Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms pdfdrive com

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To my children,
Misaiel Courage
and Adalia Joy

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Contents
Foreword by Pasi Sahlberg
INTRODUCTION
1
Well-being
Schedule brain breaks
Learn on the move
Recharge after school
Simplify the space
Breathe fresh air
Get into the wild
Keep the peace
2
Belonging
Recruit a welfare team
Know each child
Play with your students
Celebrate their learning
Pursue a class dream
Banish the bullying
Buddy up
3
Autonomy
Start with freedom
Leave margin
Offer choices

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Plan with your students
Make it real
Demand responsibility
4
Mastery
Teach the essentials
Mine the textbook
Leverage the tech
Bring in the music
Coach more
Prove the learning
Discuss the grades
5
Mind-set
Seek flow
Have a thicker skin
Collaborate over coffee
Welcome the experts
Vacate on vacation
Don’t forget joy
REFERENCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX

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Foreword
—Pasi Sahlberg
IN THE YEAR 2000, A BOOK LIKE THIS COULD NOT have been written.
Back then the global education landscape looked very different. England had just
seen a decade full of fundamental school reforms that highlighted higher
attainment targets and frequent student assessments, shaking up the lives of all
students and teachers. Sweden was in the midst of implementing one of the most
radical school reforms, with vouchers that created new types of free schools for
parents who were keen to choose alternative education for their children. In
South East Asia, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore were tuning up
their education systems for a faster pace and higher learning outcomes,
especially in reading, mathematics, and science (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2010).
The United States was running experiments in many of its states that focused on
tightening accountability for teachers and schools in search of gains in student
achievement and graduation rates. That time was the beginning of an era of
increasing effort for higher achievement. If this book had ever been written in
2000 it would have, just like many similar books at that time, advocated for new
models of teacher effectiveness, strategies to turn around failing schools, or
imperatives to fix entire education systems.
If you’d asked at an international education gathering where the participants
would travel to look for inspiration and good ideas for their own work in
educational development or school improvement, most would have probably
chosen the countries mentioned above. You would have also heard some of them
mention what was happening in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, or the
Netherlands. Some of these education systems had implemented new, interesting
models of monitoring educational progress, informing parents about how well
schools were doing, and creating new forms of educational leadership. Study
tour destinations and joint research projects that investigated innovation and
change regularly included many of these same countries. There was one country
that only a very few would have pointed out as having anything interesting to
offer when it came to education: Finland.

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offer when it came to education: Finland.
Everything changed overnight in December 2001. When the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) made public the result of its
first international study on what 15-year-olds can do with reading, mathematical,
and scientific skills they have acquired in and out of schools, known as PISA
(Programme for International Student Assessment), all eyes turned to the tiny
Nordic country (OECD, 2001). Against all odds, Finland, with a population of
barely 5.5 million people, had scored above all other 31 OECD countries in this
test that was supposed to indicate how well young people would succeed in
dynamic knowledge economies in adulthood. Furthermore, it appeared that in
Finland there was little variation in student achievement between schools, and
that children’s learning in school was influenced less by family background than
in other countries. On top of all this, Finns seemed to have accomplished these
admirable results with only modest spending in their schools. No wonder the
world of education was confused.
The international education community and global media outlets were not
the only ones puzzled by Finland’s unexpected center court position. There was
also quite a bit of turbulence among education authorities, academics, and
pundits in Finland itself. Nobody seemed to have a good enough explanation for
the superior educational performance of Finnish schools by international
standards. All the way until December 2001, Finland’s 9-year comprehensive
school (grade one to grade nine) that was launched in the 1970s received
increasingly fierce criticism from various fronts in Finnish society. High schools
and universities were accusing this new school for slowly but surely declining
the level of knowledge and skills that students were expected to possess at the
entry to further studies. Some employers joined the choir, adding that the
younger generation lacked a good work ethic and were often taught to seek
comfort and avoid hard work. Then there were the parents who thought that
children who were more able and talented didn’t have enough room in the
comprehensive school to bloom into their full potentials. Solutions, when
offered, included imitating what the rest of the world was doing. The menu of
suggested reforms included creating higher standards, having more detailed
information about students’ achievement, giving parents more choice regarding
where to send their children to school, and creating specialized schools for gifted
students. Much of this resistance to Finland’s comprehensive school was muted
after December 2001. It is fair to bet that without PISA, this book would
probably never been written.
How have the Finns responded to thousands of questions and inquires about
the success of their schools? Many Finns believe that there are five critical
elements that allow Finnish students to fare better than most of their peers in

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elements that allow Finnish students to fare better than most of their peers in
other countries. Four of them are directly associated with schools and their
mandates, one is about what happens when children are not in school. You
should, however, keep in mind that explaining why something happens in
complex social systems always includes a reasonable amount of speculation, and
can never be 100 percent certain.
First, we argue that the comprehensive school that children start when they
turn seven provides balanced, holistic, and child-focused education and
development to all children, and lays a foundation for good, equitable learning.
The curriculum in Finnish schools addresses all subjects evenly and thereby
provides all children with opportunities to cultivate multiple aspects of their
personalities and talents. The absence of private schools and the between-school
competition that often comes with them means that all schools must be good
schools—regardless of where they are and who they serve. The majority of
Finnish pupils study in socially mixed classes without being tracked or
segregated by their ability or socio-economic status. During the past four
decades now, this spirit of inclusiveness has shaped the mind-sets of teachers
and parents alike to believe that anyone can learn most of the expected things in
school as long as there is appropriate and sufficient support. As a result, focus on
children’s well-being, health, and happiness in school has become one of the key
goals of schooling across the country.
Second, we realized early on that successfully teaching heterogeneous
classes would require better-trained teachers than what we had had until the
1970s. As a result, teacher education was shifted from colleges to research
universities. As part of the comprehensive higher education reform in the 1980s,
teachers also had to graduate from research-based masters degree programs just
like any other professional in Finland. Newly-graduated teachers had therefore
studied much more child psychology, pedagogy, special education, subject
didactics, and curriculum than their more-seasoned colleagues, which equipped
them with broader professional responsibilities in their schools. In the 1990s
teachers were expected to collectively design their school curricula, choose the
most effective ways to teach, assess how well their students had learned, and
self-direct their own professional development and growth as teachers.
Continuous strengthening of the teaching profession in Finland has built strong
and notable trust in teachers and schools that, in turn, has further enhanced the
status of teachers and attractiveness of becoming a teacher among young Finns.
Third, we decided to establish permanent mechanisms to secure and enhance
children’s well-being and health in all schools. The main goal was to ensure that
lack of basic health and care at home would not jeopardize pupils’ chances to

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succeed. The backbone of this support system was a new special education
structure that assumed that problems related to education should be identified
and addressed as early as possible. Each school is given sufficient resources and
personnel to accomplish this. Every school in Finland has to establish a Student
Welfare Team that consists of experts, teachers, and leadership who discuss
concerning issues and decide how to tackle them in the best possible ways.
Needless to say, having all these special education services up and running in all
schools requires that funding be designed in such a way that schools with more
special educational needs also are allocated more funds. This has created an
essential basis for strong, system-wide educational equity in Finland.
Fourth, we think that mid-level educational leadership, i.e. schools and local
districts, should be in the hands of experienced and qualified educators. Indeed,
we expect that the school principal be qualified to teach in the school that she
leads. School leaders must also be suitable and fit to lead people and learning
organizations. Leadership hierarchy in Finnish schools is relatively flat; most
principals also teach students alongside their leadership tasks. This guarantees
that leaders in schools also have direct links to classroom experience. We have
noted that teachers are often more likely to accept feedback and talk about their
concerns when they know that their bosses also teach and may face similar
questions in their classrooms. I have argued (Sahlberg, 2015) that in Finnish
schools, leaders are teachers and teachers are (pedagogical) leaders.
Fifth, we know that students’ out-of-school situations explain a significant