As an educator who’s lived and taught in both the US and Denmark, Pernille’s story is a revealing look into two vastly different education systems. Let’s unpack her journey and what it tells us about work-life balance, societal values, and teaching philosophies.
You’ll hear:
• Why Pernille’s family moved to Wisconsin from Denmark when she was a teenager, how she became a teacher in the U.S., and why she and her American husband made the decision in 2022 to move with their four children to Denmark
• The cultural differences Pernille has noticed living in Denmark, particularly in relation to families, children, work, and school
• How the Danish school system is set up, including how students are not formally taught to read until the equivalent of 2nd grade in the U.S, and how high school (as Americans understand it) ends around age 15 so students can focus on career training
• What the school day looks like for Pernille, who is looping with her students through multiple grade levels, including how much instructional vs planning time she has and why Danish teachers are not permitted to work more than 40 hours a week
• The aspects of the Danish approach to work/life balance that U.S. educators might replicate to make teaching more effective, efficient, and enjoyable
She shares, “In Denmark, being a teacher is about nurturing well-being first—both for students and educators. It’s about giving your best within working hours and then fully embracing life at home.”
“And, education here isn’t just academics; it’s learning through play, community building, and practical skills that prepare children for real-world challenges from an early age.”
I’m always curious about what it’s like to teach in different countries, and if you feel the same, I think you’ll find this informal conversation is a fascinating deep dive into values, priorities, and what it means for kids and teachers to co-thrive.
Click here to read the transcript and participate in the discussion: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/how-danish-schools-foster-work-life-balance/
[Music] welcome to episode 303 of Angela Watson’s Truth for teachers I’m your host Angela Watson and I’m here to speak encouragement into the hearts of Educators and get you informed and energized for the week ahead today I’m talking with my dear friend pril rip about her experiences teaching in the US versus her experiences in Denmark visit truth forte. for an easy to read easy to share version of this podcast episode if the IEP process is confusing for you as an educator and overwhelming for families there’s a new free resource that can help season 3 of the understood explains podcast is like a crash course on IEPs from the perspective of a teacher who’s been there hosted by teacher and special education expert Juliana Ube understood explains is Dem defying the IEP process for families with episodes explaining the difference between 504 plans and IEPs how kids qualify for each one how to know if your child needs an IEP and more it’s a great overview for the general ed teacher and totally understandable for families who are unfamiliar with the IEP process understood explains is also available in Spanish to support multilingual families and help them advocate for their kids and it’s all free to listen to understood explains search for understood explains in your podcast app that’s understood explains today I’m catching up with a longtime friend who now lives and teaches in Denmark you might already know her yourself perneel is the founder of the global read aloud a global literacy initiative which grew to connect millions of students around the world she’s also the author of passionate readers the art of reaching and engaging every child and passionate Learners how to engage and Empower your students which is now in its second edition my friendship with pral goes back to the early days of blogging more than 15 years ago and since she moved to Denmark in the summer of 2022 with her husband and their four kids she and I have had some conversations on Boxer about her experiences there and what she shared with me has been so fascinating that I told her a couple weeks ago go we just need to do a deep dive and we need to share this I know the folks who listen to Truth for teachers will find this just as interesting as I do so she agreed and that’s what you’re about to hear a lengthy informal conversation between perneel and I about what’s different about teaching in Denmark and the Danish approach to work life balance child care families schools and parenting listen in so pero we need a short back back story here for context tell me about your family connection to Denmark and how you ended up moving there after teaching in the US yeah so I was born and raised in Denmark and if you had told me as a child growing up that I would actually end up with the majority of my adult life being in America I would have laughed after all Denmark is you know pretty consistently ranked the second happiest nation in the world but uh my mom had was a teacher and is a teacher and had a Wandering heart and so when I was 18 she moved our entire family to Wisconsin which I definitely had to look up on a map and I thought I was going for a year I thought it was kind of like the the sabatical year and then I was gonna go back but of course that’s never How The Story Goes I met a boy and that boy introduced me to a much better boy thank God who became my husband and he was a you know a red white and blue American and so life slowly just kind of built its path over there and I think once I realized um in my 20s that I wanted to be a teacher it was kind of like okay well America is where I’m going to be a teacher and I went back to school and got my degree and we had kids and all of a sudden this whole life had unfolded around us and yet in my head every time we went to Denmark to visit you know because we still had family here and friends and it was like coming home uh and it was coming home it was this idea of being able to sink your shoulders a little bit to hear your name pronounced correctly and also have your name everywhere like it’s not a strange name in Denmark it’s super super common and there was something in that feeling uh that I started longing for a lot more and it wasn’t ever uh oh my god let’s get out of America it was always a let’s run towards this opportunity if we can make it work let’s go and try and Transplant this very American Family into Denmark as Educators and see what happens um but I also thought a lot about this question because there were so many factors there was the the burnt out uh you know absolutely burnt out stress factor from from teaching never feeling like I had enough time for my own children who were getting older we have four kids there was also politics my oldest is trans and so thinking about uh the policies and the hatred surrounding the trans community in the US was really scary school shootings uh thinking about how crazy it was that we had a tourniquet kit hanging in my Ela classroom that just showed up like no no PD no staff training like here you go all of those things and then also recognizing that my children only knew what it meant to be Danish in name alone the Traditions that I had brought in to our family but they didn’t really know what it felt like to be a part of the Danish culture and so uh you know after after a long Memorial Day weekend we looked at each other and I was like is is is it now do we start looking at this opportunity is there an opportunity for us to go and try this not as a permanent goodbye to America but as a let’s try this and also because I’m curious what is it like to be an educator in Denmark you know when I would visit my family here and they’re talking about this work life balance and I was like there’s no way like that’s got to be your corporate job and all of those things and so we were both really really curious and so we we jumped in you know into this job search with both feet didn’t know if my husband would even get a residence permit so it was me all of a sudden looking for a job could not get an education job to save my life and ended up in marketing instead but got a job that was enough to move us back here um and uh when the when the job offer came through it was a big decision because all of a sudden I wasn’t going to be a teacher anymore or at least not in that moment and it was also obviously a huge sacrifice for my husband as an American moving to a country where he had no rights at all couldn’t speak the language they had already denied his uh degree as a teacher they were like me that’s nice we can see your teacher but you’re not a teacher in Denmark you have to go back to school in Danish you know he gave up his whole career knowing I was moving my own children away from a life that was really good and very close to our family in a job that I loved in a district that I loved in a community that I love just to chase this dream of what it meant to be Danish again um was a big decision but uh I remember my husband saying two things to me as we were sitting and making the decision Brandon and one of them was uh let’s just do it for a year and see how it goes and the other was you’re still a teacher even if you don’t have a classroom and so those two things were really important and then it was like we said yes in July 7th of July and I had to be Copenhagen at my job August 25th and so it was it was six weeks of sheer Insanity selling our house selling almost everything we own obviously quitting jobs getting stuff shipped finding a place to land in and I’m so glad that that was how it went because I think if we had had more time we would have been really scared and here it was just like a crazy train that we had to stay on and uh we showed up in Denmark and it was kind of like what did we just do um but now we’ve been here nearly coming up on two years uh in August and uh we didn’t go home after a year and I I think it’s it’s going to be a while I think before we go home but so it was it was an idea of going home and and certainly also of just wanting to to see what what’s it like to to work in a country that is so significantly different than the US and especially work within educ a knowing that the work really is Central around the same themes but performed quite differently and also would my own kids understand why their mom was the way she was which I think there’s been a lot of instances now they’re like this makes so much sense now like why you have the personality you have I love that I’m like I don’t know if it’s for good or bad so that’s the connection to Denmark and I will say if we hadn’t had that connection we could moved here like Denmark is notorious for making it impossible for anyone outside of the EU it took my husband 9 months to get his like a permission to like breathe the air here and in those nine months he had no rights he had no bank account he had nothing like he he couldn’t do anything he couldn’t even volunteer uh they are very very closely guarded and it’s such a shame because I think about all of the people who come here um the migrants and all of the things and the immigrants um and and what they to the country but you know we can cross our fingers and try to push push the boundaries of politics in any way we can because I wish there were more people that could come to Denmark and experience life here but until then we’ll just keep like exporting our ideas and hoping to help people that way yeah it’s been really interesting hearing your stories about the transition you know because I really only understand the American system and here we have tons of people immigrating from all different places all the time and that’s really been the design of our country from the very beginning and so I just sort of assumed it was that easy that if an American wanted to just pick up and move to Denmark Shore they could just do that and talking to you it’s like okay that is not the case so to be clear this is not an episode about let’s all move to Denmark and teach not happen like that that’s not our purpose here no it it really isn’t because we couldn’t believe how hard it was like we started thinking about moving home in 2010 and at that point like it was just this crazy idea of like maybe we should go home for a little bit or me for home obviously not for bran it but we couldn’t like at that point even though he was married to a Dane with Dana’s children had an education you know had a like not a lot of money but like a job that could pay right yeah like they were like nope you don’t fulfill the requirements it wasn’t until 2018 that he even fulfilled the requirements and the Visa that he has is contingent on the fact that he has Dan’s children and so when they turn 18 he’s out of the country unless he changes and gets permission for a different Visa so and and and Denmark only allows that because of the EU because the EU came in and said by the way you can’t keep parents away from their children just because they’re Danish the Danish government was like darn it Dad and we see it I I love I love Reddit uh for all of its flaws and me too me too yeah and always in the Danish subred at Denmark they’re always like my grandmother was Danish and people are like they don’t care like literally like you could be like unless you have a Danish passport like get a really good job that we really want try marrying a Dane but even then may not work yeah it’s wild it’s really wild so tell me about the cultural differences that you’ve noticed living in Denmark particularly in relation to families children work school it’s it’s wild like I think it’s finally started to sink in now because I’m taking it so much for granted and I realized that today as I was driving home and it was like 3:30 and which was late for me and I was like I’m going to go home and not work and my kids were running around the yard and they had friends over so in Denmark the whole system and mind you there’s always going to be people that are outside of kind of that intended system is set up so that you work to live not live to work and it is very very protected so uh obviously both I mean in my marketing job and also as a teacher I I work I work 37 hours you don’t work 40 but you work 37 and in my uh first week of school I was told very strictly by not just my union rep but also my colleagues and my principal that I had not to go over those 37 hours so it’s 40 hours with breaks and stuff in school they were like if you do please let us know and I was like sure that’s what everybody says but the following week I ended up sending a just a me a message and saying you know I’m kind of I’m I’m drowning a little bit like there’s so much to do and I’m taking over this class in the middle of the year and and he pulled me in the next day and he said okay here’s what we’re going to do we’re going to get sub coverage for you for the next four weeks for this these two hours so that you have more prep time during the day I also set up these meetings with these people who are going to show you so that you have less prep and I was just like wait what just happened and it truly was but it was so serious and he was like we have to protect you because we don’t want you to burn out but it’s Society wise like I was just talking to my colleagues where uh my kids had an art show at school and we were told the day like two days before because it wasn’t intended for parents and then it opened up for parents and my colleague goes well you know you have the right to go to that right that you can just go down to the office and say I’m going to my child’s thing and and you can go and I was like really and they’re like oh yeah yeah they can’t stop you from that or when I was asking one of my friends well how many sick days do we get and she looked at me she was like what’s what do you mean sick days and I was like well you know like how many days can we take sick and she goes however many you need and I was like really yeah and she was like I’m sure I was like and she’s like well if it’s like three months then like your doctor needs to be involved obviously and so I I was like okay and then when I got my job they were like so the way it works is you you call in sick and then we just assume you’re sick until you call in well and I was like o okay so like a week and they’re like like it is it is like I I I can take as many sick days as I need I can um if your kids are under eight then you automatically get like extra days like for them for like doctor’s appointments and whatever you just that’s just paid uh you as with children you automatically get their first day off sick like free like that’s always paid for and I know my husband even gets the second day and then you could just kind of figure it out after that uh it’s it’s it’s remarkable how much in society is set up that of course your family comes first and we see it in the education system because the education system is limited in its capacity of what it’s supposed to take on because the society is set up so that parents or home adults can care for their children and I just think about that like we end the school year with three PD days the students leave we get three days and I again ask my colleagues I said what do we do on those days and they’re like what we plan and I said like what like and they’re like no we sit down and we make kind of like a an outcast you know a draft of the next year and then we leave and I was like do we have a lot of meetings like you know is it all and they’re like no no we have to clean our classrooms and set up you know we move rooms so we move our rooms and then we plan and then remember we come back and we have five PD days before the beginning of the year and I said oh well that’s where the meetings are and they’re like no sometimes there’s stuff but most of the time it’s just prep time so again it’s this idea of how can we give you a job that’s sustainable where you can pay your bills but you can also be parents or you can just be adults if you don’t have children and how can you be a happy productive member of society and so I think about it all the time how that shows up we had to call an ambulance the other day to my school and at no point Did anyone say well can the family afford this it was just an automatic like of course we’re going to call an ambulance we’re not sure what’s going on with this child so we’re going to get them the medical care that they need um I didn’t realize how stressed I was chronically until I moved here because one thing we do well in America is shoulder burdens we just take it on and we keep taking it on and we cry at home behind closed doors and we fight I mean if you want to talk about something that’s so great in America it’s that fighting Spirit of how do we keep fighting even against all laws and I haven’t had to do that in Denmark and it’s been weird like I don’t know what to do with the fight in me because I don’t have to like I can I can Channel it into Crea ity instead I have to have hobbies now that aren’t teaching and that’s so weird because I haven’t had Hobbies since having children and now it’s like I have all this time and I’m in my garden and we’re winter bathing and I’m trying to convince my husband to buy a kayak what a life this is but that’s how they that’s that’s designed now it’s not like that for everybody there are absolutely people that don’t have resources in dead Mark and that struggle but we also have such a safety net that it’s very hard to to end up homeless for example it’s very hard to end up on the streets it almost has to be by choice if you’re a Danish citizen or a Danish resident so when we’re looking at this culture of work life balance it’s not just the schools it’s the whole society the society is a reflection of the school and I definitely see the same thing here you know the the culture in teaching very much mirrors our larger culture and that um work comes first and ambition comes first and somehow you’re supposed to just make it happen with families but at the same time we turn around and blame parents for not being as involved as they should be they’re not doing a good enough job why aren’t they here why aren’t they volunteering at the school and thinking about how the systems are set up to be pro- family or support families and um just it’s it’s remarkable how much more familyfriendly Denmark seems to be and again by Design this isn’t a coincidence it’s a core value value that we claim to have As Americans but our systems and structures don’t support that because if you can’t even get off work when your child is sick then how can we say that we value children right exactly or even afford after school care or or the sports that your kids want to do like I was asked like what about school sports I was like that’s not a thing here everything is club sports because you pay like $80 for six months like the aess here is so ingrained yeah I couldn’t believe it when my kids were coming home and they’re like I want to do this for I was like I we we can’t afford anything and then I’m looking at the prices going oh my gosh you can do them all we could we can do sports in America with two full-time teacher salaries we couldn’t afford it like with four kids that wasn’t going to happen and I think about the deprivation that we’re constantly or not deprivation but maybe it is but that that that limited access to opportunity that we so often are forced into in in a system like the the US’s that is really removed in many ways in Denmark now you obviously I still have you know social orders and ranks and some people have a much sweeter life but the the piece of the pie for everybody is so much bigger and I think about how we are so quick to blame kids right now again like we you know we do this every generation kids these days don’t know anything kids these days are going running crazy and I think about how much patience and um and well-being it takes to parent well when you’re also Under Fire and when you also feel chronically stressed and when you are just trying to survive paycheck to paycheck yes and I think that’s been one of the biggest differences is that Brandon and I my husband and I as our kids now are in their pre-teens and teens we now have the mental health capacity and the well-being capacity to parent the way we wanted to all those years in America and in America we did the very best we could in the system that we were in but we didn’t have more time in the day we didn’t have more resources and we were drained and over here I can still have stressful days but it’s normal stress it’s not stress on top of stress and so that’s not to say that the Danish youth there aren’t a lot of issues over here there is as well we’re seeing a lot of the same thing Mir in the US as as we see it you know over there but I think there’s just a different capacity to take it on at least from the parental standpoint because you’re not under so much stress right can you say more about you talked about schools not providing Sports I think about how we are asking so much of schools such limited Staffing and budget and resources but yet we’re transporting kids we’re feeding kids even when schools were shut down during the pandemic schools still fed kids because we had no other institution to feed them um you know we’re providing Mental Health Services um do doctor and and nurses school psychology the after school programs clubs sport everything comes through the school and the burden that that places on teachers to provide the unpaid labor to do that tell me how these things are are different in Denmark yeah so that has been a lot of unlearning for me um because in Denmark schools are schools we are absolutely an essential piece of the puzzle of a society that is well educated and children who are doing well but we are not the main care point we are in community and in connection and in collaboration with the government that surrounds us so the municipality that we are in as well as the family themselves and there are very clear lines of what a school provides versus what social services provide versus what home adults provide and we don’t cross those boundaries so we wouldn’t feed children for example like I had my snack drawer in the US that was either funded by you know the home adults or it was me buying extra boxes of granola bars because it was needed that’s not a thing even my students who I know are not accessing a lot of resources come to school with a fully stock lunch we’re not feeding children we’re not transporting children because everything is local schools you are biking to school you are maybe taking the bus if you’re over you know a kilometer but it’s public trans transportation that gets you to the school then you are walking to school some kids are driven but that’s just because you know their parents can do that but everybody is in a community school unless it’s by choice and then you’re then you’re in charge of your own transportation we do not have psychologist at school we do not have social workers at our school we do not have um any of the wraparound Services later on we’ll have some kind of guidance counselors but that is career guidance counseling it is not how are you doing what social services do you need there’s both a good and a bad to that I think it means that we’re very departmentalized when it comes to what are we in charge of you are in charge of the academic and the well-being of the children when they’re with you but it’s from an academic sense I think it’s hard when you then run into a family that’s standing in a in a in a in a resource need and you’re like where do we go and it’s like well you actually have to pass it on you don’t have that person that can like make some phone calls and help them out you have to connect them to other people but what it does is that as a teacher I don’t feel the burden of trying to play psychologist trying to play counselor trying to go oh my gosh where are these kids going to sleep how are they going to eat I noticed that all their clothes are are filthy and and and you know need to be replaced or taken care of that doesn’t fall on me because it’s not my job and it’s been really hard to turn that off in my brain I in in meeting this year I said to a family uh I was like you know yeah and if the clothes you know the winter coat is really dirty we can always wash it and afterwards one of my leaders was like oh no no no we don’t do that here that is not our responsibility so I think there’s also a very like uh strong upholding of what our lines are and and I think it’s good in a way because I’m expected to teach I’m expected to care for these children and to give them the very best educational experience I can I don’t have to sit and also worry about um are they getting access to the counseling they need I’m a part of that I’m a puzzle piece in that I’m writing the things that need to be written so that they can get counseling Etc but I’m not the one going to my team meeting going what are the social services we need to get this child connected to and it’s a relief in a way to be able to say this is someone else’s responsibility because I can then focus on being incredibly present with the kids that I have and planning really meaningful education um educational experiences but it’s also a very different system you couldn’t replicate that in the US because you don’t have the resources to do that the schools are are you know it’s a necessary evil for schools to be this community Hub because it’s one of the only places where everyone has free access you know we see it at the library the public library but schools where you are being transported to we can feed you we can clothe you we can keep our eyes on you in a way that you can’t really anywhere else in the US Society in Denmark there’s so many different safety nets that you don’t need school to be a community Hub in that way and it’s just I think it just changes the whole experience of what we’re expected to do and how we’re expected to carry the weight of what it means to be an educator and a teacher and I think about like it shows up in so many ways like uh I was talking I think uh you and I had spoken about this in one of our many conversations like in in in Denmark you’re not on contract for a school year you’re just on a contract like any other job so you can also quit the job at any point and you just follow the resignation rules which is usually the month you’re in plus another month and so there isn’t also this like I am now locked into the school in the same way like it’s just a job and that’s also both good and bad because of course like that can create more instability for the children and a lot of Educators do try kind of wrap it into vacation so I’m leaving after this time or after summer but at the same time too they’re also kind of like it’s a job and if I get a different opportunity I’m going to pursue that much like you would outside of education and so I think there’s also some of that heaviness removed that we automatically are given in America we are there to uh we you know we do the job because of the children which is why we don’t ask for a lot of pay because then you’re not doing it for the children which is why we shell out thousands of dollar because it’s for the children that’s why we work extra hours because it’s for the children in Denmark that is not your job your job is to be the very best teacher and to be the very best teacher that you can be you need to have your home life in order and in order for you to have your home life in order you treat teaching as a job it can still be a calling and you can go all in for the kids and be an incredible teacher that is incredibly present in those 40 hours but then you better go home and be present for your own family and be a productive member of society in maintaining the peace and happiness in your own family and I think that that’s so interesting because for educators we have always been kind of surreptitiously told to sacrifice our own families for the benefit of other children and it was one of the hardest things that I stood in as a as a as a parent but I’ve seen it to even people who don’t have their own children right they were expected to sacrifice those that they loved and the time that they spent with them and the PE that they found within their own lives in order to be more for those in their care and yet when we do that we’re just you know pouring out of empty vessels that’s right that’s not that’s not the way it’s like we need you to come here and we need you to give a 100% when you’re here and then please go home and recharge so you can come back and be 100% that’s been a wild wild permission to begin because we talk about it in the US all the time oh self care I mean I remember feeling so guilty about not being able to self-care right was like I don’t more self- care I need more like you care like don’t give me a mandated walk with a colleague give me time to clean up my classroom right like and so it’s that’s it’s been a head trip for me in letting go some of those very like this is what it means to be an educator the the sacrificial Olympics we all seem to be in how much can I sacrifice in order to prove that I am a teacher who cares that is not a thing over here they would look at you you were insane why would you do that you’re just going to burn out I mean we also have a medical diagnosis that’s called going down with stress and you will be out and it happens to teachers quite a bit but it’s basically you are exhibiting signs of of stress chronic stress so then you go on sick leave with pay for three to six months until you can come back wow can you imagine how many teachers in the US already today could be like that’s me and could you imagine what benefits it could have If people could say you’re right I am beyond my capacity and I do need to go on sick leave and get better so I can come back and co go back to being the teacher that I dreamed of being that I know I can be if I can just get my feedback under how many times do we hope for that it’s a different Society yeah let’s talk about how the Danish school system is set up um in our conversations two of the things that have been most intriguing for me is how kids are not formally taught to read until first grade and also how high school looks so very different than it does in the US so what is schooling actually like what is that experience like for kids uh well if you ask my American own children my American D used to be like skills SE my 10-year-old was saying skills of prison I was like oh we’re at that stage um so so that’s just a universal thing like school just no matter what you do yeah like and I’m like trying to to compare it to what her American schooling would be right now and she’s like I don’t care I’m here this sucks um yes so first of all Danish children typically don’t start school until they’re six um so when they go into Sero grade which would be kindergarten it is really all about community and how to be together how are you in a learning envir environment um they may get a little bit of like letter recognition maybe some uh phonics um maybe you know a little bit how to hold a pencil because we’re drawing and we’re playing and um and their days are fairly short used to be until uh 11:30 8 to 11:30 for for zero and then they went to you know after school which every school that has those younger grades has to have and it’s quite cheap um or they would just go home if there were someone home now after the reform we had 10 years ago modeled after the American system where everybody was like what are you doing uh they have to be in school at least at my my school until 1 which the teachers are like that is much too long there’s lots of movements in the day there’s lots of play based learning and so and there’s very uh much this belief of like we’re going to let kids come into the learning and if they’re showing signs of readiness then we will challenge them to make sure that they’re still interested but no one is handing a serero grade teacher a reading curriculum and saying get on it and these kids better be reading by the time they’re seven so it’s also interesting like I teach first but I’m teaching seven and eighty olds so that would be more like second in the US so by the time they come to me in first um most of them know their letters um they know some sounds and then we start working on reading and it’s very very um slow it’s very exploratory it’s very play based our schedules are so they’re not like the US schedule at all every day is different so you have a different schedule for Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday the times are the same we’re in school from 8 until 12 minutes after 1 which is brilliant we have two breaks obviously we have a morning recess and we have a lunch uh recess and a lunch um but I don’t have math every day I have math three times a week I have science once a week I have art once a week I have music twice a week I have movement every single day um I have Danish probably every day but we’re doing different things and so what it means is that you have this much more comfortable pace of teaching because I can adjust course at any time in my classroom my students are Wackadoo let’s go outside nobody’s going to come by and go why aren’t you doing math right now um my students need um I don’t know a break where we’re just sitting and coloring awesome please do that because that’s what your students need my students need extra recess every single day that’s not on the schedule because that’s just how they’re going to learn best then you’re going to do that and I think like having that kind of Freedom ingrained in a system where it’s not the same schedule every day means the kids are excited because they look forward to different days they don’t get a sick of subjects as quickly because we don’t have them every day except for Danish and at least in my school and it’s different from from municipality M municipality we have a lot of freedom to do play base learning and not just in the younger grades and that’s a focus in general we also just like I’m a classroom teacher but I don’t teach all the subjects like like right now I do because I’m kind of on an emergency schedule but like next year I’m going to share the responsibility of my class with one or two other teachers so I’m not the only one carrying the academic responsibility and the social well-being of my students for my classroom I’m the main person but there are other teachers coming in teaching in their way and the students rooms it’s not the teachers so we go in and out and that’s something you and I have spoken about too Dana’s children are expected to be left alone for short periods of time without adult supervision and they’re expected to behave because if not then it’s not the fault of the teacher then it’s the fault of the child right like so I leave my classroom like not for long periods of time but it’s wild to me like that was not a thing we did in America ever or they’re expected to take risks so we have trees that they climb at recess you know they have a tendency to walk around with huge sticks and we’re fine with that just don’t hit each other or like rocks like kids we serero graders were walking around with rocks yesterday I was like what are you doing and they’re like oh we’re building blah blah blah blah blah and I’m like okay when a child Falls and dmark it’s not why weren’t you supervising it’s oh well how can you make sure you don’t fall next time and I I think that that mentality is embedded in everything we do and so we’re very very focused on short school days that are high impact and in fact we just had another educational reform come out um which is awesome because they’ve basically undone all of the things that they pushed through 10 years ago and uh and they said again we need shorter days and we need a lot more Hands-On learning and we need less screams and so they’re very much like how can we more practical classes how can we get infus the technical traits into school earlier so that kids who want to be done after 9th grade that’s what we’re talking about high school experience so in Denmark you’re done with school um officially after 9th grade and then you can start to specialize or you can just be done you’re done you’re 15 you’re done um but you start to specialize so if you want to go to the trades you’ll go to a trade school and we were just at this event where they were showcasing the trades I mean cleaning assistants that’s a trade degree you know uh Fitness therapists that’s a trade degree dental hygienist like all of those things Brick Layers Bakers butchers like all of those things that’s a trade degree that you can go and take or you can do kind of the college prep route which is three years which is more like an American High School but it’s really elective based and you have a uh you have a course area so you might go for like engineering Focus or journalism Focus or create creative arts Focus or Humanities or something so you’re already starting to specialize at the age of 15 or 16 so what it means is that a lot more people stay in school because it’s a lot more interesting you can also go to Business School uh obviously if you want to farm like there’s all these things that you can do to start specializing after nth grade and then of course we have the Big Boon which is school is paid for by the Danish government you can take up to three degrees full degrees paid for by the Danish government and they will pay you while you’re in school and so someone had mentioned that almost everybody in Denmark has a master’s degree yeah because it’s free we pay for it through our taxes but it’s free and so I think what we see in the school system is that most people stay in school and most people have multiple degrees so they might finish a degree and go you know what I didn’t want to be a carpenter after all I’m going to go back and do engineering or I didn’t want to be in marketing I’m going to go back and take my teaching degree and I think what it does is also that it puts kind of a an urgency in our hands of making sure that we’re exposing children to as many different things as possible we want to get them in messing with the Sciences really early just like in the us but we also want to get them using saws and hammers at a very young age in fact in my fourth grade class you know they’re standing there sawing and hammering and I’m thinking oh my Lord what are all these fourth graders doing with with saws but at the same time we were two teachers to 60 kids and the other teacher the veteran teachers is like make sure you don’t cut yourself and I was like this is so wild my system is overloaded but because I am not expected to police the children the parents the home adults are supportive of us taking risks which are not even seen as risks and and taking our their children out into the out into the world like my own kids go on field trips and I don’t know until after like I once drove by my child downtown and I was like what are they doing and later I was like what were you doing he’s like oh we were walking to wherever to do whatever and I was like that’s so weird like I didn’t even know that was going to happen and so I think living in a society like that puts uh this incredible urgency of creativity into the schools how can we compete against screens we’re one of the most digitalized nations in the world they love their screens in Denmark they love their iPads and their phones so how can we make school a place for exploration where all kids feel like they can Thrive and have something to connect with and when I was hired for my job it was like how are you going to bring play into it how are you gonna help them play through everything and it has been a blast it has been so much fun and in not in a here’s the textbook and you’re going to follow this it’s show us what you got and what are you interested in and get get the kids involved and so we’re given a lot of freedom over here but honestly like if there was one thing that I could get any kind of American administrator to think about is why does your schedule have to be the cookie cutter schedule every day why do we place so much emphasis on having Ela blocks every single day when we know for some students it is the worst part of their day we can achieve literacy in many ways how are we making room for just more flexibility in schedules because also the fact that our education uh you know minister is saying we want shorter school days so kids can be kids like that shouldn’t be revolutionary right my right my own kids are home at 1:30 I mean they are tired by the time it’s bed time you know because they’ve been playing and hanging with friends and they’ve had a whole life outside of school that we don’t offer children in America I mean I was saying that to my own kids I was like man if you were in elementary school and the us chances are you’d be going until 2:30 3:00 they’re like man that’s really long yeah it is because we in the US feel this urgency to continue to expand expand expand without recognizing that kids are not ready for that and neither are the adults and so I think this idea of like how do we make the precious short time we have together high impact by recognizing that we need movement and play has been a relief to teach it because I know that all my crazy ideas can fit in somewhere right I mean so much of the sounds like the way that that school used to be in America particularly when you were talking about at the younger grades you know my dad did not start school um in the 19 late late 50s this would have been I guess or early 60s he didn’t start till first grade and he knew nothing when he walked in he’ never had a school experience before he did not know how to use the water fountain or raise his hand or anything like that um and that was fine that’s when they first started to read and I think about now all of that has been moved down really to kindergarten and even younger because I mean we’re starting with letter sounds if your kid is in preschool at age three they’re learning letter sounds and numbers at three and um you know kindergarteners in the US really are expected to be able to write a paragraph right and that’s just wild to me because even when I first started teaching in the 90s that was not an expectation that has changed even since I entered the field the idea of a five-year-old writing a paragraph and reading entire books on their own and I don’t just mean like you know C John run kind of books I mean they are expected to be Reading Writing adding subtracting and what gets missed there that I hear you saying is happening in Denmark is the piece that we are all complaining that children don’t have which is social skills um Independence risk-taking skills knowing how to advocate for yourself express your needs collaborate these are all things that kindergarten used to be for it used to be for socialization that was the primary reason to get kids to know how to get along with other kids and we skip that now and it’s like no you need to be writing a paragraph but wait a second I never learned how to tell Johnny I don’t like when he pulls my hair so we get these kids into fourth fifth sixth grade and they still have not had any formal instruction really on how to do that because we’ve been so bogged down with teaching them how to read write do math and everything else is on the standardized test and it blows my mind think about how different that would be if kids were not expected to enter um school already knowing these things and if formal instruction and reading didn’t start until first grade that would just and and first grade really is more like second grade for us you’re talking about a full two two developmental years later and I think about how I was pulling my hair out I’ve taught I’ve taught prek second and third and I would pull my hair out trying to get kids to meet benchmarks that they were not developmentally ready at and at that age a kid who’s born in September versus a kid who’s born in March completely different developmentally which you can do from six months it’s just it’s w it’s wild how much of of Developmental growth kids make at that age and I just remember doing things with them and I’m just like if if you could just let this kid go play for a year and send him back to me a year from now they’d get it like that it would be so fast easy it would be effortless but instead I’m sitting at this table with these stupid flash cards forcing it because I have to and if you just gave them one more year they could have learned the social skills they could have developed their vocabulary a love of learning a love of books a love of exploring and learning through play and they would have been so much more ready and that is the part of of how our schools have changed over the last few decades that troubles me the most and I think that creates the whole domino effect where kids are already burned out on school by first grade yeah and already feeling like failures you know because when we start to in the opportunity gap of who comes in already ready for the rigor of school and for the teachers’s pace that is not dictated by the teachers most often it’s dictated by a curriculum guide or by Administration or or you know whatever teaching guidelines we’ve been given and those kids come in and go I can’t keep up I have already failed in kindergarten and school’s never going to be the place for me I’m never going to be able to achieve because I’m already falling behind and then the home adults start feeling that pressure why is my kid not achieving and the teacher then start to internalize that pressure going why can’t I I’m doing all the things you know Miss Johnson next door is doing it and she’s doing it it’s working for her kids it’s not working for mine like we are in such a rush and we’re getting nowhere in the US you know the kids that can because they’ve had the access and have had the safety to do so they will continue to get ahead and leave the other kids in the dust and instead of saying maybe we should slow the system down and still find ways to differentiate and of course offer for opportunities instead we’re like well how can we cram more in because clearly we’re not teaching them enough rather than going could we cut about half out of what we teach so that they can have the time to digest it and actually find their ground below them and feel confident that they too belong in learning environment and I think that’s what is so beautiful in Denmark I I had a student come in and transfer into my classroom and one of the first things that he told me was but I can’t read p because of course they call us by their first name here and I said you’re not expected to we’re about to learn that I am yeah you didn’t need to read to be part of our classroom but I think of the kids who already are knowing that by the time they enter kindergarten well I’m expected to be able to do X Y and Z why why am I not you know how are they standing there feeling um and so I think it just it makes no sense to me that when we’re seeing a system that’s already putting too much pressure on children and put too much pressure on the adults surrounding children why we’re then adding more pressure and I’ll tell you one of the wild things living in Denmark is having a functioning government and I don’t mean that as a slight towards all people in government I think there are many people fighting for change in the us but we have a government because it’s small that actually enacts change that we feel the very next school year and it’s been so wild to be like wait that was a law and it’s now impacting us and we’re actively changing our teaching because of that and I think about how much if we could have a government that actually was was given power in that way and it was a government supported by child psychology and developmental psychology of what incredible areas of freedom and learning that we could finally establish in our learning communities because we see teachers do it all the time and we see them do it under the radar we see them closing their doors we see some schools who often end up as pockets of Excellence right because they’ve been given Freer Reigns given the permission to slow down but imagine what it would do for ucation as a whole if we could slow it down and the pressure valve you know that we could finally release I think that was honestly one of the biggest Gifts of Corona and there are not a lot of gifts in Corona in any way but it was the fact that I was finally told to do less than what I was supposed to do before as far as the curriculum we had lots of other things to do but the curriculum I was specifically told to slow down and I remember going here we are I can finally take the time that I need to truly do this in a fun way and I also am really struck by what you were saying at the secondary level too because when we look at one of the main problems that secondary teachers are facing is student engagement kids are not motivated they don’t want to pay attention they’re not doing their work they’re cheating all that kind of stuff how different would it be if School ended when you were 15 and after that you go right into your job training and um you know I think I don’t know how many other countries are like this but I think you know maybe you can speak to this but I know it it’s that way in Switzerland it’s that way in Norway there’s a number of Western European countries in which um you know you’re basically treated like a college student will be treated here where you’re not in school you’re not required to be there six hours a day you might go for two hours on Tuesday and then Wednesday you have an internship and then Thursday you meet with this advisor and then you go to this other training and that right there that fixes the whole engagement thing because the kid is doing the thing that they want to do that they’re interested in pursuing their passion it’s paid for so they don’t have opportunities closed off to them because they know they can’t afford to you know if you want to be a doctor well I can’t afford medical school yes you can so that’s open let’s start getting you into that field and practicing or whatever like that solves it solves like almost every single problem that I feel like we’re facing in terms of getting students motivated and and engaged in high school the idea of making in 2024 making a 15 16 17 18yearold person sit in a room sit in rooms for six hours a day and do what they’re told to do it’s just like it it’s so different from what happens after they graduate because there’s not anyone standing over your shoulder anymore we’re not preparing them in any way for the unstructured nature of college or for the level of self-motivation and self-determination that’s required in order to be successful in the workforce or in college because you’re so micromanaged and they rebel against the micromanagement and we respond with more micromanagement and I if there was one thing that I would change about the American school systems in addition to what you’re saying about the slowing down it would be this piece of more of restructuring the entire way we do it at the secondary level yeah and actually one of the things that they just came out with in this new reform too is that eth and nth grade should also have the opportunity to do work studies and to have the internships because they’re saying we’re already losing kids by eth grade and so how can we get them hooked into local businesses so that they can actually go out and start learning trades if that’s what they want to do and start having that as part of their schooling applying the maths that they’re doing applying you know all of the all of the classes that they’re doing and I just think it’s so powerful to also recognize that that is also education that that is also an incredible livelihood and again how can we help you achieve what you want to achieve to have the life that you want to have and so instead of going well why aren’t the kids going out and figuring it out us going okay how can we change the system so that it’s a lot more accessible and a lot more um you know has a lot more opportunities embedded at a much younger age it’s really I mean it does set pressure to the kids I will not pretend it doesn’t you know all of a sudden like 15 okay what do you want to do with your life and so a lot of people do kind of do the gymnasium route and then they might drop out and say you know I’m going to pause I’m going to go work and then I’m going to come back and restructure but I think that the door doesn’t slam shut in your face because of the financial aspect you can always come back and there’s always you know different opportunities for how you re-enter into the education game and even the way you get into into University here because because it’s open to everyone uh they set the grade years the GPA every year they’re like in order to even apply for being a doctor it’s usually a very high GPA um and then you either get in on quota a which is kind of like the just the GPA did you get in or not but let’s say you don’t have that GPA you can go and work and have experiences and then come back and say okay here’s why I think I would make a good doctor and here’s why I think I should be accepted into your program and they have a certain amount of people that they take through that as well where they’re like no you didn’t have the school experience that we normally look for in this degree but you’ve shown us through all these other life experiences that you’re going to be an amazing doctor so we’re going to open up the degree to you too and it’s going to be paig and I just think about that that there’s just a lot more um I don’t know a rounder sense of what a human being is meant to be over here there’s more opportunities there isn’t so many um only chances I feel like in America you get such you you know if you don’t get that scholarship or if you don’t get that GPA if you don’t volunteer so many hours then that door is shut and then what are you going to do here it’s like oh you didn’t get that well here’s another door and another door and another door and another door how can we get you to a point where sure you’re working and you’re a productive member of society they want you to pay the taxes right like how do we get you productive and happy because if you’re happy you’re not going to need as many services that’s right and they mean that like I know we’re told the same in the US but then we kind of look at our taxes and go wait what is it going towards but over here it’s like okay yeah you just took a big chunk out of my my money but man my four children can have three degrees each like okay you can have it I can call it ambulance anytime I want amazing kids need braces like that’s paid for thank God you know again that lowlevel anxiety you know is just gone of constantly feeling like any little emergency can completely wipe out savings bankrupt you yeah I saw that and the sick thing too I think of one of my dear dear dear friends who whose child got very sick and ultimately passed away and how she was forced to you know beg for sick leave in the US and how gross and sick that was uh and over here it’s like but of course of course you’re going to be home of course you’re going to be with your child even if it’s just the flu of course going to be home like we we get to be the kinds of parents that we dream of being in a society that takes care of you like this and that’s the biggest gift I and I tell that to my own children all the time one of the main reasons that we moved here besides all of the fun stuff is so that I could be the kind of parent that I wanted to be and that I tried so hard to be in the US but that the US system just simply makes really hard especially when you’re an educator expected to also care for all of these other children what does the school day look for look like for you now as a teacher oh it’s so much fun um my students get there at 7:50 I usually show up at like 7:30 I found out you know primary grade teachers it’s all about the laminating and the printing and copying it’s not the grading it’s the I need to produce all the things uh which I appreciate it’s so much fun um and then the students kind of roll in and we have our day and at uh 1:12 I’m done my students are gone so it’s a marathon I uh don’t have prep during the day because you’re just teaching I out of my 40 hours a week I am expected to teach 20 hours so I am in front of students 20 hours and the rest of the 20 hours are prep and meetings and all those phone calls and if I go above 40 hours then they get very mad because then they have to pay me extra and they don’t so they’re very like don’t go over that we’re also told at my school anyway that uh we have to be 35 hours in building five we can use outside of building so I can sit and prep at home um I can prep obviously earlier in the morning and count that and be done earlier um so it’s just again that like I have never had a day end at 1:12 and my contract time is done at 3:45 which is very typical of the us too so I get two and a half hours of prep every single single day and it’s amazing how much I can do and obviously if they have to do meetings during the day well then it’s a sub plan and then you’re just pulled for that meeting and and then it’s not extra time and they would never put meetings outside of that time um and so I think again because I’m only expected to come up with or to only be um you know responsible for 20 hours and that’s not even like those 20 hours I’m only responsible for coming with all of the teaching well it used to be 15 of those hours right now it is all 20 but like next year I’m going to teach 15 hours with my students then three hours I’m going to be supporting co- teing with another teacher where I’m not in charge of any prep or planning I’m just there to be another adult and then two hours I’m resources for other teachers but it’s a 40-hour work week and again I think about how much that time allows me to be creative and to find Freedom or to send those messages and that’s the other thing too they really don’t want you overc communicating like even our prime minister has come out and been like just hold back on the communication like parents you need to trust teachers teachers you’ve got it we’re not going to be contacting you and so I’ve been laughing about that because one of my colleagues is is on my my messages thread of the messages I get from from homes and and they were like man you’re getting a lot of messages and I was like I am I think I got three this week and they were like whoa whoa what’s going on with all those messages and I was like this is so wild so again it’s like in in the system it’s this balance right we’re not going to have you teach more than 20 hours because then you can’t be a good teacher your subject area is not going to be well thought out your prep is not going to be well done you’re not going to feel good you’re not going to be able to go in front of that child and feel good and so it’s just it’s built into the system instead of that like we’re going to squeeze every minute out of you and you’re going to get a 45 minute prep but it’s not really a prep because it’s really meetings half the time and you know you’re burning or you’re putting out some burning fire or you have emergency phone calls to make or you’re hunting down new shoes or snacks or you’re getting a hold of the guidance concert that’s not my day at all yeah is there anything that’s really great about the Danish approach to work life balance or education that you think us Educators could replicate so if someone’s listening and thinking well I can’t move to Denmark and I can’t turn America into Denmark what could someone take away from the Danish approach that might make their teaching more effective efficient or enjoyable I had to think about this a lot because I think back to how much of the things are simply embedded into the system and handed to me and I’m now benefiting but I think one of the things uh that I would encourage and I see so many Educators already doing is encourage each other to work stay within your work hours and by um and I mean and I don’t mean by not prepping but about sharing a lot more than we do I also would encourage because I think so often we’re always like oh I you know we don’t have time to prep together and what I see a lot in Denmark is one teacher will say like well I’ll prep all the math for all of us so that you don’t have to and and then trusting that that colleague is going to prep the right materials and of course you can put your own twist into it or whatever but like a a much broader sharing of responsibility in order for all of us to stay within our contract hours and I know that that’s really really really hard so hard to do in the US but I would also say within my own personal experience of allowing yourself to trust your gut more when it comes to the kids need movement breaks I just wrote about doing nothing breaks because we’re big on like let’s do a brain break that’s not doing nothing that’s again asking a kid to be activated and now they have to like follow movements or talk about something no embracing the quiet and embracing The Slowdown and I know how hard that can be when you have an administrator that’s sometimes breathing over your shoulder going you better be teaching to Fidelity and why are you not on this page but somehow tweaking your own schedule so even though it says Ela 90 minutes that you are are pretending that you’re only covering 45 minutes of ela within 90 minutes and trusting the process there slowing down in order to go further and then play especially with older students because we like you said we still do it somewhat if we have permission in the primary grades there’s a lot of body movement we’re up and doing games you know we we’re always thinking in in playful learning or at least I hope we are if we can how do we do that with the older students where they like I think about my my middle school so I’m a middle school teacher at heart how they were just expected to sit down 45 minutes at a time from 8:30 until 3:45 with one break one recess and a three minute hallway passing time and then we wondered why they came to us and were so checked out and so disengaged and would much rather try to be on their phone or whatever because they were so overwhelmed so I would say if you can’t bring Denmark to you steal the mentality of it’s much better for children to slow down and fight keep fighting I have seen so many Educators have Brave conversations with their admins taking the opportunities to say hey I piloted this that’s always been my favorite I piloted this idea and I would love to share about it and not being afraid to share share um I think we’re often so scared and with reason to share when we’re going outside of the mold or outside of the supposed expectations but I have met so many administrators that have loved when their staff have come to them and said you know I piloted this thing or we did this and it was actually really really beneficial to the students look at the test results or whatever you need to prove right or talk to the students themselves come in and see how this works because I think right now just like educators are under an amount of pressure in the US and in many other places so are administrators and they don’t have the time to sink into the genius of what’s happening around them unless we’re the ones going hey look at this this could benefit more than just my class I don’t want to be an island I don’t want to be the teacher that closes my door I want to open up for these practices and then for I mean I think also what we’ve been allowed to do in Denmark is just to have very few focuses we don’t have a 10-step Vision plan next year we’re working on differentiation in all the ways and how does that you know apply to our teaching and what does differentiation mean to me as a practitioner so I think we also just can take and strip away all the goals there’s much too there’s just too many things on our plate um so I would say more movement do less slow down open your doors and be brave in sharing your stories and of course just like like in the US I would share over there listen to the students how are we getting student voices in this my first graders have a lot to say and I love it so how are we plugging into that what is their body saying but also their voices which questions are we asking them I constantly ask him like did you like that how was that how can we change it they’re like oh I liked it no I hated it blah blah blah blah you know like we’re constantly having those conversations and you can do that in the US too and it can lead to quite profound change but yeah I think just also just fighting for yourself and fighting for your own mental health and recognizing that you know you can’t self-care your way out of feeling burnt out and that’s not on you that’s the system working the way it’s supposed to and uh I found a lot of peace my last two years as a teacher in the US with good enough with recognizing that something was good enough and setting really hard boundaries which is something that you have taught me and we’ve spoken at length about you and I Angela and years of friendship that it’s never going to be perfect I’m never going to reach the level where I feel completely done so which boundaries am i setting for myself in order to achieve good enough so that I can go and have a life and come back and be a full person in my classroom rather than someone who can’t wait to almost be done because I’m so exhausted and can’t even enjoy what I’m doing [Music] M what’s something that you want every educator listening to this to remember I think there’s a lot isn’t there I think for me the recognition that we’re only humans and that even if we’re in a society that calls on us to be superheroes we don’t need to be I think the most thing that we can do for kids is simply to show up and be present and be there as an adult who cares about them and cares about their their education in the present and and above all loves the kids that are in our care um but to do that you have to take care of yourself and and you have to be willing to set boundaries and you can’t self-sacrifice to where there’s nothing left and the students wouldn’t want that either you know they are desperate for educators who think it’s fun to teach and when you’re constantly being battered and there are so many Educators just being battered in the US right now because of so many forces how do we Shore up our walls well that starts with having enough energy to do so so how can how can you replenish your own energy and I think also just like give yourself Grace I think we are so hard on ourselves as Educators we are so quick to say we have failed a child or we have failed at something when really we went in there and gave it everything we could and it wasn’t us that failed and maybe it wasn’t even a failure in the first place but it was a system that was set up to drown us and I think that that just like you can’t stay an educator in America without recognizing that you’re not the only one in the system and that this is a this is a group effort and that you can’t carry the responsibility for every single child on your shoulders and that’s really hard because that’s what we what we teach under in the US so I think for me coming home to Denmark has been about discovering my own Humanity again my humanness and and and how vulnerable I really was but how I pretended not to be for so many years and I think rediscovering that vulnerability has given me strength in saying no and shutting my computer and saying good enough and going into my admin ministrator and saying I can’t do this I’m drowning and demanding that someone hears me and for all of those of you who have been demanding for so many years and nobody has listened to you switching jobs moving out of District protecting yourself it’s easy to say it’s hard to do when I left teaching I cried because I felt like I lost an identity I lost who I was I felt lost but then I came back to it and I’m so much better for coming back to it because I stepped away and recognized that teaching didn’t have to be my whole life it could just be a really good part of my life [Music] [Music]