__________LAPPEENRANTA (FINLAND)__________

   Lauritsala School is situated in Lappeenranta, a smallish town in the southeast of Finland with 70 000 inhabitants. The town is located close to the Russian border, which has had a significant effect on our cultural values as well as on our economy, especially due to Russian shopping tourism in the past decades. Our school consists of preschool grade along with grades 1-9. Our youngest preschool students are six and sixteen-year-old 9th graders the oldest. Altogether we have about 700 students and 80 teachers as well as 20 other staff members. The secondary level of the school is planning to participate in the cooperation. On average, there are more students with special needs in Lappeenranta than in other parts of Finland. We also have students with different ethnic backgrounds, most typically Russian, and students from socially disadvantageous background who we try to ensure equal opportunities.

   Schools in Lappeenranta, Lauritsalan koulu as well, participates actively in many school developing programmes, and among them is the program called ‘Finnish Schools on the Move’ with the aim of increasing physical activity and decreasing sedentary time among school-aged children. With the finances granted from the programme we have been able to employ sports instructors who have created many different physical activities for both students and staff. Based on those good experiences, the town has also established contacts between schools and the Saimaa University of Applied Sciences, especially with their social and health care units. So at the moment we also have access to services offered by physiotherapist students in our school.

   Our learning environments inside the school building has been adapted to serve the aims of our new national curriculum, where teamwork and independent learning are promoted, and at the same time those learning styles are combined with the needs of being active during your school work as you can choose whether you sit, stand or even lie while learning, or whether you stay in the designated classroom or even outdoors to certain areas to do your schoolwork. So, summing this all up, we feel that we have some ideas and practises to offer to this partnership.

   As to the motivation to join the project, we see that even if we have paid a lot attention to physical activity in our school, most students still spend too much time hunched over their laptops (provided by school for everyone) during classes, and during breaks over their mobiles. Our students have to use computers for schoolwork as some books exist only in digital version.

   The most active members of our school’s team consist of language teachers, a sports teacher, a Finnish teacher, a history teacher, a science teacher, an arts teacher and a school counsellor. In a group as big as ours there will always be someone to assume the role of the school coordinator in case she should leave the school.