Engaging Teaching and Learning

Our journey in Finland is a journey of engagement. As committed teachers we tailored a project to participate in this 3-month enterprise facing an unknown culture and leaving our families back home. Some of us didn’t even know with they would have the funds to pay for their expenses. That’s engagement in its purest form.

We started the course forming a group. The groups had to choose names and a fast and safe choice for our homegroup’s name was Modern Family, because of the TV series, and we have identified ourselves with it. In the beginning of the group we were so afraid, shy and the discussions were so fast. When we were discovering each other, the things started to change, we really behave as a family. The debates started to be more effectives, we could identify the skills and defects of each one. We could do self-reflections about it and in this way improve our qualities and change our defects.

Rosangela is from Recife, Pernambuco, an Electrical Engineer, and a so sweet girl. She seems to us so patient and good mother. She has a daughter named Sarah, who she loves a lot. About Wlamir, Kalango, or Little Leather, he is from Aracaju, he’s is an Architect. He give us, each day, a new nickname, lol. He has a band and play a bass guitar. He’s a great father, he has two beautiful daughters. Miguel, Micael, Micaeli, etc is from Rio Grande, He’s a Geographer. Everyday Miguel teach us a new popular sentence, stories and jokes. He add happiness in the group. Jorge, José or Falcon is from Rio, he’s a Geographer too. In the family, he speaks English better, so he must be patience with us to teach us. He likes playing boardgames a lot. He also plays guitar in the dorm. Flávio, A.K.A. Sid, is from Vitória, he’s a Electrical Engineer too. He’s the smartest, the most handsome, gorgeous and modest of the family, it’s my opinion about me, LOL. So, we are a team with competents professionals. Each one is here to learn and change ourselves and change our job environment.

We all have difficult to speak and talk in English, it was one of the first impressions of the group. So, we had to enhance our English. Therefore, we created a rule, everyone have to speak in English all the time in classes, the result was a better increase in vocabulary, speaking and talking. In this way we can engage with each other and help ourselves. It’s our own PBL in practice, learning by doing.

During the activities in the classes, we are perceiving what is student centered learning. Because our teachers use it. The focus is on us, we can participate actively and make decisions, share experiences. All the time we notice it, and we always are reflecting about how we are teaching. It’s the most beautiful experience we had. The same idea have happened in the visits. We could perceive the PBL applying in practice.

In Valkeakoski we learned about the real value of labour. When we first came to Finland we saw hair salons charging 30 euros for a haircut. 30 EUROS FOR A HAIRCUT ?? After we saw that in vocational school students do a 3-year course to be a hairdresser, we changed our minds. In PROACADEMIA we experienced how autonomous students can get with a PBL approach and how engaged they are in managing their own business.

The Kiipula visit touched us so much, because it is a vocational school for students with special needs. Applying PBL and assessing this students were so impressive for us. So in this visit we saw how the engagement is in practice.

The students are engaged with themselves and teachers. And teachers are engaged with themselves too. The PBL is so important in this process of engagement. The engagement is important in learning process, and for students with needs, it’s primordial. One of the teachers play games with the students at their free times, it shown us that the engagement can be in informal ways too. For example, Irma invited us to see first of May in Helsinki. It was a learning outside of the classroom. It was very nice to knowing the Finnish culture.

As a group we can notice the importance of the engagement in the teaching and learning process. In our homegroup we have been doing that in the classes, in our trips, in our social meetings and with the other colleagues. We arrived in Finland with a mind and now our mind expanded, so it can’t contract back.