Teaching in M.I.T.

Here I'm with some of my students and one of the teachers, Patrik. As you can see, the classroom was quite small and usually it was so packed you could hardly walk there. But it was nice - and hot. There were no air condition so you had to keep the windows open and then it was so noisy you had difficulties to hear what the students were saying. For some reason they spoke in such a quiet voice; I noticed that some young persons spoke quietly in some other situations, too; may be that was a way to show they respect you. The relations between the teacher and the students were not formal but not informal - something between, I guess. It was different than in Finland. There was kind of a friendly atmosphere all the time but every one was behaving in a nice way. We had some problems understanding each other - my English and their English were different - but we managed. And I enjoyed it a lot! Some times I met some of the students in the city center when I was there by my self and it was so nice to greet them and to be greeted by them. I felt so comfortable; hey, I have people here - others than people with whom I was living - who know me!

We had interesting discussions during the lectures. I could see the students were clever and eager to get to know more about the world we live. And I was eager to learn from them and they taught me a lot. I miss them and hope to be back with them some day!

Before I left Finland I did my "digimarks" and prepared to use many different kinds of methods when teaching. But you know what? There were no opportunity to use them. There were some computers but they were needed to other groups. One day I got the computer and the projector and was going to have a slide show. But there were no electricity...So I had to use my other methods and that was using the white board again...And we talked a lot. At first the students were shy about talking but the more we talked, the more they wanted to talk.