A new face has been popping into World Language and English classes. The English, Swedish and French language teacher from Finland, Emilia Koskilahti, has been teaching Northwood students about Finnish culture, language and history while also observing classes in her eight weeks here.
Koskilahti was invited to Northwood after English teacher Justice Mansour spent the summer in Finland.
“Mrs. Mansour was in Finland last summer and she met my colleague,” Koskilahti said. “My colleague asked Mrs. Mansour if she wanted to take me here [America] because I have a language practice that I have to do.”
There are differences between Finland and America that Koskilahti has noticed including how students treat their teachers.
“I think that students and teachers have nice relationships. They say ‘hello’ when they see each other. They are nice to each other,” Koskilahti said. “I’ve noticed that the students are really nice and social and talkative. They have a lot of questions for me and that’s nice.”
While at Northwood, Koskilahti has shown various presentations on Finland and Maijamäki School in Naantali, Finland, the school where she teaches.
“She told us a lot about Finland,” sophomore Anna Pickens said. “It’s really nice and has the best education system in the world and I think we can learn a lot about their standards. We learned about the weather and how it’s usually very cold and dark in the winter and bright in the summer. We talked about the products that come from Finland, like Angry Birds comes from Finland.”
Koskilahti teaches French and English at Maijamäki School but also speaks Swedish, Italian and Finnish. In Europe, it is more common to speak multiple languages than it is in America according to The Guardian in the United Kingdom.
“I think it’s a really amazing thing that she knows Finnish, Swedish, English, French, Italian and some Latin,” sophomore Kathleen Hablutzel said. “The reason I think that is so amazing because she can communicate with more people and be a more worldly citizen.”
Koskilahti is thankful that she could travel here and plans to bring what she has learned at Northwood back to her classroom in Finland.
“The foreign language teachers speak in the foreign language the entire period; I can take that back to Finland and speak only English or French,” Koskilahti said.
Koskilahti hopes to show students at Northwood a different side of the world that they may have not known much about.
“I hope that they have learned something about Finland and how we have a lot of good things in Europe and in Northern Europe, even though we are far away,” Koskilahti said. “I hope they have learned something about Northern Europe and about our school system. We also don’t have polar bears in Finland. Someone here thought we had polar bears walking around Finland and that’s not true!”
View a video from Koskilahti’s school here.
– By Madison Clark
