My wife suggested that we move to her home country where we\u2019d find paid parental leaves, affordable daycare, and universal health care. Initially I bucked the idea. I loved my teaching job and cherished the school where I worked, but we both knew we needed to make a change.<\/p>\n
In Finland, I felt prepared to hit the pause button on my teaching career in order to experience better work-life balance. Actually, we\u00a0received our one-way tickets to Helsinki before I found a new job.<\/p>\n
However, something miraculous happened just one month before we moved to Finland.<\/p>\n
On a June morning in 2013, I found a message in my email inbox from a Helsinki\u00a0administrator, one of many Finnish principals I had contacted earlier in the year. She wondered if I\u2019d be interested in teaching a fifth grade class at her bilingual public school. We found a time to chat and, at the end of that call, she offered me the teaching job.<\/p>\n
In Helsinki,\u00a0I started this blog (Taught by Finland) to document\u00a0the lessons I’d learn as an American teacher working\u00a0inside the Finnish school system. One of the biggest surprises I encountered in Finland\u00a0was vastly different working conditions for teachers.<\/p>\n
Consider the new teaching schedule I received in Helsinki.<\/p>\n
I scratched my head when my new principal handed me my timetable: I would receive a full salary while working about 10 hours less<\/i> than I did\u00a0as an elementary school teacher in the Boston area. (In Finland, a typical full-time teaching load for an elementary school teacher is only 18 hours of weekly classroom instruction.)<\/p>\n
It was the light teaching schedule I used to dream about while teaching in America.<\/p>\n
In a major international teaching study involving more than five-million teachers from 34 countries and economies, U.S. teachers said<\/a> they spend the most number of hours each week teaching their students: 27 hours, on average.<\/p>\n More hours of teaching equate to more hours of lesson planning, student assessment, grading, and record-keeping. In other words, many American teachers must cope with the challenges of high-stakes testing, prescriptive standards, and external evaluations while <\/i>possessing less free time.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s not just the sheer amount of teaching that burdens many U.S. teachers. It\u2019s also the whirlwind\u00a0pace of the school day.<\/p>\n In Finland, and in many other countries, children receive<\/a> frequent recesses throughout the school day. At my Helsinki school, students typically enjoy a 15-minute break for every 45 minutes of classroom instruction. The younger pupils head outside for free play while older children get to decide where they spend their free time.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just Finnish kids who get to disconnect from their work several times throughout the school day.<\/p>\n To my surprise, my Finnish colleagues would usually disappear into the teachers\u2019 lounge during these recesses. There, they\u2019d typically drink coffee, chat, and read for leisure. (To allow for this arrangement, my colleagues and I would take turns supervising the children\u2019s recesses.)<\/p>\n Scores of U.S. teachers say<\/a> they lack sufficient time to use the bathroom during the school day. Not only that, but I\u2019ve also detected a stigma associated with teachers\u2019 lounges in America.<\/p>\n In 2015, Ohio Governor John Kasich said<\/a>, \u201cif I were\u2026 king in America, I would abolish all teachers\u2019 lounges where they sit together and worry about how \u2018woe is us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n U.S. teacher-attrition rates have hovered around 8 percent over the last decade or so and they are about double what you\u2019d find in high-achieving nations, such as Finland and Singapore; experts say <\/a>this high teacher attrition rate is the primary\u00a0reason behind the widespread teacher shortages plaguing many parts of America.<\/p>\n Undoubtedly, U.S. teachers need policy changes that would improve their working conditions and motivate them to stay in the profession. But American educators also need our encouragement.<\/p>\n Too many U.S. teachers feel stressed<\/a>, micro-managed<\/a>, and pressed\u00a0for time<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n Knowing the systemic differences that exist between Finland and the United States, I wrote the book Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms<\/i><\/a> <\/i><\/b>to encourage fellow American teachers.<\/p>\n![\"15.2Teach](\"https:\/\/taughtbyfinland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/15.2Teach-Like-Finland-199x300.jpg\")