Who is .... Mrs. Thornton?

She speaks a lót of languages, she has been at the ISH for more than 15 years and she plays a very important role for our students and staff: it’s Sonja! Our very own Well-being Coach. Everyone knows her well, but it is time to get to know her a little better.

First things first: where are you from and where did you grow up?

I was born in Madrid, Spain. My parents were Finnish, so I am not Spanish by blood, just by birth. I lived in Madrid for 6 years and afterwards we moved to Barcelona. There I lived for 12 years, so I have spent a big part of my life in Spain.

Where did you go after that?

We moved back to Finland. I lived there for 1 year, but I did not enjoy living there at all. It was so dark and cold! I had graduated with the English educational system and those results were published much later than the Finnish results and I lost a year because of that as I could not go to university straight away. Instead, I signed up for different courses, I took French lessons for example.

During that year, I decided I did not want to stay in Finland. I had applied to go to the London School of Economics, and got in, but it was too expensive. So, I signed up for a secretarial school instead. This was one year, where you could spend 3 months in Sweden, 3 in the UK and 3 in Switzerland. And I thought that was a brilliant way to get out of Finland and explore a bit what I wanted. I realised very quickly though that secretarial work was not actually something for me. During that time, I became interested in studying psychology instead.

What inspired you to study psychology? Where did that interest come from?

I would say that interest came from travelling around and talking to different people about what they were doing. And so I decided, after having worked as a secretary for a little while, to apply to the Åbo Akademi University and I was accepted.

Did you enjoy your psychology-degree?

Very much so, from day one! The department of psychology was really small, so we would get a lot of attention, have loads of discussions and also got visited often by lecturers from abroad that opened our mind to what was happening all over.

My Master’s Degree was focused on the influence of alcohol on mood, whether it reinforces or lets inhibitions go as we drink. On top of that I was studying the influence of violent cartoons on children. It was all very interesting!

Did you have a clear path of what you wanted to do when you finished your studies?

Psychology is very broad, and so it is very difficult to decide what you are going to focus on straight after your studies. I started working with people who worked with intellectually handicapped people by coaching them how to work with groups in homes. I did that for a year or so. After that I moved back to Finland with my husband, where I gave birth to my twins shortly after (this was in 1990).

Where did you meet your husband?

At university. We have been together a long time, 31 years in total! He was an exchange student from the US, and I was the President of the International Student Association at university. Our poster was the only one in English, so off he went to see if there was anyone else that was able to speak English in the country. He joined our team and that’s how we met.

How did you end up in the Netherlands of all places?

After having worked in Sweden for a couple of years, we noticed that we were both working a lot and did not have much time to spend with our twins. This was not what we wanted for the family. My husband then got the choice of taking a job in Germany or the Netherlands and we chose the latter. After a year here, we bought the house that we still live in today.

I spent about 10 years at home with the girls. People often ask me how come you did not start working sooner? For a long while it was because we both thought we would be moving again in a couple of years. But it was a lovely time and I definitely do not regret the time that I got to spend with my daughters!

Your daughters studied at ISH as well, right? Or was it you who came here first?

My daughters were in Grade 10 by the time I joined. I think they enjoyed having me around: there was a shoulder to cry on when needed and someone to encourage them or be happy with went it went ok. I first started working in Administration as a substitute. After half a year a job opened up and I became the Student Services Manager, which I did for 14 years.

What did you like most about your job as Student Services Manager?

Definitely the contact with students and teachers. It is a post that is alive. What I mean by that is that a lot happens around you. Some days can be quiet, but mostly there is a lot happening. I enjoyed that part the most!

You became the schools’ Well-being Coach 1.5 years ago, how did that come about?

Through Student Services, I could notice a lot of what was happening with the students as they came in and left in all sorts of states. I started taking more and more time to talk with them and slowly disappeared more often from the Student Services post. I think it slowly became more evident that speaking to students and being available to them whenever they need cannot just be done as a side job.

It sounds like you naturally rolled into your new job as Well-Being Coach..

Yes, you can say that. I was also more often having talks with parents and guardians. I would call them to say that their child is sick and at times I would express my doubt whether they were actually sick and question whether there was perhaps something else going on. It was a good way to build up relationships with the parents, in a very natural kind of way. But of course, that also started to take up more time and so it became another reason why I rolled into my new job.

What do you do as Well-being Coach? What are your responsibilities?

The main one is being available for students that want to pop in and want to have a chat. Some students know me already from my time as Student Services Manager and now the challenge is to get students that do not know me so well to come and talk to me when they feel the need.

Are you seeing that that is happening more and more?

I do. I feel there is a larger degree of acceptance amongst the students and I notice that they know where to find me.

How is your role different than the other Counsellor that works with the students?

I am ‘first aid’: I do not give any kind of promises that I am going to treat someone. But I am a container for what you have to tell me; I am here to listen to whatever you have to say. I am here to guide you on how to get more help and sometimes I can give concrete hints on what might help, or we can do some exercises together. But I am not someone you see once a week, whereas our Counsellor is.

I also give mindfulness lessons in the Primary (Kindergarten, Grades 1 – 3). In Grade 5, I work with the students to prepare them for their Exhibition.

Let’s move away from work a bit. What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I have a dog, called Taika (which means ‘magic’ in Finnish). We used to complete together in something called flyball, which took up every other Sunday. She competed every week for a long time, but she cannot do that anymore. We now still practice something called Hoopers on Saturdays, which is agility training but then without the jumps.

I love yoga and I enjoy to cook! I also really enjoy going to the movies, mostly the art house type as well as (Scandinavian) thrillers! And finally, I very much enjoy reading!

What is the last book that you read?

Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’Farrell

And what was the last movie that you have seen?

Where the Crawdads Sing, a beautiful movie!

If we would come to dinner at your place, what would you serve us?

I would first ask you if there is anything that you do not eat or if you have any preferences. I love cooking, so I will try to adapt it to the wishes of my guest(s). I would have a bit of a hard time if they were vegan though..

What was your favourite subject in school?

I would say English, because I love books. Books have always been my refuge. We had very long summers in Finland and the first thing we would do was to go to the library, get two big bags full of books and I would spend my holiday going through them.

What do you enjoy doing during your holidays now?

I like a mix of nature and city life, if possible. I like going to museums and exhibitions, so the cultural side of visiting a city. But I also love going to beautiful nature parks, going for walks and seeing the seaside or the mountains. If you’d ask me to choose between the sea or the mountains, I would not be able to give you an answer. I just really like nature!

Speaking of beautiful nature: one of your daughters lives in Alaska, right? Have you been there yet?

Not yet, but we are going this summer (2023). I am looking forward to that very much!

Both your daughters graduated from the ISH in 2008, what are they up to now?

Jessica lives in Alaska, where she works for the rights of indigenous communities. She is an artist, and she combines her creative skills and her background as community organiser to encourage the use of art in advocacy work. For example, when there is an election, she makes the posters and encourages people to sign-up and vote and make their voice heard.

An example of Jessica’s work:

Sara lives in the UK, where she works as Principal Research Officer at an organisation that researches and deals with wetlands. Here she is contributing to the conservation of wetlands in the UK and also globally (e.g. Madagascar and Cambodia).

Very impressive! Did they get their drive to do good in the world from you and your husband?

I think it started when they joined my husband to scouting. They used to go there a lot.

They also both have a strong sense of what is right and wrong, and I think that part comes from me. But it is difficult to say where it comes from exactly. It is not something my husband and I have consciously been imprinting on them while raising them, but they are definitely topics that have come up at the dinner table.

If you could take a gap year, where would you go?

On the one hand, I would like to go somewhere where I do not know anybody. For example, New Zealand. We went there on our honeymoon, and I really liked it.

On the other hand, I would love to spend time with people but then it becomes a bit more complicated because I have people all over! I would say somewhere in the US because I do have friends there that I have not seen for a very long time. There are many reasons not to visit the US, but let’s not start talking about that shall we…

I have heard a rumour that you are quite the multilingual speaker. How many languages do you speak?

I grew up speaking Spanish, Swedish and English. Those are my three home languages. Catalan was spoken in some households in Spain when I grew up there, so I did learn to understand that language as well. Besides that, I took French lessons in the past and can still understand what they are saying whenever I am around French speaking people. After having lived in the Netherlands for 25 years it would be a little weird if I would not be able to speak any Dutch as well.

Those are my strongest languages. I can also understand Finnish, but it is a difficult language and if you do not practice it, you lose it easily. I can also speak a little bit of Italian, my best friend was from Italy and we used to practice speaking Italian and Spanish together. Finally, I understand Brazilian Portuguese as my sister-in-law is from Brazil.

Wow. Consider me impressed!

What is something that people are obsessed with, but you just do not get the point of?

Social media. I can understand part of the attraction, I also like to use it to keep in contact with people, or to play games with someone. But I believe social media can be very damaging to your well-being.

Why is that do you think?

This world that people are driven into, the constant comparing yourself with others online and people sharing only those moments of their lives that they want to share, I think it is a very unhealthy way of living.

I really do not see that social media makes you feel any better, quite the opposite actually. If you have an inclination for whatever reason to be self-critical and not liking yourself, then social media is not going to help you. People show off a very unrealistic life online, and the more ‘masks’ you wear, the less true you are to yourself.

Whereas social contact, having good friends, talking about your issues, feeling that you belong to a community, having a purpose and knowing that you are doing something for somebody else: that is what makes you feel better!

That was beautifully put. Finally: do you have any advice for the students at school?

Try to find the good sides of yourself and give yourself encouragement. Also, try to find something positive each day to make the dark times lighter when you need them to be lighter.

But also: talk about your issues. Talk, don’t text!

That is a catchy slogan right there!

Thank you very much for sharing you story, Sonja. More importantly: thank you for everything that you do at the school.

Want to get to know other staff members better? Here are some more articles in the 'Who is ....' series:

- Ms. Medjedovic

- Mr. Claxton

- Ms. Hetebrij