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

Pursue a class dream
Camp School is a huge celebration of learning in Finland because it’s something
that comes at the end of the children’s elementary school career. Students
anticipate Camp School for years, and many classrooms start raising money
months in advance. There are two major reasons that I appreciate this Finnish
practice.
First of all, I admire how much responsibility is expected from students to
raise money for this sleepaway excursion. The amount needed for everyone to
attend Camp School is significant, often totaling thousands of euros, so
fundraising should start well before the trip through different student-led
initiatives, such as hosting bake sales and school dances.
Second, pursuing a class dream, by raising a large sum of money and
attending Camp School together, promotes a strong sense of classroom unity.
My Finnish colleague, who also taught a sixth grade classroom the same year I
did, had Camp School early in the fall, and when she and her students returned
to school, I remember noticing a positive change in their rapport.
In the spring of that school year, I saw a similar phenomenon with my group
of sixth graders. After returning from Camp School, my students looked more
like a team than a group of twenty-four individuals. The trip proved to be a
powerful bonding experience. My only regret was that it didn’t happen earlier in
my two-year journey with my class.
But my experience in Finland got me thinking about how important a major
social-bonding experience like Camp School is for promoting connectedness in
the classroom. And because belonging is a crucial ingredient of happiness (and
any joyful classroom), I recommend that teachers pursue similar class dreams.

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Finnish-style Camp School is great, but it requires a significant investment of
time and money, so it may not be a good fit for you and your students. But,
thankfully, there are many other class dreams to be realized. What if the dream
was to produce a music album, with songs written and played by the students?
Or hiking up a mountain? Or creating a learning app? The possibilities are
endless.
So how could a class go about pursuing a class dream? First, the teacher and
students need to make a decision together. As teachers, many of us would be
tempted to predetermine the dream for our class. During my first year of
teaching in Finland, I made the mistake of deciding on a class dream, without
consulting my students. Before the school year began, actually, I had already
committed to a particular vision. I imagined an interdisciplinary project I found
exciting, service oriented, and motivating for my students. I decided that we
would raise money for a good cause by financially supporting young Finnish
Paralympians while raising consciousness about the (relative) lack of funding
they receive as handicapped athletes. I envisioned that my class would conduct
several interviews with these athletes, write about their experiences on their
student blogs, and possibly start a national conversation in Finland! Even before
meeting my Helsinki students, I arranged classroom visits from Finnish
Paralympians, and I felt confident that my fifth graders, whom I didn’t know
personally, would share my enthusiasm.
In hindsight, this class dream seemed destined to fail, because if it was going
to be our dream, I needed to make the decision with my students.
During those first weeks of school, my Helsinki fifth graders seemed
inspired by particular aspects of this project, especially the classroom visits with
Paralympians, but they didn’t appear to catch my vision. For example, I thought
it would be meaningful to raise a lot of money for these handicapped athletes,
but some of my students voiced understandable concerns. They wondered how
they could achieve this additional fundraising goal, because they planned to raise
a lot of money for Camp School.
As the early weeks of school passed by, it became increasingly clear to me
this class dream wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t a shared vision, and it wasn’t
realistic. And I felt quite discouraged. I decided that it would be best to scrap the
project and simply move on. Although this early failure in Finland wasn’t
pleasant, it taught me a lot about the value of including students in the planning
process and the importance of deciding on a reasonable dream. Thankfully, I felt
like my initial mistake of choosing a class dream was redeemed as my students
and I pursued and enjoyed Camp School as a shared aspiration.
Once you’ve decided on a realistic dream with your students, I think it’s

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important to start by discussing roles. For Camp School, my students were
primarily responsible for fundraising while I supported them by supervising their
progress. I’d allow them to meet in our classroom during fifteen-minute breaks
to plan, and during their fundraisers (bake sales and school dances) I’d make
myself available to them. However, I wouldn’t do the actual work of
fundraising, because that was viewed as the work of the children. This
philosophy, I’ve found, is something that other teachers, parents, and students in
Finland appear to share.
Behind the scenes, I did what would have been challenging for my young
students, for example, working with a parent liaison to pay for our class trip.
This parent opened a Camp School bank account where the money for the trip
would be deposited. After fundraisers, my students would count the money—in
math class, typically—and then I’d lock up the money until the parent
representative was ready to pick up the cash. Later, the parent would pay the
expenses of the trip, through the class bank account. Throughout the process, I
worked together with the parent liaison to communicate with other parents in the
class. One of my jobs was to make reservations for the trip. We needed food,
lodging, and a bus. And, after hearing about my colleague’s positive experience
at Camp School, I started to plan that we would have our trip at the same
location. I assumed that my students would be happy with the idea of attending
the same Camp School as the classroom next door. I was mistaken.
Many wanted to stay at a different venue, even after hearing that I had
already made a reservation at another Camp School site. That was a little
upsetting, but I felt like I knew what to do: we’d vote on those two options, and
whichever option fetched the most votes would be our choice. The
overwhelming majority of my sixth graders voted to attend the other Camp
School site, the one I hadn’t reserved. So I canceled the first reservation, and
made a new reservation based on my students’ selection. Ultimately, this change
brought joy to my students, and that brought me joy, even if it required a little
extra work. We also voted on which activities we’d participate in as a class,
before leaving for our sports-themed Camp School.
When negotiating a class dream, teachers and students will probably need to
make compromises, but that democratic process brings a classroom closer
together. At Camp School, we had the pleasure of doing so many fun activities
together in a just a few days, like Ultimate Frisbee, flag football, archery,
swimming, and a mini Olympics.
One evening we reserved a sauna by a little pond, where the water was frigid
(anyone who dove into it would scream, including me). Another night we
reserved a campsite by a lake, where we roasted marshmallows and ate pancakes
with strawberry jam as the sun was setting. That night I tried teaching my

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with strawberry jam as the sun was setting. That night I tried teaching my
students how to skip stones, but when I demonstrated, I slid into the lake,
completely drenching one of my sneakers. We all laughed about this for a long
time.
After the trip, we had a reflection session in our classroom, and I was
impressed with how many joyful, memorable experiences we had shared
together in such a short span of time. Camp School felt like the most perfect way
to end our two years together. I was left feeling, too, that something like Camp
School would have been a perfect way to begin our journey as a class.
One downside of our Camp School trip was the absence of a few members of
our class. For personal reasons, several students decided to stay back, where they
joined my colleague’s classroom for a handful of days. I respected their choice
—at the same time, I wished they could have shared those memories with us.
When we returned, I suspected they might have felt a little left out as many
students fondly recalled Camp School.
For teachers who want to pursue a class dream with their students, I think it’s
important to keep this point in mind: a powerful group experience like Camp
School is meaningful only to those who participate. Students who sit out won’t
achieve the same sense of belonging as the other children. So it’s wise, in my
opinion, to cast a vision with your students that promotes the involvement of