Date: Fri 01-Aug-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: DOTTIE

Quick Words:

schools-Internet-Lubin-teacher

Full Text:

From The Net To Newtown: Teacher Meets A Colleague From Finland

(with photo)

BY DOROTHY EVANS

Before Sunday, Sandy Hook kindergarten teacher Debbie Lubin, 25, a 1990

graduate of Newtown High, and high school principal Kari Nuuttila, 47, from

Kauhajoki, Finland, had never met.

Not only did they live in different countries, they were separated by a

generation, two different languages and six thousand miles.

Yet, over the past five months, Debbie and Kari have become good friends while

corresponding about education over the Internet. They wrote their e-mail

letters in English, which Mr Nuuttila speaks fluently.

On Sunday, July 27, they met face to face for the first time in Newtown.

"I was delighted to discover Debbie's questions that were in my field [math

and science education]. She raised concerns that I had been thinking about,"

Kari said Monday morning as he sat in Ms Lubin's Sandy Hook School

kindergarten classroom.

Mr Nuuttila had come to Connecticut after spending a week in North Carolina

attending a science teachers' workshop at North Carolina State University in

Raleigh.

He and 25 other principals from different school systems around the world had

gotten together to discuss creative ways of teaching, especially using

hands-on teaching methods that would keep students interested and stimulate

their curiosity.

"In my country, our science skills need work," Mr Nuuttila said during a brief

interview held before he would fly home to Finland Monday evening.

He was particularly interested in hearing about the techniques Ms Lubin had

found successful with her students, such as daily journals recording changes

the children observed as they watched a caterpillar spin a cocoon, a tadpole

grow into a frog or bean seeds grow into bean plants.

In Finland, Mr Nuuttila said, they didn't have kindergarten because Finnish

children don't start school until the first grade when they reach seven years.

Yet, there was much that he could learn from Ms Lubin's description of her

kindergarten science curriculum.

Technology Made It Happen

Their Internet friendship began last February after Ms Lubin carried out a

graduate school technology class assignment she'd been given at Western

Connecticut State University in Danbury.

"Dr Reed and Donna want the kids to know about technology," Ms Lubin said of

Superintendent of Schools John Reed and Sandy Hook Principal Donna Page,

explaining why she decided to take the graduate course in the first place.

The course was titled, "Developing an Educational Curriculum on the Internet,"

and it was taught by Dr Janet Burke.

One of Ms Lubin's first assignments was to use the Internet to find her

"global counterpart," in this case a person in the field of education from

another country who could share ideas online with Ms Lubin.

She logged on and put the word out that she was looking for an e-mail pen pal

who shared her field of interest.

"It was so exciting. Not exactly like sending out a resume, more like sending

your ideas" into cyberspace, Ms Lubin said.

"We had to advertise," she added, mentioning there was a special screen where

a person could tell about themselves.

"I started off by saying I was a teacher in Connecticut."

Two weeks later, a reply came up on her computer screen from Kari Nuuttila of

Kauhajoki, Finland, and within five months, Mr Nuuttila was standing in the

Sandy Hook School playground on a sunny morning in July, talking with her

under the shade of a honey locust tree.

"Technology can mean so much to education," Ms Lubin said.

It can also bring people together. She plans to visit Finland to see Mr

Nuuttila's school sometime in the near future.