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.
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| The beautiful scenery from where we had the VESO Day! |
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