Wednesday, 27 November 2024. That is a day that Tampere-based teacher and author Päivi Lukkarila will not soon forget.
Lukkarila’s novel, Skutsi, won the Finlandia Prize in Children’s and Youth Literature.
– I never believed that I'd win. Just being nominated already made me feel like a winner, she explains.
Skutsi is Lukkarila’s 20th book, which has been described as a horror-tinged story about the wilderness. She published her first novel in 2007, and every time she put out a new one, a thought floated in her head: what if this one is nominated for a Finlandia.
Some of Päivi Lukkarila’s books are self-published through her own label, Nokkahiiri, some by others. Skutsi is a Nokkahiiri book.
Päivi Lukkarila works as a teacher of Finnish as a second language at the Lentävänniemi and Lamminpää schools. She teaches primary school pupils whose mother tongue not Finnish.
Finnish as a second language is not the easiest subject to teach, and sometimes the issues and number of S2 pupils only seem be in the headlines when they’re about problems in education.
Lukkarila has enjoyed her current work for eight years now.
– This is a great job. As a Finnish teacher, I get to bring out all of my chops. Of course, I teach traditional vocabulary and grammar, but I often have to explain concepts with gestures or examples.
Immigrant children learn spoken language mostly from their friends, but naturally, they do have to practice during lessons as well. School also teaches children to understand the language as a system – its structure and the wider vocabulary. Lukkarila emphasises that reading and writing are the best ways to do that.
Linguistically responsive support means that the teacher considers the pupil's initial level and cultural background, including for individual concepts.
It is possible for history and environmental information vocabularies, among others, to be very difficult. For example, forest types, such as heath forests and spruce forests, are unfamiliar to people from the Middle East – as terms and otherwise.
Finnish teachers do remember to speak more clearly with students who are in the initial stages of learning the language. But…
– It takes a village. It doesn’t help if only the Finnish teachers speak easy language. It would be great if all subject teachers and class teachers kept linguistic responsiveness in mind. Words that are super familiar to us will easily go over the heads of some children, reminds Lukkarila.
– Teaching in a linguistically responsive way is definitely worth it. It benefits every pupil.
A teacher's enthusiasm is contagious
Päivi Lukkarila, with her years of experience as a teacher, knows what today's primary schoolers think about reading. Which is not a whole lot.
– People would rather take the easy road than the difficult one. If you think your entertainment needs are met with ten-second TikTok videos, you might not feel that enticed by a book, of all things.
It is possible to get immigrant Finnish learners excited about reading and writing, if you really want to. You just need to find something of their level to read.
And if the teacher is into it, some of their enthusiasm will pass on to the pupil. Lukkarila has experienced this first-hand.
She studied to be a Finnish language and literature teacher at slightly under 40. During basic Finnish studies, morphologies and syntaxes felt boring.
– Yrjö Lauranto’s lectures at the University of Tampere changed my attitude. With a lecturer who was so into his subject, I couldn’t help but catch some of his. I’m still thankful to him.
Teacher's work includes a great deal of joy. Such as moments when two second-graders from immigrant families sink into the world of a book so deeply that the teacher finds it best to drop this time’s grammar session.
Or the recent news from Spain, that reading has become popular amongst their youth. Some youths want to carry books around and show that yes, they read. Lukkarila hopes that this trend finds itself in Finland, too.
– Maybe the time will come when kids get bored for fast-food entertainment. There’s a lot of power in literary fiction: It lets you see the world from someone else’s perspective. It teaches you empathy and ways to think.
Understanding others and seeing past prejudices are also the key themes of Skutsi. Having to face the person you really don't want to deal with may sometimes have a surprisingly positive end.
Good themes, even for adults.
– You could go and, let’s say, talk to the new employee or trainee in your break room, even if they seem like someone you might not gel with immediately. It’s worth a try.
Inevitably, people ask: when does a teacher have time to write books. Päivi Lukkarila says that she makes efficient use of summer vacations and school holidays.
– Thankfully, I have received author’s grants from time to time, half a year at the longest. I want to thank Erkki Torvinen, our principal, for supporting my writing: I have been allowed to take writing leave a time or few.
Right now, Lukkarila is working on her first book for adults. It will be based on real people. This summer and autumn, she’s already written 50 pages of raw text.
