LiiNK: 2015 Reflection

2015 has been an awesome year for the LiiNK Project. Let's take a minute to reflect on the different steps that were taken over this past year to help our children be more active and responsible through play and character development in the school setting for several public & private schools in Texas.
January, 2015

• Signed two Texas school district MOU's for public schools to begin the LiiNK intervention in Fall, 2015 (Irving ISD & Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD)
• Continued the 2nd year of the LiiNK Project with K-2 private schools (Starpoint & Trinity Valley School) - each of these schools was paired with a matching control school in the area
• The Miles Foundation and the Andrews Foundation gave funding to the LiiNK Project
• Ordered Positive Action character curriculum for the schools - this is the one we use exclusively for the LiiNK Project (www.positiveaction.net).

February through May, 2015

• Irving & EM-S schools engaged in three LiiNK trainings
• Observations & data collection began & continued in all 12 schools (public & private)
• Parent talks interspersed
• Board of trustees presentations
• Webinar #2 with Texas Department of State Health Services on recess in the schools click here
• Invited speaker presentation at the U.S. Play Coalition Conference on LiiNK (Rhea)
• Follow up LiiNK presentation at the U.S. Play Coalition Conference (Rhea & Rivchun)
• Shape America presentation - LiiNK
• Discussions began with other school districts interested in being part of the LiiNK Project
• Discussions continued with funding partners

August, 2015

• One more half day training before school started
• Talk to parents at Open House

September through December, 2015

• Irving & EM-S school districts launched LiiNK in four elementary schools - grades K & 1 (four recesses daily and three character lessons weekly)
• Observations & data collection began & continued in all 12 schools (public & private)
• Parent talks interspersed
• Webinar #3 with Texas Department of State Health Services on recess in the schools click here
• Presentation at the TASA & School Board Convention - Austin, Texas
• Presentation at the CEFPI Convention - how to design playgrounds differently - San Diego, CA
• Two presentations about results of Year 2 data - TAHPERD Convention - Dallas, TX
• Two school districts signed on to be part of the LiiNK Project for 2016
• Discussions continued with funding partners

It is a non-stop process to move this project forward each and every day. I reflect back on how the project began. We wouldn't be in private and public schools today without some very forward thinking leaders in the schools. I have to thank some very deserving superintendents/associate superintendents for their trust in me and my team to do the research right and keep the information as transparent as possible within each district. So a shout out to Dr. Jim Chadwell, Superintendent at Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD, Daniel Gallagher, EM-S ISD Deputy Superintendent of Elementary Services, Dr. Adam Grinage, Associate Superintendent for Academic Services and Dr. Sandi Cravens, Physical Education & Health Coordinator from Irving ISD. The principals at each of these schools have also been amazing: Bryan McLain, EME principal, Kelli Shipp, EME asst principal, Angela Long, Irving Townsell principal, Raymie Ramsey, Irving Brown principal, and Jorge Acosta, Irving Gilbert principal. And definitely not least, the teachers from all four schools have been wonderful through this learning process. Change of this magnitude in schools cannot happen without a group coming together as a unified team. These four groups definitely showed how to do this. Thank-you all from the bottom of my heart for a wonderful 2015. Can't wait to see how great things will be in 2016 as we expand in the districts we are already in and as we move into other cities and states across the country.

Reflecting from Finland: Where Liink began

Almost three years later and I'm back in Finland to rejuvenate and explore some more. I have confirmed that Liink has the right purpose and is going in the right direction for children in the U.S. I arrived in Finland five days ago and rented the same apartment I stayed in back in 2012. While here, I have walked the same streets, watched the people, questioned the educators, and reflected on then and now all while having my time for play as well. What I have confirmed again is that physical activity, music, the arts, culinary experiences, the outdoors, leisure time, and especially saunas are still very important to the Finns. I have watched the families gravitate to the outdoors with their children in strollers or playing at a park no matter if it is raining or sunshine, windy and cold, or sunny and warm. The weather doesn't stop the people from enjoying the outdoors. I also passed many individuals and groups playing their music for enjoyment or for performance. People are happy here. They are less stressed, less anxious, smiling more, and walking everywhere. The very aspects I picked up when I was here in 2012 were resonating with me again on this trip.


From an educational perspective, one aspect of Finnish education which is changing is the decision to add 60 minutes of physical education daily to the school schedule. This is great news! Once again Finland is showing that physical movement is at the root of learning. They have continued to require recess (unstructured, outdoor play) to happen for 15 minutes every hour of the school day. Now they are making sure the structured physical movement patterns are taught daily as well.


One aspect of Finnish education which has not changed is the respect the government gives to all content. Each class taught is considered a content specialization. They do not see art, music, and physical education as electives or specials, but instead see them as important as other content such as language arts, math, history, science, geography, foreign language, and so on. Every content has a number of hours it will be taught per week, but it is up to the teacher how that will happen. Many of the teachers have been teaching content as an interdisciplinary approach (i.e., science and math together) for a few years now because it makes so much sense. Other teachers still teach a content at a time. The Finnish government is emphasizing the need to teach more from an interdisciplinary perspective, although in order for this to happen, the university educators need to train teachers from an interdisciplinary approach as well. This concept will take time to change since we have taught in silos for so long.


The U.S. seems to be moving in the same direction as Finland when discussing interdisciplinary approaches. We are changing at the university level when doing projects and teaching classes, but it's changing slowly. This change may take more time to impact the K-12 setting to be more interdisciplinary. I do think it's the right way to go.


So, how is the Liink Project moving in a purposeful direction? We will observe the four recesses embedded in the school day and the character/ethics curriculum embedded three times weekly in four elementary schools this Fall. I visited with Dr. Liisa Hakala from the University of Helsinki today about these two changes taking place in Texas schools. She is the professor I worked with when I was here in 2012. She is very excited to see the results. We hope to see children thriving in the school setting with less anxiety, more confidence, better self-esteem, and better attentional focus as a result of this intervention. Ultimately, students will be able to achieve academically because of better brain function. Only a short time is needed to tell whether the intervention is working or not. Stay tuned.


Have a good summer and play often!

Liink Project: Public schools to launch multiple recesses daily in DFW area

A lot has happened this year. We were able to identify a couple of major Foundations (eg. the Miles Foundation in Fort Worth) to fund the Liink project pilot intervention this spring and on into fall of 2015. We are continuing to seek federal funding, but until we do, it is so helpful to have Foundation support.

Part of the process to move the Liink Project into the schools is to allow school districts to see results and see how the project has faired so far in other schools. So last fall, we had administrators from the two interested public school districts in the Fort Worth area come and observe the Trinity Valley School in action (one of our initial pilot schools). They were so impressed. They noticed things like: children who were relaxed and happy, responsible walking in the halls to and from recess and other classes, short transitions, and attentive children in the classroom. The administrative representation from each school district was different but both teams were comprised of individuals who could make decisions to do or not do the project. Both school districts, by the end of the Fall, decided they wanted to do the project. That was great news! Just because they wanted to do the project didn't mean it was a done deal. At that point, I had to construct an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding)which is a contract between the two parties (school district and TCU) to protect both parties on each of their expected responsibilities. Both districts needed to take this project before their school boards in the spring. Both school boards approved the MOU between their district and the TCU Liink Project for three years with evaluations at the end of each year to make sure everything was going well.

So, who are the two school districts launching this Fall, 2015 with four recesses daily and three character development lessons weekly? Irving ISD and Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD! We are so excited to have them join the Liink Project with grades K and 1. Irving ISD has three schools involved in the project: Brown, Gilbert, & Townsell Elementaries. Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD has identified Eagle Mountain Elementary as their Liink school. We now have completed three full day trainings with the administrators, teachers, intervention specialists, counselors, and physical education teachers from these four schools. The trainings were very successful and created a real excitement to begin the new schedules in the fall. So as of the first day of school in August for these four schools, all grade K and 1 students will be going to recess for 15 minutes two times in the morning and two times in the afternoon. When looking at each of the schedules, the time between recesses in a classroom is never greater than 70 minutes at a time.

Most intervention studies completed in schools take place over a 6-8 week period or maybe a semester. Many studies also try to help 3rd through 5th grade students with interventions such as this. The Liink Project is taking place in the grades K and 1 setting for the first year with a grade level added each year through 8th grade if the data continues to show positive results for the children. What's exciting about this study is that each year we will add a new cohort of schools who are interested in seeing if the Liink Project will help their children be more productive in the classroom and in life. By the end of this next year, the Liink Project will have completed a full year in grades K & 1 in four public schools and grades K-3 in the two private schools. All in all, we will see the impact of this project on 1,280 students and 64 teachers across 6 schools in Liink's 2nd year in the schools. In order to identify whether the effects of the findings are due to the intervention or something else, we will also have four matching control schools for each of the four intervention public schools. We already added control schools this year for the two private schools in Fort Worth. So we will be observing and collecting data this next year in 6 intervention schools and 6 control schools. We're writing up the results now and will be submitting a manuscript in the next month for review. Once the data is published, we will send the link to the data. Just know, that what we are finding right now is off the chart!!! We are so excited with the positive changes that are happening in the children.

It's time to change the environment for learning. The Liink Project is showing to be an awesome platform to create a successful learning environment for teachers to teach and children to learn. If you want to follow us on facebook, please go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-LIINK-Project/712878885435160?fref=nf  and connect with us.

The Liink Project: The first year as a pilot study

We have changed our name to the Liink Project. This stands for Let's inspire innovation 'N kids. For everyone who has been following this project, you know that it wasn't an easy decision to change the name, but it has shown to be a great change in the long run.

We have been very busy since beginning this project as ISIS and now Liink. In Fall, 2013, three of the Deans and the Provost from TCU showed substantial support by giving $125,000 to launch the project. I had talked with several school districts and two private schools back when Dr. Pasi Sahlberg was here in the spring of 2013. By the summer, two superintendents had either been released from the district or walked away. The three school districts that I thought would be involved were no longer going to begin with us that Fall, 2013. So I talked with the Dean's involved in supporting the project and let them know that I could begin with a much smaller cohort and learn more about how to make this work once we went to the public schools, and be ready with some data and hopefully high quality findings by the time we launched in a public school district. They agreed that would be a really good idea. So, two private schools began training in the Fall of 2013 as pilot schools focused on grades K & 1 to implement 3-4 unstructured, outdoor recesses daily and three character development lessons weekly at 15-20 minutes per lesson. Each year, we will add one more year to the project. During the Fall, 2013 semester, we trained the teachers on different aspects of the intervention and collected baseline data on the grades K & 1 children.

In the spring, 2014, we implemented the multiple recesses in the two private schools and the character development curriculum called Positive Action. The teacher adherence to take the students to the multiple recesses daily was very high. The enthusiasm for the character development curriculum was very good from parents, administrators, teachers, and students. The behaviors improved significantly as a result of the intervention as well.

As of this spring, we now have two DFW area public school districts on board to try the Liink Project. We are hosting three full day trainings this spring just like we did with the private schools and then will launch the intervention in the Fall, 2015. We are also collecting baseline data on the children in the schools to make sure that the intervention schools do match the control schools demographically. So when we begin with the public schools in the fall, we will have the original two private schools, two control schools to match them, four public intervention schools, and the four control schools to match each of those intervention schools. All in all, we will be collecting data on over 2000 children across 12 schools in combinations of grade levels: some will be grades K-1 and others will be at grades K-3. We'll keep you posted on how things are going with results. So far, everything is going really well.

LIINK Project: What is so difficult about change?

I have talked for a couple of years now about the need for more structured (physical education) and unstructured (recess) physical activity/play in the K-12 school setting. Children's brains need active, unstructured, outdoor time throughout the day to allow for several things: healthy social and emotional development, stimulation of brain activity, increased oxygen and glucose to fuel the brain, and continued building of highways where the retention of knowledge exists. The trend over the past two decades has been to eliminate recess in the schools in order to teach skills & strategies associated with literacy, math, and science. Furthermore, U.S. state and national policy makers and grant providers are beginning to emphasize a need for longer than seven hour school days that we have presently to increase school accountability, student testing procedures, and the belief that time could be better spent on academics.  In other countries like Finland, Japan, and England, recess is not only expected throughout the day, but in Finland, they even expect the school day to be much less time in the lower grades (K-2) than the middle schools (4.5 hours vs 6.5 hours) and still require recess every 45 minutes. Other countries get it, why can't the U.S.? This is a disturbing phenomenon for children to be required to sit in a chair all day and even withold recess from children who misbehave in order to teach them more curriculum. This phenomenon has no serious research to back it up, and is actually counterproductive to increasing the academic achievements of students (Skrupskelis, 2000). Professional organizations, educators, administrators, teachers, and parents are becoming increasingly concerned with this present trend. Even though we know all of this, we continue to give lip service to the idea, but no one in the public school sector is willing to go out on the limb to make it happen. Why?

A couple of thoughts we all need to consider.

One is that money allocated for schools from state and federal funds based on test scores and attendance rather than the health of our children drives educational decisions. If our children drove the decisions, then we wouldn't care what politicians, textbook companies, and educational agencies demanded and would create more chances throughout the day for unstructured outdoor play for children to explore, create, and socialize.  Research shows that the fundamental requirement for any child is to move. The brain will then work efficiently for learning to take place. Instead, these powerful entities demand that we extend the day, sit for longer periods of time, and continue to prepare for a test. So far, the test scores continue to lag, the children continue to burnout, and the spark of life continues to go out.

Second, we have become so consumed over the past 30 years with comparing ourselves globally to other countries academically, that we have lost sight of the fundamentals of life. It's really not all about a test score. Through teaching to a test, the children have lost the ability to critically think. It's bigger than a test score. We learn  much in life from social experiences, solving problems with different solutions, and making mistakes. We can not truly measure what children learn through a test score. We have a generation of children presently who are afraid to fail, have high anxiety and stress, cannot finish something they start, have no regard or respect for life or people, and want something for nothing.

The only way to change the educational problems we have is to trade quantity for quality of curriculum we try to cover in a year, allow students to explore through play, teach character development regularly, and redefine the rigidity we have grown to embrace in the classroom and on the playground to a more explorative environment. Language arts, math, science, & social studies should be balanced in a child's world with physical education, art, music, languages, and technology. All of this content is important, but more does not equal better in this case. As Aristotle states, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Thinking that we have to have language arts, math, science, and social studies every day is the wrong way to think. The collection of experiences is greater than each experience alone.

We have the answer for changing the structure of the school to embrace unstructured outdoor recess, adding character development weekly, and backing off the amount of curriculum needed to be successful academically. It's the LiiNK Project. The results are in and they are very good.

LIINK Project: The first year has begun

The LIINK Project (Let's inspire innovation 'N kids) is up and moving in a good direction. We launched in September with two Fort Worth private schools. Starpoint is a lab school at TCU and the other is a K-12 prviate school called Trinity Valley. The goal this year was to collect baseline data on the K & 1 grade children this past Fall, train the teachers and administrators with the tools necessary to make some key changes in the school day by January, and observe behaviors in the classroom and recess arenas to make sure the observation instruments we developed were going to work. So, our goals have been met so far. We launched the intervention in January. The teachers are introducing Positive Action character development curriculum weekly and providing multiple recesses daily.

We have learned several things through this pilot study so far. We knew that parents needed to be part of the conversation from the beginning. What we didn't expect was the parents would be as supportive as they have been. Many of the parents, after hearing what we were going to do, asked if their children who were not K & 1 could somehow get similar experiences. The parents feel that their children do need more physical activity and breaks during the school day and especially when they raise boys. The research shows that boys need these breaks more than the girls at times which is showing up more and more with the discipline issues and lack of focus in the classroom. We have since decided that when starting this program in other schools, we need to launch it across all elementary grades even though we will only collect data on the youngest ones to begin. We still feel that all of the children will benefit from the program and the parents will be much happier as well.

Another thing we've learned is that the training needs to involve everyone who will be impacted by the character development curriculum, not just the homeroom teachers. This includes all teachers, administrators, parents, and staff who have any connection with the children learning the curriculum. A couple of funny things have happened to bring us to this conclusion. One is that the students were going home talking to their parents about castles, different fun characters, and keys to doors with the parents lost to why the students were talking about these things. We realized real quick that the parents needed to be aware of the types of things their children were learning for carry over impact at home. The other funny thing was that the children began using the concepts by role playing at recess. It was really fun to see the impact of a curriculum being introduced in a short period of time having that kind of influence on the kids. This is only the 2nd month of intervention.

We've also learned that this intervention is working faster than we thought it would. We are seeing some very good annectdotal evidence of positive changes in the first 6 weeks as a result of additional recesses daily and character development curriculum implementation and can't wait to see pre-post comparisons in May!

LIINK Project: What is it?

Many different strategies have been tried at different levels of U.S. schools over the past 20 years trying to increase children's ability to learn. Some of these strategies employed have been increasing the number of hours students go to school each day, increasing the number of hours the students sit in a desk to take in more content, decrease the number of minutes in a day the students are participating in physical activity or unstructured break times, increase the amount of homework students have to do each night, and increase the emphasis on teaching to the standardized tests per grade level. These strategies are not working.

The LIINK Project (Let's inspire innovation 'N kids) is the development and implementation of a four part intervention inspired by the Finnish education system and some bright spots in U.S. programs to improve academic achievement and the school/classroom environment which are very different than the above strategies. One evolving U.S. strategy, recognized for quite a few years now in state legislations, that needs more attention and a different way of putting it into action is character development.  48 out of 50 state legislations have either mandated or encouraged character development since as early as 1995. Each of the states has varied the instructions given to schools from implementing bullying curriculum to implementing no less than 10 minutes of instruction focused on character qualities to emphasizing principles of morality, truth, justice, & true comprehension of American citizenship. None of these mandates or emphasis has explained how to make this happen so many schools use more of a philosophical emphasis in the schools rather than a curriculum driven emphasis. Finland, on the other hand, has mandated religion or ethics as an independent course in the curriculum for at least an hour a week  per week of the school year per school year from the time they enter school at 7 years of age until the time they leave middle school at around 15 years of age over the past 20 plus years.

Some think, including me, in order for the school environment to be more conducive to learning, a structured character development curriculum as a designated content piece needs to be implemented from the time students begin school at 5-6 years of age through at least middle school.  High school should continue to build on character development as well, but I feel that our high schools need to be overhauled and this would be a standard content piece to consider when the restructuring begins. Therefore, one of the four parts of the Liink Project intervention is to add character development as a content area to the curriculum every year. A second part of the intervention is to add multiple recess periods throughout the day at 15 minutes per session. The third and fourth parts will be implemented as school districts are ready to move to those next two steps. The third part is to change from standardized testing to developmental assessments through 5th grade. The fourth part is to restructure the school day so the young children experience more play and creativity than academic content in the early years and develop more academic content as they mature in later elementary years through middle school.

Liink Project has launched as a pilot program in two Fort Worth area schools this Fall. Trinity Valley School, a private K-12 school and Starpoint School, a grades 1-6 lab school have collaborated with TCU to train and implement character development as a content area and add a designated number of unstructured, outdoor recesses daily. This first year will be used to figure out the different pieces such as training of teachers, scheduling of character development in the classroom and extra recesses throughout the day, as well as make sure the schools have smooth transitions from what they have done previously to this new format. Then next year we will launch this model in at least one public school district and try to add at least one of the last two parts of the intervention to the schools we are working with this year. This year and in future years, we will begin with the youngest children and add a grade level each year until all students are involved in the intervention from the pilot schools. We will be assessing several psychological and physical areas of development in children. I'll keep you updated on how the pilot is moving along.

Ethics in public schools

One of the topics I think needs to be included in the public schools from the time a child enters until he/she exits is ethics. Ethics is something that I think is really lacking in our U.S. culture at this point. I talked about ethics and religion in an earlier blog while in Finland so I won't go into more detail about the differences. As I stated in that blog, religion in the U.S. public schools would not work because of separation of church and state. Ethics would. I define ethics as the rules of human conduct with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. I feel that our culture has come to a place where if you are wrong, well it's not as bad as it could be, so let it go. This has happened in our schools repeatedly. It started at least 20 years ago when I was still teaching at the high school level. I remember teachers sending students to the office for breaking rules, but the administrators sending them back to class stating that there were far more critical issues going on and these rules being broken were not critical. We just needed to do a better job of managing our classes. I've seen it in police work as well. They will state that they would rather turn their heads for some issues and go after the more critical laws being broken. There is an unhealthy perception around actors/actresses, politicians, athletes who break the law but have less harsh consequences for their actions than the general public. The general public thinks, at times, that if the famous can do it, why can't they? As a result, our culture has become very muddied about rules and consequences, about respect, about right & wrong, about personal responsibility. We no longer hold ourselves accountable. If someone else doesn't catch us doing something wrong, then we continue to push the limits.

In our society, children watch athletes, actors/actresses, politicians for what is right and wrong; for the ethics of life. Many believe that these individuals are children's role models far more than parents or guardians, so when they do something wrong and punishment is minimal, children think it's ok. Let's consider some of the individuals who children have placed their trust in and set their actions in motion to be like over the past few years: pro men's golfer, a past U.S. President, numerous senators/representatives,  pro football players, 7 time winner of Tour de France now stripped of his titles. The list goes on and on. It's time for the pendelum to swing back to a place of intrinsic drive. Do the right thing because it makes us feel better. Children need to know what is right and what is wrong. They need to know that failure is part of the process to succeed. They need to experience failure so that they will get back up and try again. They need to realize that their actions have far reaching consequences. Our children today are a product of what we have trained them to be over the past 20 years. Many of our young adults don't stay with something if it gets too hard. They try to shortcut the system and want more pay for less work. They break the law through social media outlets because they don't think about the consequences. The moral compass needs to be strengthened if the majority of our children are going to be better citizens and contribute more to our society as a whole. 

If ethics were brought into the schools as a content area, children would develop a stronger sense of what is appropriate in such areas as character, personal responsibility, intrinsic motivation, bullying, cheating, lying, and an area that has really mushroomed, social media. The curriculum will have to be written for this content area, but this is a content area already being taught in Finland and other countries, so we can develop our content from what they have started. We will have to make sure that we teach the topics that reach our kids in our fair and unbiased way.  Teaching our children about these issues early on and continuing throughout their adolescent years should create a much more responsible adult who makes much wiser choices based on how they feel intrinsically instead of whether they will get caught or not.

Dr. Pasi Sahlberg coming to Fort Worth

The last time I wrote was when I returned from Finland where I learned about how the U.S. might learn from the educational successes of their country. One of the individuals who helped to create the success that they have today is Dr. Pasi Sahlberg. He is the Director General of CIMO (National Center for International Mobility and Cooperation). This position affords him the ability to promote internationalization and tolerance, creativity, and global ethics in the Finnish society through mobility and institutional cooperation in education, culture, youth, and sport. He not only promotes educational changes in Finland, but also across the globe. His most recent book entitled, "Finnish Lessons" has been instrumental in changing the way people think about education globally.

As a result of my visit to Finland, I have been able to invite Dr. Sahlberg to TCU in Fort Worth as our Kinesiology Green Chair Lecturer this spring. He has agreed to be here this next week, March 19-21 to talk about four very important topics that I believe, as a result of my intensive observations in Finland, have led to their educational successes. I do believe these four issues are pivotal to the kind of change we need in the U.S. They are ethics, restructuring the school day, more physical education and recess per day, and removal of standardized tests. I will cover what each topic area includes but will feature each topic in separate blogs this week.

The first topic that Dr. Sahlberg will discuss this next week, ethics, will be focused on how it should look in the schools. Finland has introduced it as a separate content area in their schools. I feel that we should focus on ethics similarly in our schools. In order to do this, we would have to see ethics as a content area. Public schools would need to identify which content areas would be represented in the K-8 curriculum (scope & sequence) and then decide how many hours per week would be dedicated to each of these content areas. For example, if a school district wants to stress reading, writing, math, science, music, art, physical education, ethics, and crafts in grades 1 and 2, then those content areas would receive a dedicated number of hours per week. As a student develops and matures, the types of content, the number of hours per content, and the variation in topics per content area would adjust. Ethics would stress lessons on personal responsibility, respect, kindness, patience, bullying, social media, etc. The lessons would only be 15-20 minutes per day, but would infuse the complete development of the child that is needed so desparately in our children today. We can't watch children in everything they do. They have to know enough about right and wrong, good and bad, to be able to make some responsible decisions and feel good about making those decisions.

The 2nd topic that Pasi will discuss is restructuring the school day. The K-2 children only go to school for 4 1/2 hours in Finland and 6 hours for grades 3-6, while the U.S. children go to school for 7-8 hours daily no matter what age they are. The U.S. is pushing to extend the day that children go to school to be longer whereas the Finns continue to maintain shorter periods of time for the younger children. The Finns are beating us in reading, science, and math. Pasi will address our cultures and how we can make a difference with shorter days for our younger children.

The 3rd topic is more physical activity/recess in the schools. This is, to me, the easiest piece to implement in the public schools. In Finland, they structure their elementary day around 45 minute content lessons just like the U.S. One major difference exists between the two countries. The Finns then take a 15 minute recess outside before beginning another content session for 45 minutes. This happens every hour in Finland. 45 minute content followed by 15 minute recess throughout the day. We treat recess as a one time event, if that, and think that one 15 minute break is all children need. Adults forget what it's like to sit in a chair for hours on end before getting to move around again. We forget that children will learn more when allowed to have more physical activity breaks. We have become so fixated on being better on tests, that we have compromised the essential part of our beings: movement. This has compromised our metabolism and our brain function. Dr. Salhberg will address different strengths of recess and physical activity in the schools.

The 4th topic is the removal of standardized tests. The Finns don't take any standarized tests. They believe that children should have the flexibility to learn without pressure of standarized testing. Developmental evaluations are much more important to the Finns than standardized tests. They do not grade the children at all until the completion of the 5th grade. Until then, they send home a formal developmental evaulation for each child at the end of the fall and at the end of the spring semesters. Their semesters are equal to ours. They have the same summer breaks and similar holidays throughout the year as we do. Dr. Sahlberg will address assessments and what we should do differently if we're going to be successful in the U.S.

I'll address all of these topics in more detail in future blogs. Anyone who reads this blog and is able to come to the workshops & lecture next week is welcome. He will work with university faculty next Tuesday, March 19th on these topics and then K-12 leaders on Wednesday, March 20th. That evening he will address educational reform as an open lecture. For anyone interested in attending any of these workshops or the lecture, go to www.harrisresearch.tcu.edu for more information, Pasi's bio, and the schedules for each event.

Want more or want better?

My experiences over the past six weeks have led me to think about what people want in an educational system. What does it take to create a strong, reliable system that will promote learning, respect, and social responsibility? What I've seen in Finland is a system that wants better without more hours. The pupils go to school for 4 1/2 hours as 1st and 2nd graders, then about 6 hours daily from 3rd through 6th grade. This phenomenon of going to school for half a day and getting excellent results from the pupils is hard for most countries to wrap their heads around. Most countries, including the U.S., Japan, China, and Korea have taken the school day to fairly long hours and think this will get better results. This is the mentality that the U.S. has built  themselves around for decades. Working longer will get better results. Is this true?  Finland is showing everyone that this is not necessarily true. Not only are the pupils going to school for less hours daily, but the amount of time they spend on math, science, Finnish, history is only a couple of hours a day with the 7 and 8 year olds and approximately 3 1/2 to 4 hours a day with the 9-12 year olds. The rest of the day is comprised of physical activity, recess, creative time, lunch.

In the U.S. we pride ourselves on working longer hours to get more done. Do we really get more done? Could we get the same amount of work done in less hours if we focused on the task and then had a break. Focus on another task, then have a break. Leave at a reasonable time and relax at home. This high work ethic mentality has been taken to the U.S. schools as well. Finland children rarely take assignments home with them and they focus on learning content at school for less time with breaks in between. End result: better test scores and more productive learning across the students. Shouldn't we look at this phenomenon and consider making some changes in the U.S. schools? Parents, administrators, communities are crying out for change in the schools. We all know that more assessments is not the key, more time in a desk is not the key, less active time is not the key, but what are we doing? We're applying more assessments, more time in the desk, less time being active.  This equation continues to produce poorer results!

We need to consider this thought: Do we want to strive for more or do we want to strive for better? If we want better, then we need to coordinate our time on task to be focused and then have a break. If we want more, then we continue to do what we've been doing. Another way of putting this: Coaches for many years thought that keeping athletes on the practice field or in the gym for longer hours would produce better performance. What we now know: less time on the field or in the gym, but more focused practice produces better performance. This is the same mindset I want to see for the U.S. schools. Less time in the desk - more productive performance based on more focused learning. So I'll end with the question I began with: What does it take to create a strong, reliable system that will promote learning, respect, and social responsibility? This is not an easy question, but it needs to be answered. Good luck thinking it through.

Sports and Culture: The Vision

My week has been full of many different facets of experiences related to the Finnish educational system. I started off Monday observing in a traditional grades 1-6 school, Tuesday and Wednesday at a grades 1-9 school, Thursday at Espoo with the preschool children in the forest, and today I was at the Finnish Sport Federation site. What a week of observation and learning!

Before today, I didn't really understand what the Finnish Sports Federation (FSF) represented for Finland. In the U.S. we have so many different elements related to sport from pee wee programs, to youth sport programs, to competitive school athletics, to the university athletic programs, club teams at the preadolescent through college levels, adult sport leagues, and finally professional sports. They are not all under the same umbrella. In Finland, they are. The FSF is multifaceted. Their main goal is to connect sport and physical activity to the community across the lifespan. They believe everyone should have the opportunity to exercise and do sports from all angles. The FSF, in partnership with the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) for over two years, shared an objective to find new techniques both for activating those who have not exercised and enhance a sense of community through physical activity and sport. What came of this was Vision 2020 which states that the "Finnish will be the most physically active sports nation in the world." They feel their role is to be the leader and coordinator of the many collaborative groups who will make this possible: Professional sports teams, The Finnish Olympic Committee, Finnish Paralympic Committee, and sector-specific groups (children, youth, adults). The communications director for the Finnish Sports Federation, Eila Ruuskanen-Himma, published an article stressing that in order for the Finnish people to become the most physically active by 2020, they are going to have to focus more on different lifestyles to capture the interests of the community. These lifestyles are described in much more detail in her article. The media can play a crucial part in getting the word out with different messages for the different lifestyle mindsets. I wish them well in reaching this goal to be the most physically active!

The Finnish Sports Federation's focus is for the whole lifespan whereas they have a branch of their system called Young Finland that was founded as its own entity in 1993 that focuses primarily on children. This association's purpose is to integrate more physical activity into the pupil's school and after school day. Their objective is to increase the pupil's will to exercise, create equality and attention for all, build honesty & open mindedness, introduce a balance of nature, and develop solid social skills. This Young Finland association (a staff of about 30) has concentrated on several concepts: being physically active, eating right, getting 9-10 hours of sleep, and limiting sedentary behavior. The following are some of the things they have promoted and emphasied through media outlets: that any pupil between the ages of 7 and 18 should be physically active for at least 1-2 hours daily and should sit less than 2 hours at any given time within the day.  Another emphasis of the program is to train peer instructors from grades 5-9 to work with the younger children. They have also influenced the schools to have one long recess per day of 30 minutes, whereas the others are 15 minutes each. I observed the pupils through a cycle of content classes and recesses and understand why they want one longer recess per day.

When the pupils would go out for recess each time, some would begin instantly playing different activities (soccer, tag, stand up scooters, or an activity called diapolo - see the video below). Many others would stand and visit for the first 5 minutes and then begin to break up into groups to play activities. It was interesting to watch this because it happened every recess that way. Since most of the time, the recess is 15 minutes, just about the time most of them would begin to engage in physical activity, it was time to go back in. With one longer recess of 30 minutes, the pupils could actually engage in activity for at least 20-25 minutes and really get some measurable physical activity in the school day.

A couple of things that were stressed today that I feel are important to their way of working sports into the culture: 1) they don't want sport to consume the younger child; they want it to be an avenue for being active regularly, and 2) they want activity or gym areas to be accessible for all ages who want to be active and can't afford to pay for access. Don't get me wrong. Many of the sports will cost to participate, but there are some offered that children can participate free or with a minimal charge (like 2 euros per session). This goes back to the equality emphasis that I have stressed previously which they are now emphasizing with sport as well. The government has given funds to the sports clubs budgets to be able to help children participate without fees for some of the sports. I think the U.S. has a very complex system for sport and trying to have one Federation that controls all of it is virtually impossible. I do, however, like some of the ideas they have that I think can be implemented with our kids to create a more active environment. You can check out what they do at this website: www.nuorisuomi.fi. I have to warn you that only a little part of it is in English. Brush up on your Finnish!  Have a great week-end!

High respect for teachers in Finland

I have found that teachers and professors are very highly respected in Finland. All teachers have to have a master's degree before they can enter the classroom or the gymnasium to teach. At the elementary level, the classroom teacher is prepared to teach the content areas and one of the following three areas: physical education, music, or art.  For someone to teach strictly physical education, they have to get the master's degree in physical education and then they will teach at the lower (grades 7-9) or upper (3 years of high school) secondary school settings. There is only one university in Finland that educates students to be physical education teachers with the Master's degree needed. This is Jyvaskyla University. It is located about 3 hours north of Helsinki by train and has a population of about 131,000. Only 80 physical educators are trained at this university at a time in the Master's program and everyone of them has a job when they graduate. Each of the universities is highly selective with the students for each discipline, so these physical education students are the cream of the crop. There is a need for more physical educators, but they don't have the resources to train more than 80 per group at this university.  I will be going up there to observe in the next couple of weeks. This is such a different situation than in the U.S. We have plenty of university graduates in physical education and very few jobs for them. U.S. physical education specialized students have to be able to teach a different subject area in order to be hired most of the time as a teacher.

Crossroads for the U.S.

The United States has steadily dropped in reading, math, and science status for the past 20 years and presently muddles along in the middle of the pack on National and global assessments (Hancock, 2011), even though we continue to throw more money at schools and teach more and more to specific test standards (CDC, 2010). Physical education has all but been removed from the schools across the U.S. as a result of a trend that if we stay in the classroom longer, measure teacher competencies competitively, and teach to a test, we will ultimately be better learners/scholars (CDC, 2010). As a result, our children are becoming more sedentary, obese, and less academically skilled (Dan Rather’s Report, 2012). Research has shown that children who engage in physical activity and play will do better academically than children who are sedentary and less creative and active (Singh et al., 2012; Trudeau & Shephard, 2010). Finland is ahead of the curve with their forward thinking and educational model. The United States could learn from some of their ideas as we ponder how the next generation of children will learn better skills than the last two generations of children. The purpose of my visit to Finland is to observe the Finnish children in their K-12 school environment, take in the concepts and teaching strategies of the teachers in the K-12 school setting, and develop a model for integrating some of these successful concepts into pilot programs in schools across Texas. I began the observations this morning and will continue following the university students and the elementary, lower, and upper secondary students over the next six weeks.