Comparing US and Finland (Friday's Post-I didn't have internet at the cabin)

Education in Finland is preventative, not reactive like the U.S. system.  We have a “wait to fail model” in which case a student does not receive the additional support they need until we can prove that they are essentially “failing”.   I joined the RTI team at my school because of my frustration a few years ago.  I had a student who struggled in my classroom and I referred him for special ed.  I didn’t realize that they had sent paperwork to his parents to sign until school was ending. I got the parent to sign the paperwork for testing, but it was not returned until the summer, so his teacher the next year had to start the process all over.  I joined the team to try to make a difference in the process in order to help identify students and expedite the process so they could actually receive the services they needed.  Unfortunately, with the RTI process you need to have 6 weeks of data using a “research-based” intervention, then adjust the intervention if it doesn’t work collecting data for another 6 weeks.  At that point the paperwork process can begin.  Even when I had a student (who had gone through the RIT process) referred in November of their first grade year, they still did not have the testing and paperwork completed until the end of the school year.  They would receive services the following school year, but essentially lost a year and did not get the quality of education they deserved and the services that they desperately needed.  Many schools do not even have the support to provide a “research-based” intervention for struggling students in the areas that they struggle in.  Fortunately at my school we receive Title I funding and Federal Impact Aid which helps keep our class sizes small and has given us the luxury of having a first grade aid (that the 3-4 classes share).  The aid is the one administering the interventions in both math and the Title 1 aid in reading.  If the trained and qualified teachers were actually able to work with the struggling students imagine how much they could accomplish!

Finland is proof that money can improve teacher quality, provide paid internships, increase professional development and the resources to meet the needs of students.   Making it a respective, competitive and sought after profession increases the quality of candidates that go into teaching.    Investing in teacher education and hiring teachers with master’s degrees increases student achievement and really benefits students.  Their schedule proves that it is not about how long the school day is.  In Lapwai we are lengthening our school day because we are switching to a schedule where we have half-day professional development every Friday.  I am really excited about the increased time for grade-level collaboration and working on quality curriculum aligned to the standards.  This will be especially beneficial to me as a teacher switching grades.