You simply have to experience it yourself to know the FIS way!

By Fatema Agarkar, Advisor & Mentor & Board Member to FIS, Founder ACE

Our greatest strength as a team of experienced facilitators at Finland International School (FIS), Race Course is access to years of research originating from Finland as common core standards of learning, creating age appropriate pathways of discovery for every child with their unique abilities and skills, and in a manner that brings alive the relevance of the curriculum planned, and an understanding of its application in day to day experiences. 

As an educator with over two decades of experience setting up national and international schools across the country, my excitement about the Finnish pedagogy is simply because the program of learning is about nurturing children to become allrounders, honing skills that give them ownership and a sense of responsibility, and the above all, the happiness quotient. It’s about recognising that children have needs, goals, aspirations and interests, and our role as educators is to give them access to knowledge but also empower them to further their own interests. 

Usually a tough proposition when you think about the rigours and 'demands' of the academic boards but it happens seamlessly at FIS for each year, it planned as a sum of many holistic weeks that includes Performing Arts, Creative Arts including Arts/Carts & textiles, Woodworks and Home Economics, Robotics and a wide array of sports part from their mindfulness moments and subject classes, infinite discussions while moving from one room to the other not to mention Cafeteria time and Advisory discussions daily!

It’s about the transversal competencies that are to the Finnish ethos, Personalised Learning Plans (PLPs) designed so that students deep dive into their passion projects and chart a path to achieve this, and also about individual and group work, multi ability and age classrooms that hone in important life skills of communication, critical thinking, team work, patience, decision making and time-management. 

For me, FIS is about these conversations we have with our children about the rationale, discipline, essential agreements, the negotiations and challenges and exposing them to a variety of responses for every possible question, and allow them to work out the right decision. It is about their learning, their thought process and the unique pace they set themselves. It's about collaboration and being open-minded and respectful to different perspectives and allowing children without judgement to make some mistakes to recognise what they could have done instead! Progressive schools will always lay a lot of emphasis on the attitude to learning and the process rather than the outcome, and for us at FIS, the process leads to those successful and meaningful outcomes. 

So to answer a question that most parents ask me about the culture at FIS, my answer is a summation of what I have mentioned - FIS has so many ideas, so much originality, so much thought that goes behind every lesson plan or event we celebrate or every conversation we have for the team is after creating a schooling journey that speaks of understanding the relevance of concepts introduced, about experiencing different activities and 'owning' the process and in doing that attan all that defines 21st century learning - critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication. 

You simply have to experience the FIS way, to know what this really means!