Week 1: School systems - ⁠Finnish presentation - Impression of Finland

During our first meeting we we’re all still getting acquainted with each other.
Having some snacks and games lifted the mood and made everyone feel comfortable to chat more. We all quickly started talking about our experience so far and the differences between our school systems. Turns out the Dutch, German, Finnish and Norwegian school systems are quite different from each other. Apart from not being able to experience the Norwegian learning system it was wonderful hearing about it from Emma. Just like the Finnish learning system I’d love to get an opportunity to experience it.
So, what are our first impressions of Finland and the learning system? In general, I’d say it’s positive! We all love that there isn’t as much pressure on individual students here and that the grading process looks “less daunting”. Since the goal of each one teach one is to exchange language skills and cultural aspects, we kind of focussed on the Dutch language this time of course making small connections and relations to other languages. For example, there are some Dutch words that are almost identical to their Norwegian version. Like Afstand(Dutch) and Avstand(Norwegian) both meaning distance or Bibliotheek(Dutch) and Bibliotek(Norwegian) both meaning library and quite a few more. This sadly isn’t the case with the Finnish language. That would make it a lot more easy for me to learn haha. Our first meeting/get together was very nice and I’m already looking forward to the next one.