Well, to be more accurate, this is about my experience of being a guest speaker for about half of a 3 hour class at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on April 16. As a side note, Wendy Kopp, who founded Teach for America, was the speaker in another class the previous day.
The class is run by Pasi Sahlberg from Finland, and is titled "A-317 International Lessons from Successful Education Systems." Sahlberg is author of the widely read and highly regardedFinnish Lessons: What can the world learn from Educational Change in Finland?, which I reviewed here. Sahlberg and I have developed a professional friendship, and he invited me to visit his class, which put me in the company of some fairly prestigious people- Andy Hargreave of Boston College, a former Prime Minister of Finland, and next week Tony Wagner. To say I felt both honored and somewhat awed by being invited would not be off topic.
So allow me to share my experience.
As noted, the class is about 3 hours. The first part was devoted to a student presentation as if they were presenting to the education minister of a country a proposal for a change of policy. Three very bright young ladies did a presentation on China that was well researched and well organized. Sahlberg pretended to be the Chinese education minister. He and his teaching fellow asked some questions, and then other students also chimed in with comments and questions.
The visiting speaker was allowed to finish this portion. The students had talked about doing Chinese professional development, particularly in the lower level (often rural) schools through online instruction. They presented as if this were something new. I pointed out that the US has quite a history of online education for educators, ranging from the likes of Walden teaching a class at Harvard: