When I returned, I jumped right into my school year teaching 8th grade Language Arts with both my feet splashing and kicking and me swimming as fast as I could to get up to speed with new initiatives and old mandates. Public school teachers in Delaware generally have one day to get our classrooms ready and then three or four days of in-service before the children show up.
This year we learned about the DPAS 2 - Component 5 measure that will link our teacher evaluation directly to our test scores: well, at least some of us depending on our area. Remember, the tests are only in Reading and Math.
We learned about the new Performance Plus system that will give us access to students test scores and a host of other things. We learned about our PLC's - Professional Learning Community's where we would meet with trained coaches to discuss the data. We were trained on Blood Born Pathogens, Child Abuse and new I-Pad implementation.
We are being held highly accountable. Not that we mind, some accountability, but we were not given much time at all to prepare for our children, to write good lesson plans, run off papers and have or own professional conversations about what we teach and how we do it. Seems as if all the emphasis is on the test scores.
Now as I look back to my Finnish Lessons and my six weeks of teaching in my own classroom, I am realizing just how sophisticated our pedagogy in Delaware has become. I can honestly say that if there was an American vs Finland Teach-Off with teacher competency being the goal, my colleagues and I would teach circles around the teachers that I observed in Finland. We just do it better.
Most people wouldn't get it. In Delaware, teachers have been trained in "Best Practice", most effective instruction techniques for many decades. We routinely implement teaching methods that are intricate and complicated. We teach using some of the latest technology and plan that our students also use computers so that they can do the same.
Teachers that I see are compassionate and use knowledge of the whole child to make informed decisions with parents and support staff. We work every day toward overcoming our students' poverty, lack of home resources, lack of parental support and sometimes homelessness to take them to new and higher levels in education. We believe that everything that we do will lead to greater knowledge and understanding in our students. We teach the whole child and we teach all the children. My students reading achievement ranges from second grade reading level to twelfth!
I am sure that our Finnish teachers have many of the same concerns. We do have much in common with them: compassion, dedication and sophisticated pedagogy. Teachers in the United States meet up with one major difference: we encounter a 24% poverty rate. Finland has a 4% poverty rate.
When I tell you that it's difficult to get parents to answer the phone when I call and it's difficult to insure that my children read when they go home, then I would like for you to understand that educational reform in the United States must include a parent social support component. That's what the Finns have that we don't: social commitment and determination to take care of the whole child from birth to adulthood. For that, I am grateful to Finland for leading the way and I am hoping that this lesson will have far reaching impact as we move forward in our reform efforts.
