Teacher Academy Finland

“You truly educate your children for life and yet get excellent results” said a bunch of Chinese teachers looking at me with their eyes sparkling. They had visited several Finnish schools and learned the principles behind Finnish education system – and they were deeply impressed.

We didn’t understand what jewel we have in the Finnish education system until we started working with teachers from other countries. It took us a while to realize it. But seeing an American teacher in Finnish preparatory class for immigrant children touched and moved, hearing German and French teachers saying “This is how education should be”, watching Brazilian and Russian teachers getting impressed by the Finnish education practices, hearing Indian college students tell us that “We didn’t know it is possible to learn like this!”, we finally started to realize that we really have something worth sharing here.

And there is so much we want to share with the teachers of the world! We want to tell about equality and trust and what they mean to us. We want to enlighten the curriculum and role of it. We want to tell about teacher’s role, duties and responsibilities, but also about the huge respect teachers have in Finland. We want to show the activating and collaborative teaching methods, high quality teaching materials and e-learning solutions. We want to tell about special education, inclusion, pedagogical leadership, learning communities, school lunches, the role of physical movement and play within school days etc.

To put it short: we want to share the best practices and principles of Finnish basic education. But we also want to learn ourselves and develop education even better. We want to make the school a better place for the children and young people of the world. We want to create a place for the teachers of the world to learn about the best we have in Finland and develop their pedagogical thinking and skills further.

Teacher Academy Finland was born.