Teacher Brings Home Lessons From Finland

Carolyn Streets returned to her English language arts classroom at Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS) with new insights into how to teach reading in a supportive environment — gained from a six-month sabbatical at a place known for doing it well.

Streets has taught at ESUMS for over a decade. In July Streets returned home from Jyväskylä, Finland, after a half-year research stay as a fellow for the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Research Program. 

At a time when New Haven schools (and schools across the U.S.) are struggling with how to improve teaching, especially reading, Streets got a firsthand look at how schools elsewhere take a different approach. She was in a place where parents and administrators trust teachers more to teach, where families get help starting kids to read early, where students grow up learning more languages, and where physical and emotional health are fundamental parts of the school experience.

In return, the teachers and kids in Finland got a firsthand lesson in the value of embracing diversity in an academic setting and beyond. 

Streets focused her fellowship research on how literacy is taught in Finland. 

Streets had the honor of receiving two Fulbright Distinguished Teaching awards in one academic year, and had to pick from between two six-month research opportunities, in either Finland or India. She decided on the Finland venture to learn from the education mecca’s literacy development practices. She was one of only five applicants selected in the Connecticut cohort and the only African American from a large urban district.

“I couldn’t pass up studying the pedagogy around literacy and reading comprehension in Finland, a leading country,” she said.

Streets observed the work of dozens of teachers at different schools. She engaged in discussions with both educators and students about reading, language learning, and student representation in curricula.

Streets, the daughter of Rev. Frederick J. Streets of Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ, has spent her adult life in New Haven.

Her Fulbright experience had been postponed for two years due to the pandemic.

Like New Haven, Jyväskylä is a university-dominated city. Upon her arrival there, Streets’ first task was acclimating to the harsh winter weather and a drastic uptick in Covid cases. The city’s winter Covid surge caused a local shutdown in Jyväskylä that lasted for about two and a half months. Streets took that time to get to know the city, as schools were closed to visitors. She had access to general education schools in Jyväskylä and Helsinki to do research during that time.

Streets spent most of her trip lecturing at schools across Finland and made some stops in five other countries to have collegial conversations with fellow educators.

Her main area of study during the research trip was on the best teaching practices of vocabulary instruction for primary and secondary education. 

She focused her observational work on how students transition from learning to read to reading to learn. While visiting K‑8 classes, Streets studied the schools’ reading comprehension infrastructure, she said.

She concluded after her research and observations that New Haven could benefit from offering more transitional supports to students as they learn the foundations of reading, like phonics and vocabulary. She said teaching these specific reading strategies should continue through fifth grade as students begin to transition to reading to learn. 

In Finland, most students’ reading comprehension is at grade level because they ​“make reading and the love of literacy a major cultural piece of their society.” 

She observed that the schools had social emotional learning (SEL) integrated into both their curricula and overall systems. The schools were hubs to access exercise, healthful eating, and physical and mental health resources in addition to academics. 

“The school culture is a focus on health and well being. That’s a core part of their educational process,” Streets reflected. 

“Services are immediately provided, and paperwork is secondary,” she added.

Streets said she saw that the majority of students move on to the next grade level only if the are reading at grade level. In a blog post about her Fulbright experiences, she stated: ​“A key indicator of students’ success is their vocabulary because the knowledge anyone has about a topic is based on the vocabulary of that information … I learned that Finland’s curriculum emphasizes language learning and students become multilingual throughout their schooling starting in the primary grades.” By sixth grade, the students Streets observed had become proficient in three languages. Some students learned to fluently speak five languages by high school, Streets observed.

Click here to read more about Streets’ Fulbright research. 

“Language learning is a form of literacy development. Building students’ plurilingualism as a standard approach within Finland’s national curriculum engenders strong literacy development and elucidates why Finland consistently outperforms other countries in reading,” Streets wrote. 

“There’s a societal effort to make sure citizens are literate,” she said. 

Families are provided with ample resources before their children start school to learn reading fundamentals. They are provided with access to community libraries, with specific library programming geared toward preparing pre-school students. 

Once enrolled in school, students are expected to be academically independent, Streets said.

“Teachers are trusted experts,” she said. ​“The teachers would rarely see admin[istrators] because they receive highly competitive training that makes them the experts.” 

Because of the societal expectation for students to put school first, truancy is not a significant problem in Finland, Streets said. 

Additionally students learn to prioritize their studies because there is little to no parental involvement in schools, she argued. Educators are understood as ​“the primary expert” and are trusted because of their robust teacher training, Streets said.

“They have implicit trust in the school system because, as a culture, that’s one of their values,” Streets said. ​“For them questioning the ability of teachers is unheard of.”

Another difference she saw between the schools in Finland and New Haven: Students can go to their doctors’ appointment more easily in Finland because medical facilities, separate from a school nurse, are housed in school buildings. This helps to keep parents from having to take time off of work to attend to their students’ medical appointments.

Streets added that parents are paid livable wages, which makes it possible for one parent to stay home until their children reach 6, eliminating a need and the cost for daycare. Teachers, too, are paid better because of their valued role in society, Streets said.

The tail end of Streets’ Fulbright work turned toward engaging with educators about culturally centered pedagogy.

She did multiple lectures during her trip for Jyväskylä University’s educational department.

During a five-day diversity, equity, and inclusion-centered visit and lecture, she did a Black History Month presentation at the request of high school juniors. This led to her also providing diversity training to educators.

She recalled one student of color who immediately told her at the start of her presentations that she would not participate. However, after seeing the topic of Streets’ presentation, the student eventually became an unofficial teaching assistant because of her interest in the topic. Streets was told by other educators that the student had been ​“usually disengaged in class.” 

There remained a disconnect with many minority students who did not see themselves reflected in their curricula, Streets said.

Streets trained educators in the importance of culturally centered education. 

“Students must see themselves in order to connect,” she recalled telling her global colleagues. ​“That connection makes a difference in the quality of their education.” 

Since her return, Streets is continuing to do diversity training work remotely with colleagues she met in Ireland, Italy, and Germany.

During her guest lectures, Streets was told by students that she was their first Black teacher ever — and in some schools, the first teacher of color, period.

This month Streets was accepted to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Emerging Leaders cohort, in which she plans to apply her Fulbright research and contribute to the discussions around teaching reading.