Thoughts about American Schools

One of the major parts of the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program has been to complete an inquiry project on an educational topic. Besides spending time at the library and getting familiar with literature, I wanted to use the opportunity to learn from local teachers. I visited 15 different schools in five U.S. states during this program and collected practical ideas for foreign language classrooms. Visiting many schools in different areas from coast to coast has also shaped the picture I have of the country and it has helped me understand how diverse and many-sided the U.S. and its schools and society really are.

One thing has become clear during these months; there is no such thing as a typical American school. Not only do school systems vary slightly from state to state, but schools also differ from area to area since most of the schools’ funding comes from the local level, mostly from property taxes, meaning wealthier areas have more resources than schools in poorer neighborhoods. On top of this, there is a variety of different types of schools. Besides the regular public schools, there are also many so called charter and magnet schools which often have more freedom than the regular schools and they often focus on something specific such as project-based learning. Students to these schools are normally chosen through a lottery as there are often many more applicants than these schools are able to take. There are also elite private schools with high tuition fees for those who can afford them. Coming from Finland where all schools are very similar and a lot of attention is paid on providing everyone with the same equal opportunities in education, I found it interesting to see these differences between schools here. Even though I’ve seen many amazing schools, I’ve understood that not all the schools here have the resources they would need.

One difference between Finnish and American schools is also the amount of testing. Whereas Finnish children and students do not take any standardized tests until the very end of their high school/upper secondary education, here in the U.S. students are tested many times a year starting at elementary schools. While these standardized tests probably serve a purpose, they also give a lot of pressure not only to the students but to teachers as well. Schools are often ranked according to the results and often even the funding of the schools partly depends on the results. Even teachers themselves are evaluated regularly. I’ve met many hard working dedicated teachers who even spend their lunch breaks and prep periods tutoring students, and it’s been sad to hear how little appreciation teachers get here in America.

What I found wonderful was the number of different extracurricular activities, such as music, sports and academic clubs most American schools provide their students. In Finland young people join different clubs in their communities, whereas here they can also do a lot of different things at school for free after their regular classes. I also noticed that American schools pay more attention to the differences between students when it comes to different level classes. Here students are offered different options, for example honors classes and AP classes, which allow students to take even college level classes at high school, something that is not very common in Finland yet. Despite some differences between the schools in America and Finland, in the end we are doing the same job and wanting the best for our students.