Vierailevat Espoo - Visiting Espoo

On Thursday it was back to school for me. I spent the morning at Koulumestari School in Espoo. 

I'm going to steal directly from their English language website: 

Koulumestari school is a primary school of 320 students. The name "Koulumestari" means a schoolmaster in Finnish.  

The school was established in 2007. Our pedagogy, teaching and other structures of the school are actively developed in order to answer the needs of today's and future society.  

Braveness, creativity and innovation are considered as the main principles of Koulumestari School. Our aim is to make our school an encouraging community, ready to wonder and explore the entire surrounding society through the creation of new and innovative solutions. Following of the principles of creative problem solving and technology education has helped us to make this sort of pedagogy one of our core strengths as a school.

We also wish to be a safe school that aims to provide the students with good basic knowledge and skills, realistic self-image and strong social skills. At Koulumestari School regular teaching and teaching of the students with special needs are carried out with a strong emphasis in co-teaching and integration. The special education classes and regular classes co-operate closely. Julkaistu 23.1.2012 klo 10.08 , päivitetty 9.3.2016 klo 8.42

What struck me about Koulumestari: the teachers there were very focused on collaboration, integration and co-teaching. 

The entire 5th grade (to Americans, 6th grade) was completely co-taught. The two teachers combined their classes - so instead of two classes of 20-something students, there was one large class of 47. There were two regular teachers and one teacher more focused on special education that floated around the class. The combination allowed the teachers to break the kids up into different groups and do different activities with different teachers leading the charge. They said that they basically never lectured to the entire group. The teacher I spoke to said that she was skeptical at first, but now she would never go back to teaching alone. It took some organizing and figuring out of logistics at first, but now it is better than it ever was teaching alone. 

Teachers at Koulumestari stay with their same group of students for the entire time they are there. So if a teacher starts with children in the 1st year (7 years old) they could stay with them until they are in the 6th year (12 year old). This way they really get to know the students and their strengths and weaknesses. One drawback of this system is that the kids get the same teacher, with the same personality for a long time - co-teaching helps mix it up a little for the kids (and the teachers too!). 

The teachers were also very dedicated to letting the students figure out what kind of learners they were. In fact, in the first few minutes I was in a class (6th grade/7th grade in US) the teacher asked the kids if they wanted to take some time off of studying math. The class decided that they'd take a two week vacation from math and work more on other subjects during that time. Also, the students seating chart was rearranged. The teacher had asked the students where in the room they thought they would learn best. Over half the kids said, "next to the window" so she let the kids know that she saw that, but it was impossible to please everyone. 

I was asked to present a little bit about myself and my school. I spoke in English and the kids seemed to mostly understand - but the teacher jumped in to translate a little too. I showed the video from my school website to the students. They recognized it as sort of an ad for the school. They were *very* interested in how tuition and scholarships worked. In Finland there are only public schools (with very, very few exceptions), so the idea was completely foreign to them. Besides that, they had just returned from a day long engineering and entrepreneurship activity. In the activity they had discussed funding and running a business and so they concluded that my school was like a company. 

Koulumestari students watching a video about my school

The teachers at Koulumestari have also decided to have "X" time built into their days - this was instead of having "science" a specific subject. From what I could figure out, I think this is cross disciplinary studies. The day I was there it was physics, more specifically, electricity. But this is often where their more technical lessons fall - how to use PowerPoint, how to find good information, etc.