How to teach like the Finns


4 classroom takeaways that educators worldwide can learn from

Shorter days, less homework, and better results. How do you get that? Do like the Finns. For those in the know, the Finnish system is often seen as the pinnacle of how to do education.

We’ve seen a huge rise in teacher mental-health issues and high levels of teachers leaving the field. One of the main reasons people look to Finland for inspiration is because of its high level of teaching. Realistically it is so advanced because of the expert training teachers receive, and because they are allowed to do their job without much interference.

As a Finnish-based entrepreneur in the business of creativity and innovation within the media industry for more than two decades, I’ve recently turned my focus on how to scale innovation within the education sector. Education innovations are siloed and practiced in isolated classrooms; that’s why my latest project, HundrED, is a nonprofit that’s on a mission to change this by seeking and sharing some of the world’s most inspiring K-12 innovations and packaging them online for educators to easily implement with 24/7 support for free.

Our organization’s aim is to make everything beautiful and understandable, so that any teacher in Manchester, Bangladesh, Singapore, or San Francisco can have access to the best education innovations globally. When we first started building HundrED, the initial goal was to discover and share, 100 Finnish education innovations as part of our country’s 100-year independence from Russia. In observing the research, here are four key takeaways and best classroom practices that all educators can learn from.

(Next page: What we can learn from the Finns)

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