The tail of the fatal storm felt in UP too

I just have to share these unprecedented weather experiences here at Upper Peninsula. After an extreme long winter the spring and early summer have finally arrived, but abnormalities with weather didn’t end at the same time.

A lake or an ocean?

Last Sunday, day before yesterday, here were even heat temperatures in the morning and noon. Cloudy, sultry noon felt almost tropical and it turned to high wind by degrees. Afternoon we drove to McLain State Park to see, how Lake Superior was behaving on that day. Well, the waves on the lake were as huge as on ocean. T-shirt and shorts were absolutely too tenuous clothing for the wind that felt like in October. And on top of it all, the breath steamed like in freeze weather.

Sunny view from the dorm yard two days ago

And same location today, the clouds are down!

Last night we had quite a strong thunder storm here and I heard that it would have been the tail of huge storm, which caused shocking destructions in Oklahoma (1200 miles from Hancock) yesterday as a tornado. Before the storm I had a chance to visit in some small waterfront villages west from South Range with Joe Kirkish. Mr. Kirkish is a well known local gentleman, a former teacher in Michigan Tech and a culture person, who keeps himself up to date and is a very eager photographer too.

Joe had heard from some climate experts that this kind of unusual weather will become more common in UP in following decades. There will be more and more extreme weather: extreme snow, extreme rain, extreme wind and extreme heats – lines of four seasons are going to dim while by while. “Before I could tell to my visitors, what kind of weather it would be in a specific month when they were planning to visit here. No it’s almost impossible to tell forecast for the forthcoming week. Actually, you even cannot tell at the morning, how the evening will be”

Creepy hinterland road near Lake Superior last night, just before the storm.

Together with scientific explanations related to climate change, there are some other approaches too. Today one older man in Paavo Nurmi Center’s sauna asked me, if I read Bible. Reportedly it is said there that this phenomenon, when weather is getting mad is caused by people, who are getting madder too. So, all these extreme natural phenomena and disasters are some kind of punishment from upstairs.

All the same, climate is changing and we all have some opinions and explanations for that. That’s culture.

Good time goes fast

Our active period in SRES ended last Thursday. Even though we realized it in advance that the four weeks would go fast, we were amazed how suddenly the final week and the final lesson came.

Our great team

We had two hour long lesson per day with 3^rd graders and even though it sounds a short time, I took lot of preparation work and days were drawn out often to midnight. One of the main targets of program was to create learning situation and environment, where the pupils would be in central and active role by creating and exploring information by themselves – and learning by that way. Someone could think that if you give more responsibility and tasks for students, you can lighten your own work load by doing that. Yes, in some cases that might work that way, but when operating with class with 30 pupils, the preparation and schedule planning takes notable part of your work time – especially, when you have to compress your daily class room activity effectively in two hours.


When planning, the important questions are for example: how to organize the schedule that every pupil can be active, how to adjust the level of assignments right (not too easy, but not too challenging either), and maybe the first and foremost: how to create effective learning environment.

The final floor ball game. It shouldn't be serious, right? "Why didn't you pass?!"

Operating with fellow worker(s) is a priceless advantage in best possible case. And that case came true this year. I, as a media education student and a journalist, have some know-how about creating media contents and how to use them supporting teaching and learning and Matleena, as a teacher student, has a lot of knowledge and experience about teaching methods and working with young pupils. Our team play, from planning to class room, went perfectly and we gave each other great support and our own special areas were balancing each other. And of course, Steve as a class teacher gave us invaluable tools and safe backup when working with large class.

Sanna and Risto having some spelling practice with shaving foam! One example of Mr. Aho's innovative teaching methods.

I will tell and analyze more details about our class room activity later. No it’s time to continue my other duties related to the project and try to fit everything undone tasks in Upper Peninsula to these rest three weeks I have left here. Semester in Finlandia University is over and the dorm is almost empty. That means lot of time and space to think and create!  

E-Magazine project with SRES 3^rd grade and Sodankylä's 6^th grade will continue awhile and there will be still some updates. Please follow!

And for the final, the compulsory weather update: finally snow has melted almost totally from Hancock area and last two days have been almost hot causing some burning to some parts of skin. The forecast still promises some possibility of snow showers for the next weekend, so you shouldn’t celebrate yet. This lake-effect has been something unprecedented for Finnish!

A view from the school yard only three weeks ago. The snow storm interrupted the school day and busses are ready to carry kids back to home.

The practical part of training started

So finally this week we started our field period of Hei Suomi! –program spring 2013. The 3^rd graders of South Range Elementary School have been so far, as we understand, very interested and excited about our co-operation. We are already so delighted about the great atmosphere which we are surrounded by in Steve Aho’s 3^rd grade’s class room.

At the beginning we introduced ourselves with Matleena and we also told some basic information about Finland and our backgrounds. Students got their Finnish first names and it seemed that that kind of ice-breaker was great simple idea, thanks to teacher Steve and last year’s students Sanna-Mari and Eeva.

During the first week we dealt with Finnish immigration history of Copper Country in nutshell and the students had as their first homework to ask, what kind of different Finnish backgrounds they have in their home. After that we had interesting discussion about the topic and we recognized that the kids were truly interested about that topic.

Konsta and Kyösti are exploring the local newspaper.

To explain the distances and locations, Google Maps has been an invaluable tool!

We have already taken our first steps as media producers too. Students have already learned the basics of using SLR camera. We have also explored our E-Magazine ground so far and started to do short introductions about kids there. Before introducing digital format of magazine, we riffled together some local newspapers and explored what kind of sections and contents they are including.

Jaakko and Antero, young journalists!

 Let’s hope that the current snow storm wouldn’t cancel any lessons tomorrow, because we have lot things to do before early May - and it already feels, that there’s not too much time left anymore!