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

CHAPTER
5
Mind-set
DESPITE THE TYPICAL CHALLENGES OF TEACHING in the United
States, where school hours are relatively long, state standards are usually
prescriptive, and standardized testing (and other demands) add considerable
stress, I’ve met many American teachers who are brimming with passion for
their work. Instead of seeing their professions just as jobs, they regard them as
vocations.
Admittedly, one of the things I miss most about teaching in the United States
is a vast community of purpose-driven teachers who are passionate about their
craft. In my experience, it’s common to find American educators who are so
devoted to their professional growth that, every year, they spend a substantial
amount of their own money and their free time on professional learning. This
reality contrasts somewhat with what I’ve seen in Finland.
As I’ve visited different schools in Finland, I’ve seen many competent, hard-
working teachers, who seem astute as professional problem solvers. One of the
things I haven’t observed, however, is a large number of Finnish educators who
take intentional, voluntary steps to improve significantly as practitioners,
whether it be through reading professional literature of their choice, attending
summer institutes, or implementing new pedagogies in their classrooms. In
Finland, I think I may have stumbled upon a cultural difference, which doesn’t
just concern the teaching profession. Over the years, I’ve spoken with a number
of Finns, in different professional fields, who seem to embrace the motto “work
to live” rather than “live to work.” These individuals appear content with their
jobs, but during their free time, they seem to prefer to pursue their own hobbies
rather than making sizeable investments in their professional growth.
While I’ve seen many devoted American teachers who work with a strong

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While I’ve seen many devoted American teachers who work with a strong
sense of purpose, I do wonder about their approach for carrying out their calling.
So far in this book, we’ve explored four different ingredients of happiness: well-
being, belonging, autonomy, and mastery. But the fifth ingredient, mind-set, is
perhaps the most crucial in terms of fostering a joyful classroom.
There are two predominant types of worldviews that people bring to life,
according to happiness researcher Raj Raghunathan. “One extreme is a kind of
scarcity-minded approach, that my win is going to come at somebody else’s loss,
which makes you engage in social comparisons,” he said in a 2016 interview
with The Atlantic’s Joe Pinsker. “And the other view is what I would call a more
abundance-oriented approach, that there’s room for everybody to grow.”
The researcher points to children as being models of people who adopt the
abundance-oriented approach because “extrinsic yardsticks” fail to sidetrack
them (Pinsker, 2016). Kids pursue whatever offers them a significant amount of
joy, Raghunathan said in the interview.
In Finland, I’ve met many teachers who seem to adopt this abundance-
oriented approach. They seem unfazed by how they stack up to other teachers,
and that attitude infuses their work with a sense of joy. One of the clearest signs
of this mind-set in action is the significant amount of collaboration I’ve seen in
Finnish schools. Even with the fifteen-minute breaks and the shorter school
days, I doubt I would have seen Finnish educators collaborating very much if
they viewed one another as competitors.
In the United States, the scarcity-minded approach might be a common one
among educators. For example, I’ve lost count for how many times I’ve heard
the term master teacher used to describe an American educator. Often I’ve
wondered if the use of this title is less about describing a teacher’s skillfulness
and more about declaring a person’s superiority. Surely there are “master
teachers” in Finland, but I haven’t heard anyone elevating them as such.
While Twitter may not be the best barometer, I’m fascinated by how many
times I’ve seen American educators craft their short bios so that the focus, it
seems, is on their accolades rather than their passions. Furthermore,
“microcredentials” appear to be growing in popularity among American
teachers, in which individuals receive digital badges that can be displayed on
social media accounts for demonstrating mastery over particular aspects of
teaching. While this kind of microcredentialing seems like a nice gesture of
recognizing teachers for their strengths, I fear that it could be another form of
professional posturing.
These are small, subtle pieces of evidence, but they suggest to me that many
teachers in the United States bring a scarcity-minded approach to their work. If
this is truly the case, Raghunathan suggests that this is a major problem: “The

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this is truly the case, Raghunathan suggests that this is a major problem: “The
recipe for leading a life of happiness and fulfillment ultimately boils down to
weaning oneself away from scarcity orientation, and toward abundance
orientation” (2016, p. 242).
To increase the joy in our classrooms, we teachers need to cultivate an
abundance-oriented approach. That doesn’t mean tossing aside our strong sense
of purpose—it means shifting our viewpoint away from competition, in which
we no longer seek to be better than others, and instead focusing on being the best
that we can be, regardless of how fellow educators are progressing.
This chapter is composed of six strategies for fostering an abundance-
oriented worldview in our teaching, all of which are inspired by how I’ve
observed Finnish educators approaching their work: seek flow, have a thicker
skin, collaborate over coffee, welcome the experts, vacate on vacation, and don’t
forget joy.