A testing interview with Julia

One of my favorite books is “The Beautiful Risk of Education” by Gert Biesta. The title concisely explains the essence of Finnish education - the willingness to take risks: no standard test until the end of their general upper secondary education is a risk; no supervision of teachers and teaching is a risk; the shortest school time is a risk; hiring a Chinese as International teacher assistant is also a risk. Among all the risks they are taking, students’ extra-curricular activities and how they spend their after-school time interests me most. Therefore, I had the idea of making a documentary about Finnish students’ after-school life. Naturally the International Studies (IS) students, whom I have been working with since August 2017 become my interviewees.

Julia was my first interviewee. She happened to sit at the corner doing her homework when Lenne (our cameraman) and I were ready to test our microphones and camera.  To be noted: it took us two months to get ready. J

Julia is a special girl. As she mentioned in the interview that everyone is special. However, she is really special to me and my teaching life in Kalajoki. This applies to the other students I am going to interview in the upcoming months. She doesn’t show much emotion, like her father, which you probably will notice if you have 18 mins to listen to the testing interview.

I was not a confident teacher when I first started my job in Kalajoki. I applied the international teacher assistant position when I was still living in Switzerland for my exchange study. Living in Switzerland with Leandra (my “host mother”) brought out the most confident me. She showed great compassion and respect to me and my culture background. However, all those confidences crashed when I stood in front of my Finnish students. Their faces were blank. They were indifferent to me and what I thought is important. There were so many times I had no idea whether I should continue my lesson plans or not.

There was one time after the IS lesson, Julia and her friend Johanna sitting under the stairs and waiting for the bus. I gathered all my courage and asked: Can I sit next to you? Can I ask you some questions? They accepted me and talked to me. They told me that they were waiting for their football training. They started to talk about their football club, and they shared their cookies with me. Though their faces were still blank but that’s the first time I felt connected to them.

Little by little, IS students started to talk to me more. I clearly remember once after the lesson, Julia and Santeri continued to talk to me. One of Julia’s friends asked Julia to leave, Julia said to her: “But I want to talk to Xiang…” I felt extremely flattered: WOW! She wanted to talk to me though I can’t tell anything from her face! She probably would never know how important that moment meant to my teaching life here.

If you want to know Julia more, I would highly recommend you listen to this short interview. Despite my grammatical mistakes, she answered all my questions profoundly and comprehensively. The interview covers the story of Julia establishing the first girl’s football team in her hometown together with her friends; connecting herself to the outside world through Erasmus+ projects; building the relationship between herself and the community she is growing up; preparing a gift for her father and so on. 

Click here to listen to the interview. Hope you enjoy listening to it!