Saturday, May 31, 2008

It is Summer

My work year is officially over. The last courses ended and Friday was the day for the graduation ceremony for my school, Turun iltalukio. We study late in the evening and that is why the ceremony is also in the evening. We teach adults and it is not unusual that our students have children who graduate also. The big day in regular schools was Saturday and this way the children can attend their parent’s ceremony and vice versa.

The ceremony consists of musical performances, speeches and the students receive their diplomas and the white cap which is the symbol for a high school graduate.

The cap is almost the same as in Sweden, except that the Finnish cap has a lyre and the Swedish cap has a cockade of blue and yellow, the colours of the Swedish flag. The lyre of our school is smaller than the one in these pictures. At the time the size of the lyre indicated how Finnish – minded the student was. The Finnish – Swedish students have a 22 mm lyre, Finnish normally the 16 mm neutral one, ours is the 14 mm one indicating originally very extreme Finns. The cap comes with the lyre of the University of Helsinki and it should be changed to the one of the University the student goes to, but I have not changed mine yet to the lyre of the University of Turku. I have thought about it, but every First of May I notice that I did not do it this year either.


Now some of the students have finished a dream they always had, some will go to the University and some to ammattikorkeakoulu, which means "School of Higher Vocational Education". They want to call themselves as Universities of Applied Sciences, but the Universities are not very happy about that. We don’t actually have colleges and even those seem to vary from one country to another.

Here is a picture of one of my students from the long math courses, Nicholas, who kindly gave me permission to publish his picture.



At the same time this is my answer to Rashmi Kathuria’s Meme Passion Quilt, which I received in February. This is the main reason I have continued my job as a teacher even though sometimes I feel that my job is not very much appreciated, at least when my employer, the city of Turku is concerned.

Now I have 3 months off from teaching and I am starting to explore the possibilities of blogging and the wonderful community Passionate Teachers to add new methods in my teaching.

2 comments:

A ARCA DO TE$OURO said...

good night Leena!!!!!!11 my name is Linda I am live in brazil.I am 37 years old.I love Finland I want to make contact with you. I visited your blog and I like very much. my msn is : Lindalci_24@hotmail.com me add . bjs

Les Livres De Sylvie Barbaroux said...

Thanks for the posst