Planning for the future. Regardless of whether students plan to learn, work in an office, a store, or on the road, certain skills (and a high school diploma) are necessary. While you may not need to know how to do a quadratic equation, adding and subtracting fractions is a daily part of our lives. While you may not need to write a ten-page paper analyzing a work of fiction, you will need to read instructions manuals and sort through various reading materials. If students understand that school is about planning for the future, it is easier to buckle down and work on accumulating those skills necessary for the future.
Teacher training. There’s a famous saying, “Those who can do, do. Those who can’t do, teach.” For obvious reasons, this statement is demeaning, but it is also inherently unfair to the teachers and students in our schools today. The main thing that we can take away from Finland’s model of education is that a teacher’s pride in his or her job is among the most important factors in an education system. The way to attack this issue in our schools is two-fold:
1. Professional development. Teachers who are good at what they do are proud to do it. To that end, investing in professional development for teachers can help teachers do a better job and can help teachers take pride in their occupations and careers.
2. Teacher appreciation. If we create a school environment in which teachers are respected and admired and in which students exit the classroom daily after thanking their teachers for the lessons learned, the whole culture of the school will change.
Mediocrity is just that – mediocre! And, those test scores have proven that the American education system is not perfect. Therefore, if we can take these tiny steps in our schools and in our own minds to copy other country’s educational models, we might just be able to edge them out, moving from mediocrity to excellence.