Respecting Student’s Learning Needs
Chapter 16
“At first the lack of sound is alarming.
In this place it is one’s pulse that speaks the loudest.
Next are the the sounds of birds, both near and far, single and overlapping;
sporadic yet effective, even across great distances.”
My friend and I walk down the forest trail and I ask if it’s true there are more than twenty words in the Finnish language that mean, “peace.” “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
Some time later, she presented me with a list of some of these Finnish words and their translation but she clarified that “peace” in Finnish means something more akin to “respect.” Some examples of Finnish “rauha” (peace) are giving respect when someone is deep in thought, respect when someone is working, and respect when someone is studying.
I ask her if this respect also extends to the needs of individual children and what he or she needs to learn to become his or her best.
She replied, “I think so.”
