Thanks for your active participation during November contact days. Here are some comments and hopefully more food for thought.
About the guest speaker's lecture on legal issues in the teaching profession (slides on Moodle)
-All in all informative and interactive. The law can be interpreted in different ways by different people, namely employers, employees, students, parents…In most situations one can manage without a lawyer but if you are not a member of a teacher’s union yet you might want to consider to become a member of
OAJ. Not much info in English though but you should be able to get some help in English too. If you’re not a member of any union and you lose your job, you are only entitled to the minimum unemployment benefit (680€/excluding taxes). If you lose your job, note that the union can financially support you only if you have been a member for 10 months.
-Legal aspects vary according to the types of institutions, i.e whether you work for a private, state or municipal institution. In the last two it proves to be easier to discuss your rights.
-According to the guest speaker « State schools are the ones with special needs ». I’m not sure what he meant by that but I assume he had the linguistic aspect in mind. In fact the state schools include the Finnish French school, the Russian school and the European school.
-Qualification is still the key to full time permanent employment. In other words, the teaching certificate you will receive in December 2014 can make a difference.
-UAS vs Polytechnics : the « old » terminology seems to die hard in many official documents. Note that the Finnish term remains unchanged : ammattikorkeakoulu.
About 3.3 empirical kick off session (slides on Moodle)
We hope you not only enjoyed the candies but that you also benefited from the session for tackling the empirical part of the assignment ! If you’re interested in our colleague’s
Kimmo Mäki’s PHD thesis and understand Finnish you can find it at the library. Alternatively you can read the abstract in English.
Education Society and Culture
-One of the highlights of the contact days : 4 teams, 4 different approaches to sharing your findings with the whole group both content and method wise (cake metaphore, drama, filmed interviews, real time poster making).
-Congratulations on your creative, illuminating, inspiring, varied, and untraditional « presentations » !
Teaching and Learning kick off (slides on Moodle)
The main objective was to open up teaching and learning from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Kolb’s learning cycle provides a framework for learning from one’s experiences. You can continue the activity we started together by relating the 4 stages of the cycle with your own experiences in a teaching and learning context. This might prove to be a useful tool during the teaching practice process.
November contact days evaluation
What did you learn ?
What could you transfer to your workplace and how could it be implemented with your students ?
What do you need to learn more about ? etc.
You can ponder these questions in the Moodle Wiki or equivalent.
Reminders, deadlines and other points
-If need be, keep working on your PDP and submit the new version(s) to Moodle
-13.1: Plan for Teacher Activity in Communities and Networks (3.3) in combination with Learning at Work (3.2) ; Teaching and Learning (3.2)
-Keep elaborating the case that you and your team chose last Tuesday in connection with 3.3. More info will come later about the implementation part.
-Mistake : 12.5.2014 : 3.5 (and not 3.3) Developmental project plan (see list of tentative deadlines)
-The earlier your start with teaching and guidance counseling observations (part of 3.4), the better. It might be a good idea to share your teaching schedule with your team and in fact the whole group (Moodle general discussion forum). And of course, you can also observe your colleagues or any teacher at any school. This shouldn't be a problem as schools are usually very open in Finland. Discuss with your team what you could focus on during these observations.
Best of luck with the assignments, meetings and whatever you will undertake before we meet again in January.
PS: any urgent questions ? David can probably help when Irmeli is on vacation!
