Family teaching dynasty runs through Gustav Adolf Gymnasium

ERR reports that chemistry teacher Katrin Soika and several members of her family work at Gustav Adolf Gymnasium, a school in Estonia, continuing a teaching tradition that she says is “in their genes.”

Soika’s father, Jüri Kaljurand, teaches physics and technology; her husband, Erki Soika, teaches physics; her sister, Helen Kaljurand, teaches physics and chemistry; and her son, Kristo Markus Soika, is a physics teacher. They all work at Gustav Adolf Gymnasium.

Soika said her father played in the schoolyard as a primary school pupil. She herself accompanied her parents and grandparents to school from a very young age.

“GAG is like a second home to me,” Soika said. “When I was little, I went to school with my mother and father. Everything feels so familiar to me that it does not even feel like I am at work.”

Anne Kaljurand, head of the school’s foreign languages department, said she had connected best with teachers who maintained good relationships with students while also being demanding and having a strong sense of humour.

Kaljurand recalled her favourite teacher, mathematics teacher Aili Ainome. Once, when the heel of Ainome’s shoe broke during a lesson, she took the shoe off, placed it on the teacher’s desk and began banging it against the desk while continuing with the lesson.

“I feel that I was born to be a teacher,” Kaljurand said. “My mother and father were teachers, and my grandparents were also connected with the school. They were both school principals and teachers. It was not really my choice, because it is simply inside me. I played school already in kindergarten.”

Soika said her parents and grandparents had also influenced her career. She spent time at school with her grandmother, grandfather and mother, while conversations about teaching were a constant part of family life.

Soika has worked as a teacher for more than 20 years. She said that when she began, everything felt exciting, but she now thinks more about how she influences young people.

Kaljurand said children had remained essentially the same over the years, but their ability to concentrate had changed. Teachers now had to explain more and repeatedly draw students’ attention to the lesson.

“Friendliness and contact help. The relationship in the classroom is very important,” Kaljurand said. “A supportive environment is the most important thing.”

Kaljurand said she was surprised that young teachers were reluctant to become class teachers and take on that responsibility. She said she enjoyed having her own class and was currently leading the school’s 13th upper-secondary class.

She also said teachers used to meet more often in the staff room. Today, the pace of work is so fast that there is rarely time to sit and talk there.

Soika said she had tried not to pressure her children into becoming teachers, but all of them had accompanied her to school when they were young. She recalled having a box of Lego bricks under her desk.

“That is probably how teachers grow up too, by accompanying their parents to school when they are little,” Kaljurand said.