Ranskalainen sosiaalityöntekijä
Laure-Anna is a 24-year-old French so-cial
29
worker completing her internship
in Finland. She leads a charity in France
that collects hygiene products for homeless
people.
At our school, she was supposed to work
with the school curator but ended up ob-serving
classes instead. She met teachers
and student and got to know them as well
as the school. She organized events for the
students, such as debates. Her goal was to
make an environment where students are
comfortable talking and working with each
other. She also wanted to spread the charity
work that she does in France to Finland.
She wanted to do her internship in Fin-land
because she was interested in the Fin-nish
schooling system. She told us that in
her opinion the French schooling system is
old-fashioned compared to ours. She was cu-rious
about how schooling works here and
wanted to analyze and understand it, and
bring what she learned to France.
We wanted to ask her about attributes she
thought were unfamiliar or new, compared
to France. One of her main points was that
the hierarchy system in school here is not as
important and strict as in France. In Fin-land,
addressing and talking with teachers
is more informal than there. We also ha-ve
the advantage of choosing our courses,
whereas in France they don’t get to do that.
She also brought up how French students get
punished for not doing your school work or
disturbing the class. However, in Finland, we
don’t have as harsh punishments.
Finland has great gender equality, so she was
surprised to hear that girls and boys have
physical education separately. She mention-ed
how French students tend to spend their
recesses smoking because they don’t have ac-cess
to activities such as table tennis or other
sports.
We thank her for doing this interview with
us and wish her the best of luck with her
work.
Teksti Laura Välimäki and
Sara Suo-Anttila
Kuva Minttu Leinonen