After spending a delightful voluntary quarantine at a Finnish lakeside cabin to ensure we weren't shedding any germs from the US, we drove back to the Helsinki region for phase 2 of our Covid trip: trying out a Finnish school. We were excited to learn first-hand why Finland has the reputation of having the best public schools in the world.
Actually this wasn't our first encounter with schools in Finland. A few years prior, I'd come up with the idea that it would be a good idea for the boys to learn more about Finland (at the time our youngest wasn't in school yet). I'd written a principal in a town my relatives live in to propose what I thought would be deemed an impossible ask. But if you don't ask, you don't get... I'd inquired whether the boys, dual Finnish-American citizens, could visit the elementary school for a week during our winter break. To my surprise the principal responded to my email within 30 seconds with a resounding "yes!". He told me to meet him on the agreed date morning by the teachers' lounge and that's what we did. We showed up and within minutes the kids were ushered into their respective classrooms. No paperwork or bureaucracy, no liability forms to sign. I didn't even really meet the classroom teachers till later. I don't believe it would have been quite this simple in the US... In any case, that school, the teachers and the overall experience had been wonderful. The boys didn't know much Finnish but they managed to go along with the flow (a key philosophy in our family) and escaped without major mental trauma from being thrown in the 'deep end of the pool'. In fact quite the opposite: they had enjoyed the new experience, the rich variety of classes and the attention they got from their new school mates. The experience was so fabulous, we even repeated it the following year. Fueled by that success, we were now set up to try the same experiment for all the kids and for a longer time: they'd visit a school in Espoo for 3 weeks.
We had booked an one-bedroom AirBnb for our stay. It was a tiny but clean, modern and very functional basement apartment of a large beautiful house. The best part about it was the wonderful, originally Russian hosts, who we became good friends with, as well as its location in Pohjois-Tapiola. Tapiola is a suburb of the city of Espoo, which is just west of Helsinki. Tapiola is known as the "Garden City" thanks to its numerous parks and bike paths - the lovely result of thoughtful urban planning. We chose this location somewhat randomly just because it was the closest place we could find to our family friends, who'd relocated from California to Finland a year prior. I didn't know Espoo because when I had last lived in Finland, in high school, it had been in the opposite side of Helsinki in Laajasalo, a beautiful "island" suburb. It was a happy coincidence we ended up in Tapiola and got familiar with this delightful part of Espoo.
August 12th was the first day of the 20-21 school year and the kids started school... twice! In the morning they went, in-person, to a Finnish elementary school. Later the same evening, with a 10 hour time difference, they also logged onto their computers to attend their US schools remotely. The first day of in-person school in Espoo was interesting: We literally had no other info from the principal other than to show up at 9am. To be fair this was the first day of the school year in Covid era which even for Finland meant special arrangements and schedules. It was likely an extremely busy time for the principal to deal with a family who'd hoisted itself upon the school. Given the circumstances it is actually amazing we were even allowed to join the school as visitors at all! Once we got to the school, I asked around to find the right grade level teachers in the school yard. I then had to explain to them (luckily I speak Finnish) that the kids were joining their classes. Some of them didn't even know to expect them! I guess the principal had forgot to inform them... Our 7 and 10 years had been placed one grade lower, with their age group peers, than they'd be in back home in California. This is because children in Finland start school they year they turn 7. In fact, our eldest (12) who would be in 8th grade in California, should have been in 7th grade and in middle school in Finland (which is grades 7-9). We thought it was more important for him to know at least one person at the school and be able to commute to the school with his siblings, so we'd asked for him to be put into a 6th grade class of the same school with his one-year younger California expat friend. The kids were a bit apprehensive but off they went, no tears or tantrums. Quite brave of them really. When I picked them up, they seemed to have had an ok day. They didn't understand everything the teachers had said but between following the others and the teachers or classmates translating they'd figured out "how to go with the flow" as our 7 year old daughter explained it. They all had one complaint though: they hadn't liked bringing their own lunch. They'd had to eat it alone in a classroom while the other kids went to to enjoy their lunch in the cafeteria. In Finland, all kids eat a free school lunch. The American concept of bringing a lunch box simply doesn't exist. And the food is good and nutritious i.e. no junk food like pizza or french fries. It is a warm meal, with vegetarian or other e.g. gluten and lactose-free options, served in a cafeteria on real dishes with real cutlery. Thus the request for our kids to bring their own lunch was quite unusual. We'd been asked to do it because we weren't officially registered at the school and hence our kids weren't included in the official lunch budget and headcount calculations. Even the teachers seemed embarrassed by this arrangement - everyone seemed to feel school lunches were the right of all children. Later, the start of the 2nd week or our 3 week visit the issue was actually fixed thanks to one of the teachers raising her concerns with the principal.
Our kids are good students but of course in tagging along in a Finnish school they encountered what you might think as an insurmoutable obstacle: the language. They understood a bit of Finnish (with skill decreasing in age of the children) but none of them could speak it. We speak English at home since my husband Joel is American, originally from Colorado. The fact the kids' Finnish pretty well sucked had been an ongoing source of stress for me and it felt like a failure on my part. I just hadn't had enough time and energy to maintain monologues and keep speaking to them in Finnish which is what it would have taken to ensure they grew up bilingual.
What little Finnish they knew, they knew from attending "Finnish School" for years back in California. The Silicon Valley Finnish school, the 2nd largest such entity in the world, offered 1.5 hour sessions every other Sunday during the school year. The Finnish School is great but that amount of time isn't really enough to learn a language, it is meant more to maintain the language and teach reading and writing to kids who already know Finnish.
Actually, kids were bilingual already, only the two languages they know are English and Spanish. In their California public school, they had been in a TWBI i.e. two-way bilingual program since kindergarten. They'd even learnt to read and write in Spanish first before their native English. Because of that, my thinking is that they are used to not understanding everything and interpreting meaning from context. This maybe helped them adjust to being in the school in Finland as much as their basic Finnish skills. Also, since Spanish is phonetic the same way as Finnish (you pronounce every letter), they had for a while been able to read Finnish and sound decent - although they had no idea what they were reading. During the 3 weeks the kids were in school they learnt or were reminded of Finnish elementary school customs they'd seen during previous visits. For example, kids take their outdoor schools off inside and they go into classrooms in their socks or inside schools they keep at school. They have recess numerous times per day for which they go outside and play (switching shoes on/off each time). The schedules vary by school day so there isn't a standard start/end time for all the kids in the school. The kids call the teachers by their first names and the relationship between teachers and students seems casual by US standards. They also study number of different subjects, taught by dedicated teachers, whereas in the US the classroom teacher typically teachers most subjects in elementary school: for example the kids had foreign languages (English and Swedish and optional German), they were sewing in handicraft class, building things in woodworking and they were cooking in home economics.
One of the biggest, most concrete differences to US schools though is the kids' independence Most kids in Finland, starting from 1st grade, walk or bike to school on their own. And by the way, because of this (and maybe thanks to cultural influence of Nokia) almost all of them own cell phones. Our AirBnb was further than normal from the school the kids were visiting (maybe about 3 times further) but after the first day, all our kids biked the 20 minute trip to and from school. We'd been lucky and gotten loaner bikes for all of use from family and friends. When the schedules were such that our youngest (7) would have to go to school alone, I would bike with her and then bike back to get her at the end of the day. I did this rather than drive her (which no one does except maybe when the weather is really bad) since this is the "Finnish way": I wanted them to experience full immersion into the life of a Finnish kid. While the kids were attending the local school during the day, they also kept up their US schooling. Despite the +10 hour time difference, they dutifully logged onto their computers to attend their US schools remotely each night to ensure smooth transition back to their own classes after the trip. The kids were amazing for doing this and managed to attend majority of their classes with no complaints. They had to miss classes that were past their 9pm bed-time though. Even more amazingly, they were troopers about attending school in Finland - all new surroundings, new classmates (except for the kids of the relocated family we'd known previously in California) and most importantly, a new language with very only a few complaints (from our 10 year old who isn't a fan of "change")!
Because of relatively low Covid cases, we were also able to enjoy fairly "normal" life when not busy with school or my remote work. We visited beaches, outdoor coffee shops, went for drinks on outdoor patios and did a bit of sightseeing. We reconnected with several of my high school friends and cousins who were all very hospitable and invited us for outdoor dinners and other outings. The weather also co-operated. It was gloriously warm and sunny. The standing joke with us is that everytime we come to Finland, we bring the good California weather with us. All of this was great because it - especially the fact that the kids went to school on their own without us needing to pack a lunch - left a great impression on Joel. He went home to San Jose, CA, shortly after school started to look after our house and dog which had been our plan all along. When he got there his memories of sunny, fun Finland were made even better by the fact that he was welcomed by insane California wildfires and smoky skies!
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