15. Every Child Has “Special Needs”

“They don’t have learning disabilities, that’s true. They all comes to this that they have this behavior disorder one way or another. They are not being active (in the) classes, they are being rude to the teachers, maybe they go attack some of their peers here at the school, stuff like that. So there has […]

16. More than Fifteen Words that Mean “Peace”

Respecting Student’s Learning Needs Chapter 16 “At first the lack of sound is alarming. In this place it is one’s pulse that speaks the loudest. Next are the the sounds of birds, both near and far, single and overlapping; sporadic yet effective, even across great distances.” My friend and I walk down the forest trail and […]

17. Teacher Freedom and the Core Concepts for Learning

“Teachers have a lot of good ideas and when they process those ideas (and) share the ideas with each other, they can create an even better school than we (can) here in the Board of Education.” Chapter 17 The Finnish education system moves slowly because teachers know that developing young minds takes time and rushing […]

18. Finns Share Insights About American Education

“I guess I’d say I didn’t really like the multiple-choice thing in the U.S.  My sister said it really well: ‘It felt really funny to not having to produce anything yourself. You would just choose from already ready answers.’” Chapter 18 It’s toward the end of my journey and I sit down to interview students who […]

19. Visiting Andreas Schleicher and OECD for a Global Perspective

“The kind of things that are easy to teach and easy to test are diminishing in the labor market relevance because computers are a lot better than humans in things that we call algorithmic processes. What gains in importance is not your capacity to reproduce what you have learned but to extrapolate from what you […]

20. Pasi Sahlberg on Equity and Education

“We should not have different expectations and hopes for our own children than for the others.” Chapter 20 Over two days I had the pleasure of getting to know the warm, reflective Pasi Sahlberg. My first experience was when we traveled to and from the Nordic Comparative and International Education Society (NOCIES) conference in Turku. The second […]