Three years ago, at the end of my family’s time in Finland, Mika Rantala, then the Head of school at Schildt Upper Secondary School in Jyväskylä, asked me to record a brief video on my reflections after visiting numerous Finnish schools, meeting with teachers, administrators, and students. 
Having visited many Finnish schools at all levels and given time to think by virtue of my Fulbright award, I reflected here on what I’d seen. Frankly, I forgot I’d made this video and it seems fresh to me again.
In a nutshell, the one word that I came away seeing as the basis of Finnish educational success was trust. Everyone appeared to trust each other to do their job well and have good intentions about doing so.
I don’t know if a culture of trust is possible in an American public school. Perhaps. It might be better to imagine how we as teachers might show our students a bit more faith. How might they respond if we operated our classrooms as places of trust?
Here is the four-minute video:
THE BIGGER PICTURE: Educating Students for the Globalized Present 