School Visiting Report

 Lyseon Lukio - Upper secondary school

    In a gray day in Hameenlinna we woke up early in a Monday morning, it was cold and there were few people in the streets, few talking, a silent day. A typical scenery in Autumn. We went walking to school, our expectations were to receive some lecture, talking to the teachers, visit some classes rooms, to get knowing the whole environment. It was what happened, in some scale. There, we were greeted by the principal and the counselling guidance teacher, by the way, the guidance teacher has a very important role in Finnish schools. He/she  is responsible for guiding the students in their competences and skills.  

    There were few students when we got there, few students in the halls, so we went to the conference room to listen the principal talking about the school’s history and its organization. It was good to listen that the school was the educational place to many important people in Finland, including Sibelius, a classical composer. The teachers have made effort to give importance and preserve the building’s history and memory. There were some posters on the walls with many schools projects, some of them are related to Sibelius.

    Despite the fact the school was an old building the way of teaching was more guided to the phenomenon based learning. The school in that moment was running projects in psychology field, we have discovered that visiting the classrooms, all of them were with the same theme. It is important to mention when we went out to the teachers room. The school was packed with living students moving around, alright, the old build school was pulsing with the young upper secondary students. They seemed to be curious about our visiting due their glacing, it was very warming and made us feel comfortable as teachers. Somehow it contracts to the outside bounding schools walls,  where the Finnish people are more introverted .

    As we got to the teachers rooms, there were some teachers, some of they were about 30’s or 40’s. Something came to our ears was that every teacher there speaks English! Good surprise, we were able to communicate without any problem. The teachers were open to talk and show some parts of their working routine.

    After some coffee and talking we were divided in groups to visit the classrooms. As we said, teachers were dealing with projects, and the students were presenting the results of their researches. They were working in groups of five, it is common to create teamwork in the educational institutions in Finland, in fact, it was our first task in the first day at HAMK. We were incentivized to mix with the students, talk to them, feel their feelings in being a student in that school, It was a good experience. It is worth to mention that the students and teachers were receptive.

    At the and, we went to the conference room, so we listened more about the school project in entrepreneurship and counselling guidance. Some students presented us with their experience in business area as they conduct their high school studies. It is interesting noticing that students do not study just subjects from the board curriculum, but in Lyseon Lukio case they have studied business and entrepreneurship. For a good surprise they managed winning a contest in business field. They were in three, each with their skills enriched by school, each in the process of building their desires as a future career. There were a magician, who probably, but not necessarily is going to work in the entertainment business, other a singer with strong voice and strong will and another a promised business woman. The idea of counselling guidance, possibility to mold the knowledge in the field where the students are interested in, good structure and environment, qualified teachers among a series of other things are meant to be a path of a reasonable education to be reach for us as teachers.

Demola

    Demola is an international organization that facilitates co-creation projects between university students and companies, either locally or internationally. For Demola groundbreaking innovation is created only when people with passion and talent are interconnected across nations, cultures, and fields of expertise. It means that innovation with true impact cannot be created in isolated and disconnected units. That is why we need a stronger ecosystem instead of bigger silos.

It was an interesting experience to know that company. Partnerships that are effective with them are very important for the multiplication of good ideas of students in the area of entrepreneurship. At Demola they are able to shorten borders giving the necessary support to young entrepreneurs to develop their projects and leadership.

    During the presentation of the Head of Demola Tampere, Ville Korpiluoto we had the opportunity to meet some of the work done by them, as well as what is needed to make the team. To know the forms of applications you can visit the company's website and choose the desired location.

Proakatemia

    Proakatemia is a good option for those ones who want to experience a different kind of education. There isn't teachers there, the students learn from the others students, in case the oldest ones, through the sharing of their own experiences, successes and failures as well. They have the opportunity to learn by living and practicing according to their kind of enterprises, they have the chance to travel abroad in order to improve and or purchase their skills and knowledge.

    We realized a space completely different from others educational centers here or in Brazil. The time spent at school is different too, the students are more autonomous, they can make their own schedules, so themselves can decide how many days and hours they will stay at school, and for our surprise, or not, they like to stay there as Alexandre, and student there, who presented the Proakatemia’s organization he told us that really like to stay there, and feels in the right direction. It's what all teachers hope to listen from a student.                        

Fonte: http://esseepankki.proakatemia.fi/

Hämeenlinna Yhteiskoulu - HYK

    The school was recently renovated, everything was working in according. The environment was crowded with kids from primary school, it is a school from 1st to 5th grades. As the principal said, every corner of the school should be useful for learning, thus even stairs could be transformed in a meeting point with an interactive board. It is not necessary to say he was correct in seeing the whole school as big classroom.

    After some words the teachers was divided in groups to cover a bigger area, we could see different practices performed in that day. In one of the classroom the student of 4th grade that was studying mathematics, by the way, the whole floor is used as classroom, so it caught our attention the fact they were spread through the room, some of them were studying in a group, there was one student studying by himself, others were listening to a lecture, another group studying science and there was a group of eight students with special needs studying the same topic as the rest, but there was a special mathematics teacher educator taking care of them. The whole classroom is meant to improve the students needs, space for meeting, collaborative or independent working, electronic resources, comfortable fornitures and no walls among the students.

    The Brazilian public schools reality is very different from this school in Finland. Most of Brazilians school don’t have this support, especially in technology. There are many students in the same classroom and most of the teachers do not have a study to lead with students with special needs, but we can try to adopt some educational strategies from Finnish schools to Brazilian schools. Of course this is a hard challenge but together we can make the difference. 

CARCARÁS GROUP MEMBERS:
Aline Ramos
Daniel Silva
Hermano Nunes
Izabelly Dutra
Odair José