A New Purpose

Writing posts for this blog has admittedly been difficult for the past couple months. The reason is simple—now that the first year is done, the blog doesn’t seem to have much purpose anymore. I started it to tell people back home about life in Finland. I explained all of that last year. Nothing is new or different about Finland this year. So now what?

Finding a purpose has actually been a common question in my life lately. What kind of purpose do I want my life to have? What is the purpose of friendships? Even my thesis is about the purpose of preschool.

 

But today while I was in my apartment I happened to look up at my love notes wall. These are the cards friends have sent me while I’ve been here. They add some color and life to my otherwise barren apartment. I happened to read one of them and my friend had written “I so enjoy catching up with you and your experiences by reading your blog posts.” Suddenly, at least this blog has purpose again, if not my life or my thesis. So here goes.

Thanks to the industrial inquisitiveness of one of my classmates, the students in my program had the opportunity to be guests at an English class for third year Finnish pre-service teachers. The idea was for us to talk about our own education systems and teacher training programs and for them to be able to practice English by participating in the discussion. I don’t know how much they got out of it but I found the discussion so interesting that the one and a half hours flew by without me realizing it.

All of the students were female, which is not surprising since, like in the US, teaching is dominated by women. But unlike most Finns, many of them were very willing to talk. And it may be because they were where they were that this was the case.

Let me explain. These were all future Finnish teachers, which means they had gone through the extensive process of applying and getting into one of the most difficult programs to get into in the entire country.

They told us what this process was like. The first step was a two hundred question multiple choice test. The test was based off of six articles they were given a month before. To pass the test, they needed to truly read and digest these articles because the test required them to analyze and apply the information in them.

We asked them what percent passed. Their answer: 10%.

Then came the second part—the interview. This part differed based on what university they interviewed at but both of the ones we heard about were group interviews. At the University of Turku, interviewees were required to complete a set of tasks as a team that included acting and building blocks.

They were not told what the purpose of these activities was or on what basis they were accepted. But we all agreed it had something to do with interpersonal skills and their ability to cooperate with others. Hence, it made sense that the students in the room were chatty; they had the interpersonal skills that got them into the program in the first place.

We asked how many made it into the program in the end. It came out to 6% of the original batch of applicants.

If I had tried to become a teacher in Finland I don’t know if I would have made it. But I see why teachers are given so much respect here. And with them being so well qualified, it makes sense that they would be given so much autonomy and trust in the classroom.

People commonly ask what we would like to take back to our countries from the Finnish system. The answer to this is never as easy as it might seem since education is so mired in culture and values of the country but this trust is earned. And that might be something we can get behind, even in America.