Things behind the picture

We are pleased in the group picture, in which a group of IS2 kids (Sanna and me as well) looking at the 107 Pulla and 201 Karelian pie they just baked. They are so proud. Like many others, I am proud of them as well.

But this piece of writing wants to address more about how we achieved the happy moment in the picture. It’s not depreciating all the great work IS2 kids have been done so far. This writing aims to remind them how much other people have helped them. Put in another way, I want to thank for all the great ideas and supports from my colleagues.

It was exciting news when Lena assigned IS2 the work to bake for the International Food Exhibition during the High School Culture Week. As return, school will contribution a small amount of money for our Dublin trip. Culture week is a great new idea. Life in countryside can be so still and stale in November, when Christmas is yet to come. It’s always nice to have some happenings from time to time.  

After collected recipes from Finnish language teacher and Swedish language teacher, I started to plan the baking schedule and prepare the shopping list. After booked Home Economics Classroom C1 with the help from school secretary, C1 classroom teacher came to introduce herself to me. I was rather surprised to meet her for the first time. I always use C2 with my English Club students, and I have never thought who is in charge of C1. She offered help to prepare dough for pulla and porridge for Karelian pie since I am not familiar with Nordic baking and fancy Finnish kitchen machines, especially inside school kitchen, which has its “strict” rules. Furthermore, she reminded me not to mess up with her kitchen several times, in a very humorous way.

During the preparation, she started to ask me: how many students will come to bake? How are you going to divide the roles among them? How to plan the kitchen for Pulla and Karelian pie baking? How are you going to divide the porridge so that it can be made into 200 Karelian pie? How to divide the dough into 200 pieces? Have you thought how to carry the bakery back to high school? And so on…

I felt so unprepared in front of her questions, but remarkably, she didn’t make me feel very stupid at all. In terms of cooking, I am a typical Chinese cook, who always rely on “feeling”. In terms of planning, I heavily rely on improvisation. I always think students will figure out how to do it and the process of solving the real problem is the process of “learning”. But today’s cooking is not only a learning process, but a task. I am not ready at all. She generously started to teach me how to plan the whole process before students getting into the classroom.

10 portions of porridge for Karelian Pie.

Get ready to make the Pulla dough with machines.

Even oven trays are ready...

So, when IS2 kids came, even some of them were much ahead of scheduled time, everything had been ready. She stayed much longer than planned because many of our students didn’t know how to make Karelian pie. She offered to help more. It was another treasure that two Finnish language teachers came to help. Of course, William also came with lots of “energy fuels”, physically and mentally.

Undoubtedly, IS2 kids did such an amazing job. They cover each other’s stupidity. They find ways to cheer up their spirits even when doing pure labor work. Great work. And I hope, they keep up with today’s fantastic group spirit during tomorrow’s Food Exhibition. Another big thanks to Lena, who had this idea. 

What should be “International” looking like?

I had two International Studies (IS) lessons with 2 different groups this week. IS1 is a group of first year high school students and IS2 formed by second year high school students. I had very different feelings after finishing the lessons: frustrated V.S. excited.

The topic of IS1 is “music and globalisation” and we started with looking at our own connections to the rest of the world based on the recent music we listened to. Not surprisingly: nearly half of the group listen to songs created by Americans; everyone listens to music with either phone or computer, which are made in China mainly; everyone listens to music via Spotify or YouTube; 4 out of 23 students paid for Spotify Premium. We hastily considered Spotify is a Swedish company during the lesson.

To make some corrections here: Spotify shouldn’t be simply defined as a Swedish company. If check Wikipedia, then we would be surprised by the complexity of its history and its shareholders situation. Same complexity applies to “made in China” products. But we didn’t look at it, nor thought of looking at it. At least, it didn’t come into my mind during the lesson. I was too much occupied by frustration.

The frustration came from the indifference I detected from some students. The indifference to the questions and the results. I am always not sure about the topics and methods I bring to the classroom, to which extent students are interested in it. Not only because this is an optional course which is supposed to be fun and interesting, but also, I come from such a different context that I couldn’t imagine in which environments my students grew up. With this uncertainty, I am hypersensitive to different opinions coming from students, which in return, affects implementation of the lesson plans.

To summarize the poor execution: I should have first imagined the possible results and then plan the next steps for different results. If ask myself now: what do I really expect them to figure out from this activity at that moment? The answer would be: “I was not sure. Maybe to see how much they are connected to the world?” Obviously, they knew some of it already and that’s why I noticed the “indifference” among some of them. But how to find out what they don’t know? How much can I help in the searching of unknown world? Am I able to do it? – I am full of skepticism at this moment.

That’s exactly why I personally enjoyed the lessons with IS2 so much. The topics are mostly relevant. One reason is that we have gotten to know each other very well that there are some unspoken rules to achieve agreed topics or projects without even noticing it. Let’s take topics of this week’s IS2 lesson as an example.

William and I briefly knew that we would need to plan some Ireland FUNdRAISING projects. One of IS2 students sent a link about Nose Day Trip Application in WhatsApp group and encouraged IS2 as a group to apply for it: make a fantastic video so that three students and one teacher might get a chance to travel to Uganda with YLE next Spring. I indeed feel enormously happy whenever they propose anything to do as a whole group, which they always do. Because I firmly believe, whatever project students decide to do, they will do it well or at least enjoy doing it. [1]It comes from the initiative ability. I see the safe environment for most students to speak up their opinions as the cornerstone of Project-Based-Learning.

In fact, we didn’t really plan anything for the Nose Day Trip Application since we first need to find out the traveling dates, which might be in conflict with our Dublin trip. We went to plan the Kids’ Evening (ipanailta). We had “project managers” taking over the rest of the lesson so I was happily to be part of the planning and find my own role and place in this project.

I got excited in the end of the lesson because it's really fun! However, William felt missing something. He thinks that IS2 is packed with planning and raising money for Dublin that we lost the sight of being international. I didn’t agree and that’s why I decided to write this piece of blog.

What should be “International” looking like? What is “international” for? Why we are so eagerly to know the outside world but not paying attention to things happening around us? If I couldn't first figure out the true reason of wanting the internationalisation or globalisation among the group members, then my class would only stop at the frustration level.

I am not saying IS2 lessons are perfect. They are far away from what I expected. Taking another finished FUNdRAISING project for example. I proposed to sell Chinese food with me on the Kalajoki International Restaurant day while another student proposed to sell cakes on the local Plassi Market day. As I have mentioned before, we have an unspoken rule to agree on what project to take: they chose the second one and I am fine with it. They raised 200+ euros as a group and they were the happiest sellers in the whole market.  

Why didn’t they choose the first one? It’s INTERNATIONAL restaurant day, when you get to meet most of the foreigners in the town. Why doesn’t that “International” matter to our “International Studies”? How much are we, as IS students, interested in those International people’s life in our little town?

Talk back about the Nose Day Trip. To what extent they were participating Nose Day events (during their Middle School study time) for the sake of helping millions of children in Africa, Asia and South America? Why do those kids need help from us? What is “HELP”? What can we really help, as a group of privileged young people traveling to Uganda?

Like always, I am going to finish my blog with questions. ‘Coz I am always searching for answers.

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[1] I later on found the deficiency of this argument. If one student proposed something, he or she would need to persuade the whole group to execute it with him or her. This person has power in the group. However, in previous paragraph, I mentioned that: I am uncertain with the topics I brought up because I am not sure whether students are interested as well. I don’t have the power in this group. Of course, the precondition of these 2 statements coming from 2 different groups. Still, I see the “desired” power relationship in my classrooms. Seems that I do not want the power of being a teacher.

How did the International cooking club go?

The International Cooking Club with Merenojan students had a big goal: How to shop, cook and eat in the climate changing world? We have made Chinese dumplings, French quiche, creative apple food, outdoor BBQ, basic bread and self-made Nutella, Italian pizza. We tried to use local and seasonal ingredients while we were cooking foreign food.

We also interviewed Juha Leskelä from K-supermarket at the very beginning of the club. He explained to us: 

1. why food products in K-supermarket are a bit more expensive than Halpa-Halli; 
2. how to look for cheap but quality food in K-supermarket; 
3. what has K-supermarket done to support local farmers and why; 
4. the decision about stoping selling energy drinks to underaged kids. 

It is highly appreciated that Juha was willing to answer our questions during his working hour. In fact, we didn't buy ingredients for our cooking club from K-supermarket, because school has a cooperation with Halpa-Halli. I indeed admire his devotion to support local products in K-supermarket with relatively higher prices. 

Below are photo collections from our cooking club. :)

This is dumping! The bottom one is gluten-free dumpling! Yeees, we even made gluten-free ones! 

We also made steamed buns, which is also called "Kung Fu Panda dumpling"!

Gluten-free Quiche!

Another Quiche! Many many thanks to our French master cook!

What could we do with so many apples in the yard???

Let's show our French friends how to set fire and grill food outside! 

Hyvä mieli, kaikki.

Four seasons pizza: Summer (tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and basil)!

Four seasons pizza: Winter (cheese, pineapple with honey)!

Four seasons pizza: Autumn (cheese, tuna and pineapple)!

It seems that everything went well. However, there are many things which could have been done better, especially from pedagogical point of view. By written some of them down, I hope it helps to remind myself to do better in the future. If, with some luck, I might get some advices from the readers. 

This club started from my idea of exporting "Home Economics" subject to China[1]. I thought we would create such a perfect interdisciplinary learning space in the cooking classroom. It is a space we could explore: literacy, easy maths, nutrition, food chemistry, food biology, geography, society and culture, economics, climate change and everyday choice and so on. I once explained my beautiful idea to a stranger who sat opposite to me on the train from Luzern to Zurich. He listened quietly and told me that: nothing can be conceptually decided until you try it out. Therefore, I decided to try this course in Merenojan Koulu. 

In spite of my zero education experience in this subject, school fully trusts and supports my idea by sponsoring the cost of ingredients and allowing us to use Home Economics classroom freely. Home Economic teacher also gives me lots of help. She reminds me to let students clean and tidy up the classroom after cooking because it is the important part of this lesson. I can feel her genuine trust and support from reading her message. 

Lesson by lesson, I began to realize how difficult it is to implant the idea of  "How to shop, cook and eat in the climate changing world?" while most of time we simply stayed at the level of "cooking eatable food". In 3 hours, we have to: plan the food, prepare shopping list, go shopping, cook, eat, last but not least clean and tidy up. The whole process has always been so hectic that I couldn't divide my time and effort to everyone in the classroom at all. Many times after the lessons, I felt bad because I neglected some student or did/said something rude to some student. Fortunately, our French volunteers joined us in many situations and offered enormous help. 

By doing the lessons, I learned the complexity to integrate many subjects into one learning space with limited time and planning. To continue or not? If continues, how to make it better? 

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[1] Many courses in Finnish curriculum are not taught in China. If you happened to see some clubs like cooking club, crafting club or sports club in Chinese schools' curriculum, you would probably be told that they are selective and after-school clubs, and they are not important.