The Finnish Experiment - Abstract

I have always had an eagerness to start a blog, but never could quite motivate myself to begin. I enjoy writing immensely, but usually made excuses for why I wasn’t getting started.  I questioned who would want to read what I wrote; I told myself I was too busy with teaching and other extracurriculars; finally, I just couldn’t figure out what to even write about.  I’ve had various ideas over the years, but could never flesh out a concrete idea that I would want to continue with over an extended period of time.  I finally have a concept that I am both passionate about and eager to explore further: Real World Education.

Why Blog?

My passion is education; it’s that simple.  I love social studies (my previous subject), I love children and seeing them grow both educationally and socially, and I am sure I will love what is in store for me this upcoming school year as I transition into 8th grade language arts and instructional coaching.  As a beginning teacher, I was good (I think), but I wasn’t an advocate for education.  I didn’t know how to speak up against the injustices that occurred within our field.  I was complacent and accepted things as the status quo.  This was partly due to my inexperience in education, but more so due to my not knowing that there were alternatives.  I love education, but there is so much we can learn from countries such as Finland to make our system better FOR KIDS.  In a country where politics dictates educational decisions, we are struggling to do what is best for our children.  While teachers in North Carolina are especially fed up, it’s important to note that this is an issue across our entire country; our educational system needs fixing and it is time for me to back up what I always say to my own students: “Be the change.”   

The series of blog posts that I hope to write throughout this academic school year will highlight a few of the cultural experiences I had in Finland, but will mainly focus on what we in the United States can do to hopefully improve the state of education in America.  The change starts with making an impact on the local level.  I am going to continue to incorporate the 4 C’s (collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication) into my own teaching and help others in my school do the same.  We need to make our teaching applicable to the real world for our students.  I hope that people reading this blog will engage with the content and gain a new perspective.  Please feel free to hold me accountable for keeping up with my writing (it may be necessary come October or November) and offer suggestions and questions along the way.  

Why Finland?

In both graduate school at North Carolina State University and through an educational opportunity I had in Finland this summer, I have begun to learn about a philosophy of education that allows the Scandinavian country of Finland to rank among the best in the world.  This program (also through NC State) was called Finnish Connections, Collections, and Reflections, which was sponsored by the Triangle Community Foundation’s Borchardt Fund.  This professional development program offered the following three goals:

1. Connecting with other cultures through global collaborative projects
2. Crowd curating cultural media collections
3. Reflecting on cultural understanding through written and multimodal works  

While the program seemed more of a focus on the culture of Finland, I also have been deeply exploring the education system in Finland through the reading of Pasi Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessons (2011 and 2015) as well as additional research and conversations with local Finns.  

Sahlberg discussed three major paradoxes in his book that makes Finnish education so successful:

1. Teach Less, Learn More
2. Test Less, Learn More
3. Enhanced Equity through Growing Diversity

These concepts may sound familiar to many in the United States and I look forward to exploring them in more detail in future posts.  Some of the topics that I hope to explore in my future blog posts will also include the following:

1. My project between 7th/8th grade students in Raleigh and their counterparts in Scandinavia and the benefit of international collaboration
2. Early education and the idea of teaching young people how to be happy as well as the benefit of schooling in optimal learning environments
3. The treatment of the teaching profession (non-surprising spoiler: it is much different in Finland)
4. Unique philosophy of counseling and special education and the positive effect these experiences can have on students when approached early and effectively

Courtesy of The Bright Side