Teachers at Pärnu Kuninga Tänava Põhikool

“We show the students that it is real life and not something that we only do inside the school”

Teachers think that having practical classes helps students to be better prepared for life and motivates them more than more traditional approaches, and they also think "attracting and retaining qualified teachers" is very important in the present and the future of Estonian education

ANA BARREIRO LÓPEZ AND LUCAS FERNÁNDEZ BARREIRO | Pärnu

Kadri Anari works as a class teacher in Pärnu Kuninga Tänava Põhikool. She studied in the University of Tallinn and has a master’s degree in teaching. Her colleague Reene Tammearu is an English teacher and has been at this school for much longer. They value "teamwork" as one of the secrets of their work at this school and 

—Estonia is one of the countries with the best education in the world according to the PISA survey. How was the change from a more traditional way or teaching to the introduction of technology and new methodologies if you compare it with the time you went to high school?

—KA: I went to high school in 2001 and there was a big project in Estonia called Tiger Leap, where a lot of Estonian schools were connected to the Internet. We got new computer classrooms and that was a new thing for us. That helped us a lot, especially with math, and we were able to use new methods. Because of that, for me personally, it wasn't a big difference.

—Your educational system is characterized by not following the traditional model. How does this benefit the students and what are its weak points?

—RT: Actually, sometimes we still use some traditional methods, because we still use textbooks and workbooks, but sometimes we go outside the classroom to study, and we use a lot of digital equipment. But what differentiates us most is the relationship we have between teachers and students, and also with the parents, because we all work together as a team. So we also involve the parents in the student's learning process. It's not only the student and the teacher, and that probably helps a lot. And we have a very close point between students and their homes, we know very much about families. And that helps us to know better what is happening to the student. And the leading principle of the Estonian education system is, of course, inclusive education, which means that every child is offered an education that exactly matches their abilities and needs. But the problem is that we want to get to every child, whether it is either the case of staying behind or the case of a very talented student, but it takes a lot of human resources and it is very hard work to get to every student. But it may happen that the teachers might feel that they have too much work, and that may cause stress and teachers leaving school. So I think this is the problem.

—What type of additional human resources do you think would be necessary to be able to help all these students with special needs?

—RT: We need more teachers, but the government knows about the problem and is trying to solve it. So the main concern is that we have a lot of work and because we have to take a high number of classes, but we get a very low income, and that's a problem. For this reason we need to do more work to be paid better, so it's a kind of a circle you can not get out of if the government won't help us. But they are trying to do it. I just have heard that next year we will have a salary increase of 4 percent [Laughs].

—Your school schedule has diverse activities such as cooking or carpentry workshops. How does this help the students compared with the more traditional textbook, homework and written exams than we normally have in Spain?

—KA: First, this will prepare them for practical life, because they learn how to fix their clothes or sew a button, or do some easy wood work. And the other part is that they have to prepare their project, like, if they have to knit something, they need to choose the correct materials or maybe draw a sketch. Then they have to make it real, they have to go through all the process, and, after that, they need to analyze: "How did it go? Did I choose the correct materials?” So they make the theory into life.

—What do you think helps and stimulates the students most to learn in the Estonian educational system and what importance do motivation and emotion have in this process?

—RT: As you know, everything starts with motivation; no doubt about that. But the question is: “What motivates you, students?” So if we find something that motivates you then it’d be easy, but what we try to do is to give students tasks that need reasonable effort. Tasks that are not too easy, because that would be boring for you, and tasks that aren’t too difficult, because then the students would not even want to finish it. But again, that means that the teachers need to work more because there are students with very different abilities, so we have to prepare different tasks to make them suitable for every student in the class to get them involved and then that also creates motivation. Also, whenever we do something outside the classroom it also shows the students what is real life and not something that we do only inside the school and that the things you learn in class are not only useful inside it. That’s why we sometimes visit different buildings and workshops outside, like you did today in Pernova, to show them that what we do here is actually real life. We also ask them questions like “why do you need that?” and “why are we doing this?”. It's not because we want to teach you that, but because you will probably need that. 

—KA: We try to find correlations between, for example, math problems and real life, so we will do a math problem about house renovation, something connected to real life.

—RT: At least we hope and we have seen that motivates you because you will really need it.

—What do you think are the main reasons the students turn out to be very successful in life after they leave school and go to the university, to a vocational school or get a job and how do you evaluate them to get such good results?

—KA: It’s a cultural thing. Education is really important for us and we try to make the students see that the better results you have at school, the more you learn, the better the life that is waiting for you outside the school later on. So, if they realize that and the parents support us, then they’ll be motivated. The other thing is that we pay a lot of attention and time making sure most of the students get the results we want in the subject. So they are used to learning and they have to do it more frequently and get better results, so they remember this later on in life.

—From now on, what do you think are the challenges Estonian education faces now and will have in the future?

—RT: As I mentioned earlier, one of the concerns right now is attracting and retaining qualified teachers, and that’ll be a concern for many more years because it’s not going to be solved in a year or two, but I hope it gets resolved at some point.

—How did you overcome the previous challenges? 

—RT: We work as a team; the teachers as well. We help each other and support each other, so not only do we divide the tasks between us but we also talk to each other and support each other that way.

—KA: Teamwork.