School | "Open office school" is causing widespread problems in Helsinki

Teachers and parents describe what learning is like in the many schools where they would like more walls.

“Children are restless. The goods are lost and it is easy for others to take them. Because of the noise, we cover our ears.”

This is how a special education teacher describes the newly opened Tahvonlahti elementary school in Helsinki.

HS told on Mondaythat Jakomäki’s Kankarepuisto school, which was completed in 2020, has been modified this year for almost a million, when the open spaces proved to be unsuitable.

Very few teachers from other schools consider modern open learning environments to be functional, according to HS’s survey.

They have been built all over Finland with enthusiasm. No law or current curriculum directly forces this, but it is about what the leading officials and decision-makers of the municipalities throughout the country have considered ideal in recent years.

We asked a few respondents in more detail what the problems are at school. However, it is a broader phenomenon, not just the schools mentioned here by name.

“Nearly all the teachers in our school need more walls”, says the teacher in Tahvonlahti. HS knows the names of the respondents, but does not publish them, because the teachers think that the name will lead to boredom in working life.

The school has only a few traditional fully enclosed classrooms. Instead, there are completely open spaces separated by glass walls.

For example, dozens of fifth graders see each other all the time through the glass. Forty first-graders study in an open space, next to which more than a hundred other children pass by, for example, on their way to recess.

There are interruptions and noise all the time. It exhausts teachers too, but it is unreasonable of a teacher to ask any young child to concentrate in such conditions. It is most difficult for those children who have, for example, ADHD or the autism spectrum.

The teacher thinks that the new facilities will increase the burden experienced by the children and make it difficult to keep quarreling children and young people apart from each other. Due to bullying, Tahvonlahti came up in the results of a recent school health survey, although the survey was carried out before moving into the new school building.

I shop there were a lot of messages from the new elementary school, most of them from the parents of the youngest children.

“The children’s day is really programmed so that they can avoid each other. “, describes one mother.

According to him, there are more groups than spaces for groups, which forces strict schedules and rotation.

Stupidity condenses into the hallway spaces, which are shared by a couple of first graders and four preschool groups, whose things don’t even fit in the hallway.

Both adults’ and children’s coat racks and shoe shelves are also so low and low that Winter boots have to be kept on their lapels and outer overalls hang partly on the floor.

Stuff often falls, adding to the chaos.

“Teachers make things go somehow, but I don’t understand why their work has to be made more difficult with invalid solutions,” says the mother.

Open learning spaces have been implemented in Helsinki especially in new school buildings, where it is easier than old school buildings to introduce a new idea of a new kind of learning environment.

In the video below, Jakomäki’s communal building is presented from the inside. The video is of Helsinki’s urban environment.

The school in question is the one whose renovation and partitions HS reports on Monday.

For the survey there were also responses from teachers who felt that they had managed to prevent the most silly excesses during the construction phase.

For example, in the Finnish-Russian school and Pakila elementary school, the wildest plans were changed when teachers and parents got involved.

In addition to new school buildings, there are special compromises in some renovated old buildings and temporary shelters.

Both of these are represented, for example, by the former University of Economics and Business, which is now an escape facility for elementary schools. Taivallahti elementary school will be the first to use it.

Teacher describes that middle school classes are mostly factual. Primary school children, on the other hand, are in the premises that you walk through. There are also large open spaces where two different classes study without a partition.

The facilities force a certain kind of co-teaching, even though such decisions should be made before pedagogy.

The teacher thinks that it’s basically that there are more children in the building than they can comfortably accommodate. However, it would have been possible to make partitions in them too, if desired.

“Whenever you ask the students, they would like their own class and then their own desk with their own storage space for things. Students do best when they have a safe class of their own and familiar adults,” explains the teacher.

Read more: The teacher tells what the rough everyday life is like in Helsinki’s “open office school”

Read more: Is this a serious precedent? Walls began to be built for the new “open office school” in Helsinki