1st February

The next few weeks will be quite busy, since I have many courses in February and March and a final exam in psychology on the 18th February. My head is about to explode with questions, reflections and thoughts from my experiences in Finland and I do my best to write everything in my journal, talk to people and try to get some of my questions answered.

It is often difficult for me to find the time to write on the blog since it is public and therefore I find it important that I am careful when I publish thougths and have to spend some time on considering what to write and how to write it. So, I have come up with a plan, next week I will try to upload some videos or audios, where I record my reflections and therefore make it easier for my self to post more often on my blog and say more in a shorter time - which actually brings me to my reflections from yesterday's lessons:
Is one of the most important things in a teacher's work to make things easy for yourself and your pupils without damageing the quality of the teaching?

Yesterday I observed 4 lessons, Finnish, English and Crafts and tomorrow, I will observe an English test in grade 6 and next week I will assisst the teacher when the pupils get their test results back. I look forward to this for many different reasons, one being my interest in finding out what view the teachers have on the subject English and what aims the teachers have for their teaching. The impression I got from observing 3 English lessons was that the subject has a great focus on The UK and The States and issues in those two countries, leaving out the rest of the "English speaking world" - and by this I actually mean the rest of the world, since English is spoken in close to all countries in the world (if not all).

Of course I cannot make any conclusions based on the 3 lessons I have observed but this is one of the things I would like to investigate further during this course - and one way for me to do so is to have a look at the course books they use at the school, especially because one of the English teachers told me that their course books are new, extensive and well thought through (and made by teachers) and therefore often used as the sole teaching material in English teaching.
To complete my investigation I will try to see as much as possible in grade 7-9 where the teachers might have a different approach to the subject English.

Untill next time...