Most memorable learning experience

My most memorable learning experience is not very pleasant one. It happened in my first year in senior high. It was in English class and our English teacher Justiina was asking how to bend some irregular verbs. My verb was to begin. I knew how it was bent: begin, began begun but I didn’t pronounce it correctly. I said it more like it is written. Justiina said that the pronunciation was incorrect and asked a student next to me pronounce it right and after that the whole class pronounced it together. Then it was my turn again to pronounce it. I couldn’t say it correctly and the student next to me and the whole class after that pronounced it again. It was my turn again and I still couldn’t say it correctly. The same pattern was repeated maybe five times before the right pronunciation came out of my mouth. That was humiliating and distressing but it worked. I still remember it clearly after more than ten years and I can also pronounce that verb quite well.

My personal teaching history

I've been working in vocational school since january 2008. I've had a few different positions but all of them are related to cooperation with students. At first I started as a supervisor of on the job learning for hair and beauty students. Students came to serve customers like in real life working situations and to practice their skills. My job was to guide the students, to support their growth to professionals and to show example.

Students came from vocational collage but also from adult education.

Quite soon I was asked to teach hair students in an online course and I said "yes". The course was about personal growth towards professionalism. After that i was offered more opportunities to teach. I taught haircutting, hair coloring, makeup...

Time went and my position evolved. I had the opportunity to run the facility where I worked. I was able to decide how we would develop our work for better results and for higher comparable with real life beauty salons.

A few years later I was asked to participate a planning team who designed a new kind of learning environment for hair and beauty students. The main aim was entrepreneurship and the target group was graduated hairdressers and beauty therapists who wanted to practice their entrepreneur skills.

Now I'm full time hair and beauty teacher since August.

First post is the hardest

I've had difficulties to start my blog. I just don't know what to write as my first post. Then I thought I could just write something no matter if my first post doesn't fit to my later posts. I just have to write something or I'll never get started...

Well now I'm just going to write something.

My journey towards teaching began rather early. I kind of knew at very early age I wanted to be a teacher some day. At first I thought I wanted to teach biology then chemistry and mathematics but in some point I forgot I wanted to be a teacher. The idea of teacherhood came back occasionally for example when I was instructing new colleagues...

I've had great teachers and not so great teachers during my life. Most of them have had more influence to my life than I was expecting during class. I'm also surprised that I've actually needed so much of that information I was taught.

My formal studies

I think the meaning of formal education is going to decrease. The education system responds to changes too slowly and it will collapse or lose its meaning at least. People seek knowledge and skills no degrees. Knowledge and skills can be learned without formal education and you don't need a certificate to prove it.

On the other hand I'm kind of old fashioned when talking formal education. I appreciate formal education, degrees and certificates. That may be so because classical formal education suits my personal  learning style. I will talk about my learning styles later on.

When I was a child I really enjoyed school. I really wanted to go there every morning. I was eager to learn and understand life. I liked biology, geography, mathematic. I didn't like gym and that's because it wasn't educational it was primitive and brainless.

I managed very well in compulsory school the whole nine grades. I went straight to high school and still managed quite good although youth was difficult time. I wasn't that interested in school that much anymore. My plans changed a lot and I didn't know what I wanted to do after school.

After high school I took a short professional course and went to work. That work wasn't enough for me and I wanted to go back to school. I studied hairdressing in vocational college. I was very fond to the beauty industry so I needed to study more. I studied also beauty therapy in that same vocational college. During my beauty studies I got interested in make up and I wanted to focus on that so I went to study make-up.

After make up school I still needed to know and understand more so I went to university of applied science to learn more about cosmetics. After bachelors degree I wanted to have pedagogical qualification so I applied to these studies...

I have also studied a few course in university. Mostly education but also some marketing and computer science.

After these pedagogical studies I want to have my masters degree. My major could be related to education, marketing, social science, computer science or maybe future studies or management. Time will tell. I'm interested in so many things so it's going to be hard to choose.