk about my new glasses for a bit.

I told my colleagues that I feel uncomfortable with my “expensive” new pair of glasses. They all said back to me: Go back to the store and let them fix for you. But I “feel” uncomfortable. How can I valid my “feelings”. They answered: Just go and tell them your feeling.

I went. The shop assistant helped. I came back again and I still feel a bit strange. My dearest colleagues gave their experiences of how many times they have visited the stores to fix their own so as to encourage me go back again whenever I feel uncomfortable. I questioned: Won’t they get annoyed by me? To what extent it fits me then? They laughed and said: Until you feel ok with it. You paid for the services and they will help you.

I am puzzled. I did pay for the product and the service. But the service is so subjective that I am not even sure what is “good enough” to me. It is so difficult compared with my experience in China that I paid for the product and then I get used to what I paid for. People would think I am weird if I complained and they would argue that: why don’t you buy the expensive one from a fancy shop. You get what you paid for.

The puzzling I have here resonates with the feeling when I listened to my colleagues talking about differences and individualities among students. How do the students know their levels of learning? How much can teachers be sure that students feel stressed, therefore, we shouldn’t push them go further? If we don’t push further, how much his or her potential could be reached then? How much should a teacher trust students’ feelings? Meanwhile, to what extent students are sure of their own feelings??? Who is the person to decide “enough is enough” for students then?

The questions are not aimed to be answered but used to guide myself on becoming a teacher, as well as a learner in a very different community and ever-changing century. 

 

The beautiful scenery from where we had the VESO Day!