Leading Lights Swedish School : 2017

keskiviikko 13. joulukuuta 2017

St. Lucia and the Theme Days 2017

As every year since 1949 we celebrated St. Lucia in our school on St. Lucia's day, December 13th.

While Lucia visits sick and old people with her maids and choir spreading light, hope and love, the other students in high school have theme days, where charity and humanity are usually in the main role.

This year we had an opportunity to hear 18 year old Afghan boy Khadem tell about his journey to Finland and Oulu. He also told about life in Afghanistan and the differences between these two countries. Our students found the presentation very interesting, and afterwards they had a lot of thoughts about the topic.

In the photos below you can see Khadem and our students, and some of the thoughts they wrote and drew after the presentation.

You can read more about this year's St. Lucia of Oulu here (in Finnish).

Here can you read our last year's post about St. Lucia and see the awesome video that is made by our students.

keskiviikko 22. marraskuuta 2017

Mahdollisuuksien päivä – The Day of Possibilities

Our students Emma and Rasmus visited a fair event called Mahdollisuuksien päivä, where various possibilities to study and work were presented from the Roma people point of view. The fair took place on 2nd of November in Pohjankartano School. There were information desks where various learning institutions and employers told about the possibilities that they have. There was also a presentation about the Romani culture.

Our students felt that they got new information about the Roma people and their roots. ”They are people like anybody else and equal to all of us. The Roma people shouldn’t be treated in a different way just because of their background,” they think.

The Romani minority in Finland

There has been Roma people in Finland since 16^th century. Nowadays their social situation is pretty good compared to many other European countries, but it hasn’t always been like this. Roma people have been discriminated, and still there are many things that need improvement.

Romani language gained a minority language status in Finland in 1995. The status guarantees some rights, but issues like accommodation, subsistence and education have been problematic. During last decades, also health education has been important aspect in improving Rome people social status.

The National Roma Forum of Finland (FRF) was established in 2007 to promote and monitor the realization of the Roma people’s basic and civil rights. FRF works against all kinds of racism, anti-gypsisim and discrimination. FRF promotes Roma culture and Romani language, Roma people’s social integration, participation in public life and decision making.

(References: romanomission.fi, magma.fi, romanifoorumi.fi)

tiistai 17. lokakuuta 2017

Meeting in Braga

Almost the whole "Leading Lights" group on the stairs of Bom Jesus sanctuary

Third meeting of the project "Leading Lights" was in Braga, Portugal, 9th - 13th October 2017. From our school students Emma and Laura and teachers Eva and Johanna participated the meeting.

As earlier we collaborated with Laanila High School. To get to know each other before the trip and to have something to take with us to an international picnic, we baked some cinnamon buns together on Friday evening before the departure.

Baking cinnamon buns with students and teachers from Laanila High School

The main theme in Portugal was "Celebrating Difference". Every school had prepared a presentation about how the students who are blind or deaf or who others have special needs, have been taken as an equal part of the school community. Since in the previous meetings people have been interested about the Swedish speaking minority in Finland, our students presentation was held from that point of view and the special needs were taken into account in the larger perspective, with the help of Laura´s video about accessibility in Oulu.

Emma and Laura's presentation

(This wasn't a part of presentation ;) )

During the sunny five days we familiarized us with the students with special needs, and visited different associations and churches as well as a synagogue and a museum. We also heard a touching lecture about discrimination issues in schools by an university researcher. We visited also the towns of Porto and Guimaraes, and got to meet the mayor of Braga. :)

International picnic at the school farm

Team Finland. In the back row: Nina, Siina, Johanna, Eva and Jarkko.

In front: Noora, Emma, Laura and Aapo.

Synagogue of Porto

Picnic in the City Park of Porto

Outside of a Shelter for Victims of Domestic Violence

Selfietime!

Group photo

The week in Braga was really succeed. Both students and teachers made a bunch of new friends and learned a lot about equality. The various activities challenged our ways to think and opened eyes to look things from different aspects.

At the end of week every participant got a certificate in a festive ceremony with vibrant applause. Thank you, Portugal and all the nice people there!

lauantai 7. lokakuuta 2017

European Day of Languages

The European Day of Languages is a yearly event held on 26 September. It celebrates the linguistic diversity of a continent with over 200 European languages, 24 official EU languages, about 60 regional or minority languages and many more languages spoken by the people.

The meaning of the day is to raise awareness of the wide variety of languages in Europe, to promote cultural & linguistic diversity and to encourage people of all ages to learn languages.

The European Day of Languages was established by the European Commission and the Council of Europe. This year was the 16th time to celebrate the day.

This year the day was celebrated in Oulu as the main event in Finland. The celebrations took place at the shopping center Valkea. There were many kind of activities, such as stage performances, information desks, quizzes, immersion and - what our students liked the most - orientation trial with different kinds of functional games.

Read more about the event in Oulu at https://www.facebook.com/euroopankieletoulu/?ref=page_internal

The newspaper Kaleva wrote also about the event: http://www.kaleva.fi/uutiset/oulu/uudet-kielet-tulivat-tutuiksi-euroopan-kielten-paiva-nakyi-valkeassa/771665/

torstai 14. syyskuuta 2017

The Hunger Day

The Hunger Day 14.-16.9.2017 is the biggest annual fundraising campaign of the Finnish Red Cross. With donations made to the Disaster Relief Fund The Red Cross helps the victims of natural disasters and conflicts around the world, and in sudden accidents in Finland too.

Our students participated The Hunger Day this year as well by collecting money at the streets of Oulu. They commented the experience with following words:

"It feels good to help people when you know that the help is needed. We made also new friends."

"Joy of helping"

"The sense of community"

"It made me think about equality."

"Life isn't that bad anyway."

"You learn to appreciate what you have and realize that the things could be worse."

torstai 18. toukokuuta 2017

Accessibility in Oulu

In the meeting in Braga our main theme will be "Celebrating Difference". We are going to consider different kinds of special needs and disabilities. We will, for instance, explore the city from a different perspective: how does the city take into account different kinds of special needs?

To get our students who were willing to participate the meeting in Braga in to the theme, we asked them to make videos about accessibility in Oulu, our home town. Here you can see two of them.

The first one is made by Laura, and it's in English.

The second one is made by Emma, and it's in Swedish, but you'll understand it for sure.

Enjoy the videos! :)

keskiviikko 3. toukokuuta 2017

Photo Exhibition in Melilla

In the meeting in Melilla we had a photo exhibition where every school had sent two to three photos. Theme in all the photos was equality in daily life. Here you can see almost all the amazing photos seen in the exhibition. (Unfortunately we don't have names of all the photos or photographers.)

PS. Have you noticed that three of them can you see in the Erasmus+ corner in our school? :)