Cindy Edelman Excellence in Teaching Fellows apply lessons from Finland to classrooms

After reading Amanda Ripley’s book, The Smartest Kids in the World, our team realized that we must prioritize equity before advancing our Social Justice initiatives. The book highlights that Finland’s education system is the best in the world because they view equity as a fundamental mindset, and rigor cannot exist without it. 

Despite Finland’s predominantly white population, there was significant economic disparity in the 1970s. They underwent substantial reforms to ensure all students received equal treatment and education. Similarly, the United States has a history of structural inequality, with policies and practices that have disproportionately benefited Caucasians at the expense of African Americans, Latinos, and Indigenous peoples. Like Finland, we recognized that to improve our schools, we must ensure that public schools serve all students fairly and equally.  

The concept development for our trip aimed to benefit our school community by aligning our efforts with our principal’s focus on culturally diverse practices, involving our entire faculty. We began by reading Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain in January 2021 and have continued to share our findings through this fellowship. For instance, after our weeklong visit to Finland and our work with the literature, we have collaborated more on our findings at Lake Lucina. Attending professional development sessions and visiting classrooms in Finland enabled us to create on-site professional development and engage in in-depth conversations based on our UChicago Surveys from students, teachers, and parents. Additionally, we worked alongside our Lapland International Forum for Education consultant to further our efforts through a study-act cycle of inquiry, ensuring we established equitable, conscious practices. 

We meticulously planned our budget and utilized all the funding provided by Cindy Edelman to support our incredible journey to learn about the happiest place on earth and one of the finest school districts in the world. 

Tell us about your experience, and was there anything that you were surprised to learn while there? 

Patience and determination led us to the most magical experience in our educational careers. We attended the LIFE 2024: The Shadowing Experience Journey Towards Well-Being in Education, hosted by some of the most experienced educators in Helsinki, Rovaniemi, and Lapland, Finland. It was inspiring to witness the collective commitment of educators from six continents and 27 countries to advancing the cause of quality education for all. The level of discourse during our visit was invigorating, as we heard diverse viewpoints from various educational settings, including large urban schools, private sectors, and rural and small schools. It became clear that many educators worldwide were facing similar challenges in our profession. 

By attending Life 2024, we had the opportunity to learn about the steps Finland took to ensure equity and equality in their education system. We shadowed teachers in their classrooms and observed their practices firsthand. Our days included built-in reflection time, allowing our team to develop an action plan to implement real changes in how we teach the standards and manage our students at our school. We also learned new strategies to keep our students engaged, which we were hopeful would improve our district and state testing scores. This experience has opened more doors for our students to have a successful future. As a team, we also set goals for ourselves to become leaders in culturally responsive teaching for the district. We will not only be implementing the strategies and techniques that we learned in our own classrooms but will also be opening our classrooms up so other teachers can observe and learn from as well. Along with this, we will be holding professional development sessions to help teachers create a culture that supports successful equity practices in their own classrooms.

Our school visits were truly awe-inspiring. The key takeaways were the emphasis on the well-being of children in all aspects, teacher trust, and school equity and equality. During our first visit to Vainamoinen Primary School, the consistent theme was the focus on the trust of students and teachers. This was evident in their commitment to ensuring every student receives an education that prepares them for life. In every classroom we visited, students were engaged in play and games, with no set schedule or curriculum (except for lunch, which was the only activity that was scheduled). 

So, how does learning occur without a curriculum? Every teacher had the same answer: when students are having fun, learning just happens. For example, when students went ice skating, the teacher had them graph how many times they fell and put beads in a jar to count the total, culminating in a “fall out party” when the jar was full. This is just one of the many ways students at the primary school experience play-based learning. 

Teachers in these schools are granted full autonomy in making decisions about their students’ education due to their extensive training, comparable to that of a doctor in the United States. They are highly respected in their communities, and parents collaborate with them to support the holistic development of their children. Teachers are not subjected to evaluations because they are trusted to act in the best interests of their students. 

The final big takeaway is that all schools in Finland receive the same funding, regardless of the economic status of their location. Parents do not pay out-of-pocket for anything, including field trips, breakfast, lunch, and supplies. Schools are not permitted to fundraise or accept donations. This ensures that students in wealthier areas do not have anything different than what the schools those in economically disadvantaged areas have, which promotes a high level of equality across Finnish schools. 

What was your favorite part about the trip? 

It’s hard to pinpoint just one favorite part. One of the most unforgettable experiences was visiting Ounasrinteenperuskoulu, a school for grades 1 through 9. This visit highlighted the importance of the well-being of the child, the curriculum, and the opportunities for students to explore and experience diverse activities. We arrived during the after-school program, which offered basket weaving, sewing, pottery and clay, technology, snowshoe hiking, and more. We chose snowshoeing, and it was an incredible experience that underscored the importance of play and exercise. Hiking up a hill for hours in the darkness, we learned so much, laughed, fell, and got back up again. The educators supported each other, fostering a sense of accomplishment and forming lifelong friendships with colleagues from Spain and Portugal.

This experience reinforced the focus on the whole child and student-centered learning, ensuring that every child receives an education that prepares them for life. To elaborate just a little more, it was the experience of a lifetime. They aren’t lying when they say Finland is the “Happiest Place on Earth.” It was truly breathtaking to see how everyone seemed incredibly happy after all. We got to meet many people who worked in the customer service industry who spoke about how they just love what they do daily…play! Some of the most educated workers who had already experienced jobs with Microsoft and other amazing careers opted to come back to Lapland and work in the customer service industry. The teachers we spoke to were not stressed out or unhappy, it was clear they loved their jobs. They said they truly love meeting people and providing joy to others.

We were very spoiled on our adventure and were able to experience Husky sled rides, snow mobile rides to a reindeer farm, a trip to see the Northern Lights with a beautiful campfire, dining at an ice hotel where everything was made of ice (including the building, the tables and benches, and our plates and cups), visiting the Arctic Circle, and of course meeting Santa Claus. All that, along with the amazing professional development and the valuable lifelong friendships we have made surely made the trip an experience to remember. We are still in contact with many of the other participants and plan to go and visit some schools around the world with our newfound friendships that were created during the time we spent there. 

How will this experience translate to your classroom and affect your students? 

This experience was incredibly enlightening. Our aim was to learn how we could enhance our schools by adopting Finland’s principles of equity and equality. 

In the United States and many other countries, there is a push for higher academic standards for younger children. Even kindergartens, which used to serve as a transition from preschool to formal schooling, are now closely monitored for their teaching and learning outcomes. This has resulted in more structured teaching and less time for play. Supporters of this approach argue that it benefits children. However, we are forgetting that they are still kids. Play is an essential part of childhood. With the right opportunities and environment, play can help children learn academically and socially and improve their cognitive health. 

What concerns us the most is that the children who need a supportive and engaging learning environment the most often receive it the least. Kids who are underserved, vulnerable, or marginalized—such as those from low-income families, non-native English speakers, or racial and cultural minorities—typically receive the most rigid, teacher-led instruction in an attempt to ‘close learning gaps.’ If these children are struggling academically, socially, or behaviorally, they are often required to sit still and focus for even longer periods, which they are least prepared to do. 

After visiting Finland, we’ve introduced more play-based learning experiences into our classrooms. While we still adhere to the district curriculum guides and state standards, we now incorporate as many hands-on activities as possible into our lessons. We believe this approach has promoted equity in our school and helped our students keep pace academically with those in wealthier parts of the city. Thanks to these changes, our school remarkably achieved an A rating last year for the first time in 20 years! 

A major concern is that Finland’s education system ensures equality for all students, regardless of where they live. Equality is the cornerstone of Finnish education. While we have a lot of work to do to achieve equality for everyone, we must start with small seeds and nurture them to grow and flourish. This effort should begin at the school level, but we know that disparities exist in various ways when we visit schools in different parts of the district. These differences are not just in technology but also in the fact that new teachers are often placed in struggling schools, leading to a cycle of teachers leaving and students having multiple novice teachers, which disrupts learning. We need to understand what is happening not just at Lake Lucina but across the district to address these inequalities and improve the quality of education for all students. 

We are excited to start holding Professional Development trainings to share our research and experiences with teachers across the district, aiming to foster greater equity and equality.