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

Champion 2.0 and discovered a collection of helpful classroom strategies. But
there was one strategy I found puzzling: “Joy Factor.” Joy in the classroom,
suggests Lemov (2015), is a tool that a teacher can leverage to raise
achievement:
Of course, Joy Factor moments are not ends in themselves. Good Joy
Factor in the classroom has to be “the servant”—that is, its purpose is to
support the day’s objective. It should also be something you can quickly
turn on and off. (p. 442)
While Lemov appears to view joy as a strategy, I’m proposing that we start
to see prioritizing joy (or happiness), inspired by the Finnish approach to
education, as an overarching goal in our classrooms. Happiness can be
understood as “a state of heightened positive emotion” and instead of
sidetracking the teaching and learning in our classrooms, it can improve
productivity and enhance social and emotional intelligence (Seppälä, 2016, p. 8).
I understand that prioritizing happiness in our classrooms may seem like an
abstract idea. Here’s one way of thinking about it: when we’re seeking to sleep
better, we prioritize it by taking different steps before we crawl into bed, such as
exercising and powering off our cell phones (Raghunathan, 2016). Similarly, we
can put joy first in our classrooms by using a collection of strategies.
During my years of working and living in Finland, I have identified a
handful of steps that educators can take to promote joyful teaching and learning.
Raj Raghunathan, professor at the McCombs School at the University of Texas
at Austin and the author of If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? (2016),

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recognizes four ingredients of happiness (if basic needs like food and shelter
have been addressed): belonging, autonomy, mastery, and mind-set (Pinsker,
2016). One ingredient that I’ve added to this list is well-being, which I view as
foundational in order to develop the other components. I’ve organized Teach
Like Finland’s thirty-three simple strategies around these five ingredients of
happiness, applying them to the context of a joyful classroom.

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