Suck It, Finland!

I started this new thing in my class this year.  I kept reading about how Finland (or Switzerland or Sweden or the Netherlands or one of those other cold places) has a better education system than us, and how they have more recess and less testing and shorter school days.  Like every media outlet ever, I decided to ignore the fact that Finland also has a fairly homogeneous population with very little poverty.  Because, you know, it probably doesn’t matter if the students have a consistent source of nutrition and a safe place to do their homework.  Quit whining, American teachers!  Instead, I decided to focus on what I could do to replicate this wonder-system.

Shorter school days?  Let’s face it; I already leave work right at 3:52 every day.  If I start leaving before the kids, administration’s not going to be thrilled about it.  Less testing?  Ha!  If I encourage my kids to opt out, my job will be gone faster than you can say “College and Career Readiness Performance Indicator!”  More recess?  Now that, I can sort of do.

Last year, I observed a day at a high school for a professional development class I was taking.  I spent all day attending classes with the kids, sitting at the back of the room and trying to remember how to graph functions (with no success).  This was a good high school, a private school for low-income kids, the kind of place we try to send our students when they leave us.  The classes were engaging and the kids were motivated and focused.  But what struck me most was how much sitting was involved in attending high school.  By the end of the day, my Fitbit was in negative numbers.  This was very stressful for me as, like a less-hilarious David Sedaris, a huge part of my well-being was tied to my step count.  

Okay.  So be more like Finland and get the kids up and moving more.  Challenge accepted.  We started off small.  Right after reading or journals and before grammar (because grammar is obviously the most boring part of class), we’d close the door and hope the administrators would stay out and I’d cue up a YouTube workout video.  This consisted mostly of me running frantically around the room doing “high knees” and yelling a constant harangue along the lines of, “Really?  You gonna let an old lady beat you like this?”  That was fun, at least for me.  I couldn’t really tell if it was helping the kids’ focus or not, but I was starting to get the much-coveted thigh gap, so I figured we’d keep going.

It got boring, though, after a while, once we had done all the videos that didn’t involve women in sports bras.  (I teach seventh grade, y’all.  I just can’t.)  So we branched out a little.  We did yoga for a while, but all the Jehovah’s Witness kids just stood in the back and looked at us disapprovingly, and after a while the judgment got to be too much for me.  Then I created the Cards of Death, a handful of index cards with instructions like “10 Burpees” and “30-second dance party.”  It works well, except that the kids keep stealing the real cards and replacing them with things like “Give Jose candy.”

Once the weather cooled off a little, we expanded to Five Minute Freeze Tag, which has resulted in multiple trips to the clinic.  What can I say?  We play to win.  There’s also the Endurance Challenge every Friday, where the last three kids standing get a reward.  I find it both positive and problematic that the Endurance Challenge keeps getting longer as my kids get in better shape.  I used to make fun of them for being weaklings, but now it’s like, “Okay, we’ve been doing pushups for eight minutes now…we kind of have to learn what verbs are…”

But my new favorite activity is playing improv games with the kids.  One day a week, we circle up and play Statues in the Garden or World’s Worst or I Love You Baby (which is oh, so awkward) for five or ten minutes before we get down to business.  And the kids love it.  A few of them hang back and don’t really participate.  And one girl glares at me the entire time we do anything, like the evil monkey in Chris Griffin’s closet.  But mostly, even the shy, awkward ones get into it.  And now that I’ve been walked in on by administrators a few times and my pre grammar workout hasn’t been shut down yet, I’m feeling pretty good about it.

Here’s the thing.  We hear a lot about rigor these days, and accountability.  Both those tend to be pretty closely tied to standardized testing, at least in the way they’re measured.  And I don’t think rigor and accountability are a bad thing, except that after eleven years in the classroom, those words immediately conjure up the buzz of faulty fluorescent lights and the smell of the stuff they use to get puke out of the carpet.  But the not-very-well-concealed hippie in me wants to ask, what about joy?  Where are we finding joy in the classroom?  Because that’s a damn worthwhile pursuit as well, and one that’s often neglected.  

We find it in a lot of places in my class, at least on a good day.  In books.  In honest, uncomfortable conversation about beliefs and race and vulnerability.  In review games and writing stories and the occasional Frozen singalong.  And now, in YouTube workout videos and improv games.  Granted, those kids in Finland could probably still beat us on a test…but not in arm wrestling.