Sastamala 22-28 January, 2023

Sunday 22nd

Yours truly boarded the coach at Lahdesjärvi ABC (for those unlikely-to-end-up-in-this-blog visitors, that is a chain of service station/supermarket hybrids found all around Finland) at 10:45 on a Sunday morning. The reason? To pick up our foreign Erasmus+ visitors from two countries and schools: Germany (Otto-Hahn Gymnasium, Ostfildern) and Spain (IES Comarcal, Burjassot). We were to spend a week together working on the theme of carbon neutral cities. 

Arriving at the airport about half an hour before the first guests, the German team, landed, I and Saara as well as the Finnish Erasmus+ students made it to the terminal to meet them. The Spanish team was soon to follow - and it was first time we Finns and Spaniards met each other, by the way. After exchanging hugs and pleasantries, we had lunch at the airport and departed for Helsinki city centre for a good three hours worth of free time activities. We teachers had coffee and Runeberg's tart and the students ... Well, did something - good for them!

After a visit to Oodi (Helsinki main library) we had a stroll around Helsinki, along Aleksanterinkatu, Esplanadi and back along Mannerheimintie just in time for the coach. 

Monday 23rd

Monday was the traditional “let’s tour the school, teach everyone some Finnish they’ll forget in a jiffy and have coffee & something sweet at every opportunity the staff room” day. So … We toured the school had coffee and something sweet every time we could in the staff room: this time, it was the traditional Finnish blueberry pie. Afterwards, I briefed the students and teachers about the learning task and the next day’s visit to Tampere. The idea behind the task and some practical suggestions for format, layout etc. can be found here.

Then, one of the highlights and also a main staple during these visits to Finland: an evening get together for students and teachers alike at Levo hunting lodge. I, Sakari and Kasper (who are also a regular and irreplaceable parts of this activity) went to the lodge in good time to get the heaters going and to heat up the sauna, and the whole place was pretty nice and warm by the time students started to arrive with the food and beverages. We teachers enjoyed the buffet table and some sausages - and as the students didn't really eat too many of the, there were plenty of those left for the following day's cookout in Ellivuori - and each other’s company while the students enjoyed the sauna to the max.  

Tuesday 24th 

Tuesday - off to Ellivuori for the winter fun day. It’s a sad thing indeed when you have to live in constant fear/hope/doubt whether there'll actually be enough snow in Finland in January .... Luckily, there was just enough for the activities we had planned, such as sledge riding, tandem skiing, soccer in snow, fat biking etc. etc. 

Perhaps the most popular/successful activity was the cookout at the Laplander’s hut: sausages and pancakes. Nevermind that the fireplace was too small for more than one regular-sized cast-iron pan and that it took ages to cook pancakes to feed nearly 50 people - it was still good fun! As a fan of cooking and eating I can of course totally relate to this.

Wednesday 25th

We (that is, I and all the foreign Erasmus teachers and students) boarded the coach at 8:00 at the school, the destination being Tampere. This was to be the get-to-know-more-about-what-needs-to-be-done day - that is, information about the Tampere 2030 initiative with the idea that it would benefit the project tasks.  The coordinators/personnel at 2030 welcomed us at Siluetti with open arms and avocado sandwiches & coffee, after which we were joined by Oras Tynkkynen. He introduced us to the concept of circular economy, the next step and fighting climate change and resource depletion - the topics of which a new SITRA working paper would be released shortly. 

After a tasty lunch at Sandro, we returned for a system simulation workshop. The students were split into six teams each of which was given a fictional alter ego (e.g. "Kaija ja culinarist" for whom the team received was some background information as well as the assignment to try and think what would it take to make that fictional person to change their consumption habits and how. The key things were precisely the how and why, as 

After the working day ended, the teachers continued the afternoon with a visit to Werstas, finishing the day in Tampere with an evening at Sasor.

Thursday 26th

Not much to say about this day, except that it was surprisingly hard work despite the fact that I was “only” supervising the project work. Going back and forth between four different classrooms on different floors, looking for some extension cords and trying to pop by in the staff room every once in a while to get the coffee going and print something etc. made me feel as if I was on the move constantly. As I was.

After lunch there was a bit more time to work on the projects before a trip to Pukstaavi with the foreign students. The colleagues departed to Tampere with Saara on the afternoon bus. 

Friday 27th

Then the big day for those students who had been working hard (and indeed they all had): time to present the learning tasks. For this occasion, we had Maarit Särkilahti from SITOWISE, who was again kind enough to come and listen to the students’ presentations and evaluate their ideas.  I’ve got to tell you: the work that the students had put in the tasks and the presentations … They really exceeded my expectations, they truly did. Clear ideas, clever suggestions - and the presentation parts went very nicely too! Our guests agreed and their comments and additional questions to the three learning task teams certainly conveyed this well! It seems that being part of international teams really made the students give 100% and an extra 10% on top of that of themselves. 

We teachers had our farewell dinner at Saara's place in Tampere while the students had theirs in Seurahuone. The food was "delicious and plentiful" - to quote my late father, who was instructed to write this sentence into the official records as a NCO in the Finnish military in the 60s, after each meal every day...   But unlike in the Finnish military (well, in all likelihood), this was indeed the case: appetizers, salad, reindeer stew & mashed potatoes and blueberry pie and Lappish cheese for dessert - YUMMY!

Saturday 28th

Our guests boarded the coach for Helsinki a little bit before 9 AM. The students took their sweet time (as always) saying their goodbyes with lots of crying and hugging. Even though yours truly wasn't present (Saara had kindly agreed to supervise the departure instead), I would image that the teachers were somewhat more subdued. Not that we're cold-hearted but rather that we know that we shall anyway meet again quite soon in Spain.