A U.S. Teacher in Finland: Teaching Less, Collaborating More

By Tim Walker

Teaching is burdensome. Some of its greatest challenges exist beyond the classroom walls. Poverty. Broken families. Domestic violence. The list continues.

Teachers who seek to care for their students need to be cared for, too. Without sufficient support, teachers burn out. Some even leave the profession altogether.

As an American teacher now in a Finnish public school, I'm witnessing and experiencing meaningful professional support. A close look at my current teaching schedule reveals two important sources of preventive care.

Teaching Less

When I received my timetable in early August, I was dumbstruck. As a 5th grade classroom teacher, I would be contracted for 24 hours of teaching each week. What's more is that there would be a built-in break of 15 minutes every lesson. Factor in the breaks and I would only be spending 18 hours in the classroom each week. On average, that's less than four hours of actual teaching time every day. This is a typical teaching load in Finland.

At my previous school in the U.S., I had about 5 ½ hours of instructional time every day. That's a total of 27 ½ hours of time in the classroom each week, which is nearly 10 hours more than I spend teaching in Finland.

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http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_ahead/2013/12/how_does_finland_support_teachers.html