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

Get into the wild
Last spring, as I was walking my dog around the pond behind our home in
Finland, I discovered several boys, in fourth grade or so, fishing on their own.
As the days got sunnier, I continued to notice more and more Finnish children
outside without adults—riding their bikes, swimming in nearby ponds, and
walking around with fishing poles. But it wasn’t just the warm weather that
brought kids out to explore nature. I saw something similar during the coldest
season.
In the winter I’m in the habit of running around a larger pond by our home,
which is typically frozen, and one morning I was surprised to find about fifty
children on the ice, cross-country skiing with their teachers. Those students
looked like they were in first or second grade. On another occasion, on that same
frozen pond, I saw teenage students ice fishing with their teacher. On a separate
day, on a hill next to the pond, I found elementary school students sledding
during the school day. (Their teachers approved—they were the ones
supervising.) Just a few hundred yards from that hill I visited a kindergarten,
where teachers told me that they’d sometimes visit a nearby forest where their
students would learn math concepts.

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One of the most beloved part of elementary school in Finland—for many
children, at least—is something called “Camp School,” in which Finland’s fifth
graders or sixth graders, typically, spend several days with their teachers in a
natural setting. For Camp School, my students and I took an hour and a half bus
ride away from Helsinki to spend a few days at an athletic retreat center, where
we completed a variety of fun, physically demanding activities. Last year, Minna
Räihä took her sixth grade students on several Camp School excursions.
In my experience, Finland’s teachers seem eager to bring their kids outside
of their classrooms. In his 2008 book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv
praises this Nordic nation for encouraging environment-based education, in
which Finland “has moved a substantial amount of classroom experience into
natural settings or the surrounding community” (p. 205). Louv is best known for
coining the term nature-deficit disorder to communicate the yawning gap
between kids and nature (Louv, 2011). In light of nature-deficit disorder, Louv
(2008) suggests that America adopt Finland’s commitment to environment-based
education.
Initially, I felt reluctant to include the strategy get into the wild, because I
wondered if it was too Finland-centric. In this Nordic country, it’s relatively easy
to enjoy and explore nature. Pull up a satellite image of Finland, and you will see
a nation that’s almost completely covered with trees and lakes. I questioned
whether educators around the world, especially those teaching in urban school
districts, could realistically practice this strategy. But then I remembered that
connecting regularly with the natural world is vital for everyone. Once, I visited
a forest kindergarten in my Finnish city, where a group of five-and six-year-old
children spent about four hours outside each day (on average) and, afterward, I
emailed Louv to help me understand the benefits of such an arrangement.
“The research strongly suggests that time in nature can help many children
learn to build confidence in themselves; reduce the symptoms of Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, calm children, and help them focus,” Louv said
in an email. “There are some indications that natural play spaces can reduce
bullying. It can also be a buffer to child obesity and overweight, and offers other
psychological and physical health benefits” (Walker, 2016a).
Improved cognitive functioning, Louv added, has been associated with
nature-based learning for years. For a recent example, he pointed to a 6-year
study involving more than 900 public elementary schools in Massachusetts, in
which researchers found a link “between the greenness of the school in the
spring (when most Massachusetts students take the [state-wide] tests) and
school-wide performance on both English and Math tests, even after adjustment
for socioeconomic factors and urban residency” (quoted in Walker, 2016a).
Time spent in nature, Louv told me, is “obviously not a cure-all” for

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Time spent in nature, Louv told me, is “obviously not a cure-all” for
children, however, he suggested that something like a forest kindergarten could
“be an enormous help, especially for kids who are stressed by circumstances
beyond their control” (Walker, 2016a).
As Louv points out in Last Child in the Woods, the idea of environment-
based education is nothing new—it has been around for more than a hundred
years. John Dewey, in his 1899 book The School and Society, supported this
concept: “Experience [outside the school] has its geographical aspect, its artistic
and its literary, its scientific and its historical sides. All studies arise from
aspects of the one earth and the one life lived upon it” (quoted in Louv, 2008, p.
203). More recently, as Louv notes in his book, Howard Gardner—professor of
education at Harvard University and the researcher who developed the theory of
multiple intelligences—added another kind of intelligence to his list: “naturalist
intelligence” (Louv, 2008).
For many teachers, especially ones in urban schools, taking students cross-
country skiing or ice fishing isn’t feasible. So where should educators begin? I
find it helpful to think about several different tiers of getting students into the
wild, from a (relatively) low level to a high level of investment. The first tier is
about bringing nature into the classroom. The possibilities are near endless,
depending on your curriculum. For example, while I taught elementary school
students in America, we sprouted potatoes in different parts of the classroom for
a unit on the scientific method, cared for tadpoles for a unit on the frog life
cycle, and (under microscopes) studied pond water, which we retrieved from a
nearby reservoir.
The second tier involves stepping outside for a lesson, or part of a lesson.
Logistically, it’s easiest when you don’t need to arrange a field trip. Big
excursions (for example, hiking a mountain or visiting an arboretum) are
wonderful, but they often require a significant amount of management on behalf
of the teacher. Using the schoolyard as a habitat is an effective way of getting
students to interact with nature on a regular basis without investing a substantial
amount of time planning. These are a few activities I used to do with my
elementary school children in the Boston area: writing down observations and
wonderings in science journals about natural objects (such as stones, pinecones,
and feathers) found in the school yard, documenting wildlife around the school
premises using digital cameras and uploading those photos to our online field
guide, and collecting natural objects, such as decomposing leaves and large
rocks, to use in our tadpole habitats. I recommend thinking about what useful
natural sites might be within walking distance of your school. In the Boston area,
I taught at one elementary school that was just a half-mile away from a pond,

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and there we gardened, documented wildlife (which we uploaded to our digital
field guide), collected pond samples to study in our classroom, and raced
different rubber ducks in a stream for a math and science lesson.
The third tier involves greening the school grounds by undertaking projects.
“[Schools] might begin with butterfly gardens, bird feeders and baths, tree
planting, or native plant gardens,” writes Louv (2008, p. 219). “Moving on to
larger projects, they can create ponds, nature trails, or restore streams.” Years
ago, I worked at an urban school in Massachusetts where a second grade teacher
led her class to develop and maintain a large school garden. This undertaking
was a major source of joy (and healthy pride) for that friend and her young
students. At another school, I taught with a teacher who set up bird feeders
outside of the classroom windows, where our students could easily observe and
identify birds throughout the school year. The children’s enthusiasm for these
winged creatures was sky-high, and it appeared to motivate them as readers,
writers, and learners.
As teachers, we don’t need to make ambitious efforts to reap the benefits of
environment-based education. We can take baby steps, experiencing the joy of
making connections from our classrooms to the natural world.