I really enjoyed elements of this book and definitely pulled out some strategies for my fifth grade classroom. However, I don’t teach like Finland because I’m not in an environment that allows it. I wish I didn’t live in a high poverty state where the people making our educational decisions haven’t been inside a classroom since they were in school, but I do. The reality is, we don’t teach like Finland because we aren’t Finland. I wish we could be more like them, but it will take much more than 33 strategies to change my state’s schools.

I wish I had read reviews before picking this up at the library. I hate not finishing books, but this was one I almost didn’t. And honestly, I skimmed massive chunks. Like other reviewers have said, this book was just like a stupidly detailed laundry list of everything this man heard and said each day. I’m not sure if this is his writing style or was just specific to this book. It was a horrifically boring way to read about schools and subbing.

He was also very clueless and kind of a jackass. He was hyper critical of what teachers were teaching and how they would run their classroom. Sir, you can’t just let kids talk about what they want all day. That isn’t school! And full time teachers cannot run a classroom without any rules or management. Sure, as a sub, you can deal with noise and chaos for that one day in there, so rules don’t seem necessary to you. But an educator, you can’t teach that way. And goodness I got pissed off at his reaction to a Holocaust unit. He claimed watching an interview with Elie Wiesel wasn’t a good lesson because it was depressing, and that he didn’t want to “force teenagers to shake hands with the dead”. Good lord. Children have to learn sad things... The Holocaust is important. It needs to be learned. Just because all teenagers “want to do is flirt and joke and get through the day” doesn’t mean that’s all they get to do.

As an educator, there are so many things I wanted fix about our schools, but his suggestions were stupid and absurd. Even the suggestions that were decent, like lessening homework loads or eliminating homework all together, were for stupid reasons. Teachers have been reasons for limiting homework. But most of his “simple” suggestions were absurd. “This kid with ADHD should be educated at home for just a few hours a day, and schools should pay for it.” Ah yes, with all of that extra money. There are so many more examples but I would have to write an entire novel myself.

Ug. This book was awful.