Lessons Learned: Student Well-Being in Finland and U.S.

By Robin Gee

School counselors wear many hats from social worker to academic and career advisor. They provide support for teachers in the classroom, valuable perspectives for administrators and a trusted ear for students seeking guidance. Overall, student well-being, success and confidence is a primary focus of their work.

Elizabeth Ko is a counselor at The Summit Country Day School working with children in lower grades, one through six. Last spring she had an opportunity through the Fulbright Program to do deeper research into student well-being. She chose to spend four months in Finland to explore how the topic is approached in another country.

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. State Department known for facilitating exchanges for college students in different countries, but the program also provides opportunities for early career educators interested doing research and sharing ideas with their counterparts abroad.

She was accepted into the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Research Program last winter. Out of 14 or 15 host countries involved, she found that Finland has a national curriculum that references well-being in its core.

The research project she proposed would look at how Finnish schools promote well-being and what classroom structures and aspects of their system support student emotional and social learning. She said she hoped to find strategies and activities that could translate to her work in the U.S. 

School in Finland

“I visited 21 different schools in my time there and went to multiple cities, talked to dozens of teachers, school social workers, school psychologists, principals, community partners, mental health organizations and curriculum developers,” Ko said.

Fortunately, most adults and older students speak fluent English in Finland, and even the younger students had some knowledge and welcomed the language practice. Ko noted the national curriculum and other important education documents were readily available in English.

“Given that I work in the elementary-age level and that’s my passion, when I first found out I was going to go to Finland, I thought it is great if I can talk to the adults, but you know who I really wanted to be able to talk to were the younger students… So I enrolled in a class through the University of Eastern Finland last fall to try to learn some basic Finnish, and then I did some independent study with a workbook, and also did some daily Duolingo… I did not become particularly proficient, but I could recognize a lot of words, which was helpful,” said Ko.

She said she was amazed at how many of the young students did have a basic understanding of English. Some spoke it a home, and because Finland has a high immigrant population, English was helpful. And, she said, the kids had fun practicing English words with her and correcting her on her Finnish as well. 

“And so many things are universal when working with kids, so many things from classroom to classroom are so similar, I got a kick out of how much I could understand, even with the language barrier. It was really fun,” she added.

Finland schools are organized in similar fashion to U.S. schools with a pre-primary similar to kindergarten, nine years of what is called basic education. Grades one to six parallel U.S. elementary level, and grades seven to nine are called lower secondary school. After completing basic education, students can choose one of two academic paths, college bound or vocational and have flexibility to complete in two to four years. 

Social and emotional learning in Finland

Finnish schools do not have school counselors but they do provide school social workers, whose role is to support students in much the same way our school counselors do, said Ko. Older grades have designated academic advisors to help them with career and educational goals. Yet, the way in which well-being is approached is a bit different, she said. 

“One theme that just kept popping out was how much independence and responsibility the students have over there at a very young age,” she noted. “Kids are very used to hopping on the bus or the metro or walking, even at a young age, by themselves or in groups of other kids, not necessarily with adults. In Ohio we have these massive car lines and school bus systems and all of that. In Finland so many students are walking pretty long distances to school…They manage to get themselves places on time and independently. Even during the school day they are very much given a lot of responsibility that to them doesn’t even register as responsibility.”

“We just don’t have the same infrastructure for getting kids to and from school as independently as they do in Finland, but there are other things that I really think we could tweak a little bit in making schools a bit more like mini societies, where kids have some responsibilities and independence and jobs,” Ko said.

“I was impressed with how well the Finnish school environment challenged the students in a way that didn’t feel like challenge, but they did a great job rising to that challenge. So, I want to play with that a little bit at school,” she said.

She also said she liked the Finnish schools’ approach to hands-on learning. In Finland, students in the younger grades all take crafts classes. They learn crocheting, woodworking and other handicrafts. 

“Even little kids…They learn basic welding. They weld a little garden trowel and take it home. I was speaking to a group of second graders at one school, and they all walked in to hear my talk carrying these cute little stuffed animals in their hands…They had designed them themselves, picked the colors, learned how to crochet, because that’s a part of the curriculum in handicrafts,” Ko said.

In the U.S. we tend to think of hands-on learning as science experiments or engineering projects, but even crafting teaches students valuable life and academic skills, she said.

“When you think about it, the amount of focus that these students had to apply to create these little creatures and the fine motor skills…They’re following multi-step directions, applying deep focus and having to navigate frustration as they do it, and then in the end they get this product that they’re so proud of,” she added. 

“What a life skill to be practicing in a safe, casual environment in your second-grade classroom, that skill of pushing through something hard, focusing and then being proud of the outcome. I think that is a genius way to practice those skills.”

Ko said her experience got her thinking about what she could carry home to her own work and school — things like providing more opportunities to practice independence at school and projects that teach focus, creativity and pride in accomplishment. Yet, she said, she took away something even deeper from her time in Finnish schools.

Somewhat surprising takeaways

“In American schools, there is an increasing trend in wanting to offer more social-emotional learning activities and instruction…I go into every classroom, and I teach a social and emotional learning lesson about every two weeks. We learn about friendship skills, conflict resolution skills, emotion vocabulary, that kind of thing, and I think that’s great,” she said.

With the Finns emphasis on well-being, Ko said she expected they would have similar programming. She wondered what curricula they used and what tools and activities she might find useful to take back home. Yet, she said, it wasn’t that simple.  

“I had thought I might pretty easily pick up some new lesson ideas, or things like that, but that wasn’t the case. I found that that instruction was far less obvious. It was not a set aside time of the day or a separate lesson. It was much more baked into the everyday workings of the classroom,” Ko noted.

She said her focus changed a bit from wanting to know what specific tools or activities the educators were using, to looking at well-being in a broader sense. 

“What are the things that we can bake into all dimensions of school life that contribute to social and emotional well-being, not the 20 minutes a week that we spend teaching friendship skills,” she asked.

She noted that in Finland, the concept of social and emotional learning was not any one educator’s role but rather everyone’s collective responsibility.

“I think in the U.S. we do believe that, too. However, I think the focus on standards does kind of silo certain things into… that’s a math standard, or that’s a reading standard, or that’s a social and emotional learning standard. It separates them out. Where in Finland it felt to me like social and emotional learning was much more just part of the water they were swimming in,” Ko explained.

Raising successful global citizens

Ko also noted how much students in Finland were aware of their role as global citizens. Even young students talked about the environment, human rights and health issues. She credits part of that to the fact that their neighbors are totally different countries whereas in the U.S. our neighbors are within the same culture and system.

Still, she said, the experience made her think about adding more global awareness and to be more intentional about talking about our students as citizens of the world.  

“We have this collective responsibility to make sure they are leaving our schools as caring and capable members of society who want to bring about change, who have the skills to bring about change, and who have that sense of self efficacy and hope that they can bring about change,” she added.

In Finland the Ministry of Education put out a document called “Vision for Basic Education 2045.” In it, said Ko, they identified three priorities: We want people to have a meaningful life; we want people to have a life together and we want to have life able to be lived on this planet. They way we get there, the educators wrote, was to give children the skill and the will to meet those priorities.

“One of the ideas that I got from Finland was that schools are perfect avenues to practice these kinds of skills…in a really safe, developmentally appropriate way, and so we should be looking for ways that kids can demonstrate agency…We can we show them you might be six years old, but you’re allowed and welcome to work for change, and we’re going to help you practice what that looks like.”

Ko shared her experiences and insights in her project blog available at sites.google.com/view/sisuschoolcounseling. She also will present her findings at her school and at three large conferences for school counselors and other educators this fall.  For more on the Fulbright programs go to fulbrightprogram.org.