Teacher Niina Utso
When the Soviet Union broke up and Estonia gained independence, it was a restless time. Worries about the future persuaded Niina Utso to move from Estonia to Finland and retrain as a teacher. Now her own background helps her to understand those of the pupils. Jakomäki is a multicultural, international school.
Jakomäki School has pupils of more than 10 different nationalities. There are also immigrants on the teaching staff. Niina Utso, who is 51 and Ingrian, teaches chemistry, mathematics, biology and geography in the upper grade.
She came to the school 12 years ago. At first she just taught the classes that prepared immigrants, but now, as a full-time teacher, she is in charge of other groups.
Utso arrived in Finland during the recession. She studied, and her husband did anything he could. Utso had studied geography at the University of Tartu and qualified as a subject teacher, but to be eligible to teach in Finland she had to study biology at the University of Helsinki. To do that, she had to study Finish too.
“I have studied and worked in two countries. It has enriched my life in many ways.”
“The studies took a surprisingly long time. We were having money problems but somehow we got by. I have sometimes wondered how we managed, because, with the little money we had, we also helped our Estonian friends and relatives.”
Utso’s mother is from Ingria. During the Continuation War she, like other Ingrian Finns, came to Finland, but was returned to Soviet Estonia after the war. Utso’s Russian father spent the last year of the war in Buchenwald concentration camp. Prisoners of war were regarded as traitors to the fatherland and they were not entitled to live in the cities. So the family lived in a small community in southern Estonia.
“In spite of my parents’ backgrounds we spoke Estonian at home and we lived like Estonians. When I was a child I spoke with my mother in Finnish, but I forgot the language later on.”
Utso began her career in Tallinn. She researched population change and manpower needs at the Ministry of Labour. She changed ministries after she had got married and had two children. The Ministry of Agriculture provided larger flats for their employees.
Utso worked as a teacher in Tallinn for three years. Following Estonian independence she worked as a process designer for a private research company until her move to Finland.
“It was hard in Finland to start with, but we soldiered on. Perhaps immigrants have to work harder than Finns to remain competitive in the job market.”
Text and photograph: Anu Likonen, Jukka Vuolle and Nanni Akkola
The Ministry of Employment and the Economy