As soon as we stepped off the bus on Monday(the 4th) from Helsinki, Hannele, the residency director, picked us up and drove us to Syvarauman Elementary School where we met Markku (a member of the Nortamo Seor language club) Juha (the instructor) and the children. This was our first opportunity meet all the participants, both young and old, for Echo, the Rauma Language/Dialect Project.
Upon arrival we were escorted to the inner sanctum of the school- the teacher's lounge- and were introduced to the faculty. Remembering as small children what it was like to look at the door of the teacher's lounge, there was a slight air of intimidation before entering. 'What do they do in there? What do they talk about? Are there cookies?' Well, we can safely confirm, perhaps on an international scale, that teachers do in fact 'lounge' and the topic of conversation tends to rotate around troubled children or what happened or will happen during the weekend depending on the day of the week. Also, there ARE cookies, lots of them, and coffee too.
Then the five adults, Ron, Mackenzie, Hannele, Markku, Juha, and Hannele, all headed to class. As we entered the building, we hung our coats in the hall, and entered the classroom. With a mixture of Finnish and English we introduced ourselves and tried to explain the project to the sixth graders. The process seemed simple enough, but was complicated as things often are by language barriers. The children would listen to Markku tell a story from his childhood in the Rauma Language and also read from the famous book written by H.J. Nortamo, which solidified the Rauma dialect and illustrate the stories.
In general, their English level was exceptional and they seemed pretty game to try entire the process. We set a date for that Friday to meet up for the first lesson.
From Rauma Blog
From Rauma Blog
From Rauma Blog
From Rauma Blog
From Rauma Blog
Small sample of Markku's story
No comments:
Post a Comment