Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms pdfdrive com
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8 Teach Like Finland 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms ( PDFDrive )
Vacate on vacation
When I accepted the job of teaching fifth graders in Helsinki, I was ecstatic. But I was also tentative. I had a million questions about how to teach well in Finland. My Finnish principal must have guessed that I’d be brimming over with queries, because she told me that she’d be away on something called a summer holiday until late July. The principal’s unavailability surprised me slightly, because the principals I’d known in America seemed to work throughout the entire summer. The Finnish principal graciously suggested that I contact a Finnish colleague with my questions. So I e-mailed this fellow teacher and asked to speak with her the following week on the phone, and then another curious thing happened: I didn’t hear from this colleague until July, and when she e-mailed me, she politely suggested that we chat after the holiday, saying something about her summer cottage. A pattern was emerging. It seemed that my Helsinki coworkers were literally vacating during the summer. Initially I was skeptical of this approach. The American educators I had grown to respect never seemed to stop working just because school was out for the summer. I used to do the same thing. In the United States, I’d often spend a large portion of the summer attending teaching seminars, reading professional literature, and conducting home visits where I’d meet with parents and students. I loved the summer holiday, because I had more free time to do work. However, in Finland, where teachers are often depicted in the international media as top- notch, I found scores of educators who disconnected for the majority of the summer. Today, I’ve grown to appreciate this popular practice among the Finns. For years, setting aside a significant period of time for rest and relaxation each summer wasn’t a priority of mine, but these days I’ve found that I thrive from having longer stretches of time to recharge. It’s what helps me to prepare for another school year. In my experience, I’ve found that Finland’s educators do very little school-related work during their summer holidays, generally speaking, but even after a few years of living in this Nordic country, I confess that this approach feels too extreme for me. I’m in favor of a hybrid approach, in which there’s a healthy chunk of time for disconnecting and a healthy chunk of time for professional development during the long break. As a teacher, I’ve found that there’s no better time than summer months to reflect on my work and encounter new inspiring ideas I can incorporate into my classroom. The problem I’ve detected among American educators is that we sometimes neglect to leave sufficient time for recharging during the summer. Catching up on sleep and reading interesting books are good basic things, but so too is this Finland-inspired strategy of setting aside sufficient time to vacate on vacation. As I hinted before, I’m not proposing that teaching-related work go completely untouched for the entire summer. Rather, I’m suggesting that we teachers prioritize designated stretches of putting work aside. In her book Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte (2014) described a compelling study, conducted by Harvard Business School, which seems to bolster the case for taking adequate time off: [The researchers] compared two groups of workers at a Boston consulting firm. One group worked fifty or more hours a week, didn’t use all their vacation time, and were constantly tethered to the office with electronics. The other group worked forty hours, took full vacations, and coordinated time off and after-hours on-call time so clients’ needs could be covered but people could regularly, predictably, and without guilt totally unplug from the office. Which group produced better work? The team with time off, not surprisingly, reported higher job satisfaction and better work-life balance. But they also increased learning, improved communication with their team, worked more efficiently, and were ultimately more productive than their ideal worker colleagues. Other studies have found that employees who take full vacations are not only more likely to stay with the firm but also receive higher performance reviews, and that workers are not only more creative but that turning off the constant barrage of e-mails and the ideal worker requirement to respond to them immediately enables people to concentrate and get more done with less stress. (p. 91) I think it’s wise, if you can afford it, to physically vacate with your family, with friends, or on your own during the summer, fleeing to the hills for a day trip, going on a cruise, relaxing on the beach for a few days, and so forth. That being said, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to get away to reap the benefits of a vacation. What matters most is our mind-set. In other words, it’s possible to “go on a vacation” but not actually vacate, because you’ve brought your work along with you. (I know this, because I’ve tried it before; those “vacations” weren’t refreshing.) What’s helpful, I’ve found, is when I embrace that summer holiday mind-set (the one I’ve seen so often applied in Finland) and set aside a few days, or weeks, to stay off e-mail and social media, especially during the summer. It’s something that has encouraged me to be more physically active, more appreciative of nature, more rested, and more present with my family and friends. Download 1.64 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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