Our summer trainees are working on real guidance cases

TAOK's trainees from the Czech University of Life Sciences have been busy working with, among other things, Floworks projects. During the summer, they are putting their vocational guidance studies to the test holding professional interview sessions to students working on various projects at Floworks. 

Here are Alena's and Jana's experiences from working with TAOK and Floworks so far:

Photo: Floworks

Hi!

Jana and Alena again.

In the beginning of our stay, we got an opportunity to attend the project at Floworks and do some practical training there. When the project was introduced to us, we were in awe. Practical training, during summer, people from different countries and universities, working together and creating real things for real clients. The idea sounded awesome. And we wanted to know everything about that from the students involved in the projects.

The Flowork coaches, Jussi and Eija, helped us create open questions to manage the semi-structured debate with the student groups working on the projects. Their tips and recommendations were very helpful and they explained why it is important to ask questions that do not force the students to answer in a certain way. In practice, of course, that’s a different story. It will probably take a lot of practice until we learn to ask the right questions. But the discussions with the groups are great practice. 

"We have a safe space to make mistakes and learn from them which is amazing."

But this realization came later. Before we started, the fact that we should “facilitate” some groups without any qualification to do so was paralyzing. We had only theory from our studies at the Czech University of Life Sciences. During our debates, we are still learning to ask the right questions and be aware that there are no wrong answers, to improvise, to catch the important point, to maintain the discussion, to schedule the meetings and talk without barriers and shyness.

We will definitely use these soft skills later on in our day to day life and we are grateful for this opportunity to leave our comfort zone every now and then.

Cheers!

Yours,

Czech girls

Greetings from TAOK trainees!

Hello TAMK!

We are Alena and Jana – two students from the Czech Republic. We are trainees at TAMK. In our country, we study at the Czech University of Life Sciences, our bachelor programme is called Guidance in Vocational Education.

We arrived in Tampere on 31th May, so we have now been here for more than a week. During our first week, we managed to get lost a few times, get confused by your buses, meet loads of new people but most importantly – we totally fell in love with your city!

We definitely agree with the nickname that locals gave to Tampere – Manchester – but not because of the brick buildings, but we think that it is due to the constantly changing weather.

A lot of things surprised us. For example, the gambling situation here. The gambling machines are everywhere. And we are not sure what to think of it…. you must get paid a lot. ;)

The fact that Finns seem to drink milk and coffee with every meal was also surprising. And maybe, if the buses could start to announce the next stop, it would be less confusing and we would not have to be so nervous that we would forgotten to press the button and miss our stop. Thanks!

Maybe the last weird thing that is worth mentioning - everybody here is very welcoming and helpful. (Forget the stereotype that Finns are “antisocial”. You are not! ;) ) And almost everybody can speak English. Even if we find somebody that can’t, there is always some other person prepared to happily help us.

Thank you for having us!

Alenka and Janička