Off to Helsinki

HundrED

In one week Lindsay Pinchbeck, founder, director and teacher at the Sweetland School in Hope and I will be landing in Helsinki, Finland for the HundrED Innovation Summit. We are thrilled to be invited and looking forward to meeting educators from around the world and visiting with those we met last year who are returning. I’ve blogged about HundrED before but for those of you who are unfamiliar hopefully this post will inspire you to take a look at the HundrED website and tap into their amazing resources.

I plan on blogging from Helsinki next week so keep your fingers crossed that my connectivity works from Finland!

WHAT IS HUNDRED?

HundrED.org is a not-for-profit organization that discovers inspiring innovations in K12 education. HundrED’s goal is to help improve education and inspire a grassroots movement through encouraging pedagogically sound, ambitious innovations to spread across the world.

The purpose of education is to help every child flourish, no matter what happens in life. In a fast-changing world, education must adapt to keep up. The world is full of inspiring innovations, but they can struggle to spread beyond their immediate environments. That’s why HundrED discovers, researches and shares impactful and scalable K12 innovations with the world, for free.

This (under 2 minute) video says it well.

CHECK OUT THE RESOURCES

You can become a HundrED Innovator as well and learn more about the many many innovations included in the site. There are amazing educators doing amazing work around the world and many have been recognized by HundrEd and have profiles on the website. You can learn how to become a HundrED innovator and see the many profiles of Innovators by CLICKING HERE.

OUR WORK (and play!)

The invitation to attend HundrED during November 2018 was based on the work that Lindsay and I have been participating in since 2016 with the Go Malawi program. We offered arts integration workshops when we traveled to Malawi for almost three weeks that summer. We were recognized by HundrED as Ambassadors – you can read about our work on the Go Malawi site at THIS LINK. Check out Lindsay’s profile on the HundrED site or Argy’s profile.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

HundrED Youth Ambassadors

Share with students

Are you a student reading this OR do you know students who are interested in participating in making positive change? If so, watch this video, join Jordy, and contact HundrED and apply to participate in the HundrED Youth Ambassador program.

 

My Helsinki – Part 3

The days were full

This is one of a series of blog posts about the trip that Lindsay Pinchbeck and I took at the beginning of November 2018. We were invited as Ambassadors to attend the HundrED Summit in Helsinki. We were inspired by the amazing educators who shared their innovations in education.

Each day was live streamed and fortunately archived and made available for free to the world. Along with the events being available so are the 100 innovations that were selected this year. The innovations are available on the HundrED website and this short video below provides an overview of HundrED that explains their mission.

We Seek and Share Inspiring Innovations in K12 Education – HundrED

HundrED’s manifesto – 

The purpose of education is to help every child flourish, no matter what happens in life.

In a fast changing world focusing on traditional academic skills will remain important, but that is not enough. To thrive as global citizens, children must be equipped with a breadth of skills.

To learn more about the content of the summit please go to the HundrED website and click at the top of the page on each of the dates – 7.11 – 8.11 – 9.11 to see the live streamed presentations. These will provide you with a clear picture of what took place.

More blog posts will follow with details of the learning opportunity that took place in early November.

Happy Teaching, Happy Learning

Finland education system

I’ve been excused by my brothers (yes the ones who were dressed up in their evzone costumes in a recent post) that I am in “LaLa” land. When asked what that means the response was that I am out of touch. I’ve been known to make lemonade when handed lemons and the norm for me is looking at the glass half full and not half empty. As parents, my husband and I learned when our sons were very young, that we needed to look at each situation and ask “is this a dance or a wrestle?” and yes, most of the time, it was a dance. Few things in this short life, in my opinion, are worth battling over.

Recently, an article reached out to me that made me ponder what makes some of us approach situations (easy or difficult) so differently. I wonder if our learning environments as children have something to do with it? And, I wonder how our young learners will be impacted over the long haul with the “testing environment” our schools are in at the present time?

I have been curious about the Finish education system and what makes theirs so world-class. The article provided some incite from one writers view. It is called “Happy Teaching, Happy Learning: 13 Secrets to Finland’s Success” written by Sophia Faridi and published June 24, 2014 in Education Week TEACHER. Ms. Faridi had been to Finland with seven teachers from the U.S. to learn more about the Finnish system and the lessons it “might offer”.

Ms. Faridi found 13 factors that she identified to be key.

1. A heavy emphasis on play.
2. No high-stakes standardized testing.
3. Trust.
4. Schools don’t compete with one another.
5. Out-of-this-world teacher prep programs.
6. Personal time is highly valued.
7. Less is more.
8. Emphasis on quality of life.
9. Semi-tracked learning.
10. National standards are valued.
11. Grades are not given until 4th grade.
12. Ethics is taught in primary grades.
13. Collaboration and collaborative environments are strongly emphasized.

Sophia Faridi said: ” Students in Finland appear happy, engaged, and invested in their work.” If you’d like to read more about her findings please click here.

By the way, no one in my professional world has ever said (to my face anyway) that I am in “LaLa” land. Hmmmm!