Ivan Beeckmans's List: Blog Topics/Reference

• One morning, the teachers mentioned that a school board committee had recommended an earlier start time to solve logistical problems in scheduling bus routes
• n those that originally started at 7:30 a.m., only a third of students said they were able to get eight or more hours of sleep. Students who got less than that reported significantly more symptoms of depression, and greater use of caffeine, alcohol and illegal drugs than better-rested peers.
• In schools that now start at 8:35 a.m., nearly 60 percent of students reported getting eight hours of sleep nightly.
• During that academic year, car crashes by drivers 16 to 18 years old dropped to seven from 23 the year before.

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• For educators and the schools in which they teach, the challenges of this moment are significant. Our ability to learn whatever we want, whenever we want, from whomever we want is rendering the linear, age-grouped, teacher-guided curriculum less and less relevant.
• In fact, in my own kids' lives, I believe their best, most memorable, and most effective teachers will be the ones they discover, not the ones they are given.
• But it does suggest that we as educators need to reconsider our roles in students' lives, to think of ourselves as connectors first and content experts second.
• "weapons of mass collaboration," as author Donald Tapscott calls them.

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• Learners should be in control of their own learning. Autonomy is key. Educators can initiate, curate, and guide. But meaningful learning requires learner-driven activity
• Learning is network formation. Knowledge is distributed.
• Motivation, not age, is key
• What role do blogs or microblogging [insert tool in question] play classroom or online learning? Any role you want. Answers to questions like this don’t exist in advance of exploration.

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• Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically   unnoticed. "Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private   schools in Finland."
• None is allowed to charge tuition fees.
• The irony of Sahlberg's making this comment during a talk at the Dwight School   seemed obvious. Like many of America's best schools, Dwight is a private   institution that costs high-school students upward of $35,000 a year to   attend -- not to mention that Dwight, in particular, is run for profit, an   increasing trend in the U.S.
• From his point of view,   Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions: How can you keep track of students' performance if you don't test them   constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for   bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers? How do you foster competition   and engage the private sector? How do you provide school choice?
• Finland has no standardized tests
• "Accountability is something   that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."
• what   matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given   prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility.
• And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that   nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable.
• "Real winners do not compete."
• cooperation
• Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the   goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success   today, was never excellence. It was equity.
• every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn
• Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health   care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
• academic excellence through its  particular policy focus on equity.
• Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries.

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• In the States, I often witnessed teachers (including myself) who worked tirelessly inside and outside of the classroom. I was a bit proud of my “workaholism”, thinking that it made me an elite teacher. It’s my sense that Finnish teachers see restlessness as a sign of weakness. Slowing down with students and colleagues is important.