Public school districts across the country are facing declining enrollment and shrinking budgets. This reality is forcing district leaders to make difficult decisions about how to use limited funds. It’s more important than ever for these leaders to gain a solid understanding of what works.
When district leaders prioritize research-backed approaches in their schools, they can direct their critical funds toward innovations that will improve student outcomes. Global learning opportunities let them see how other countries approach teaching and learning.
“You learn more about your own system and ask better questions by examining other systems that are completely different,” said Dr. Laura Jacob, superintendent of the California Area School District in Coal Center, Pennsylvania, and a member of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools.
In 2024 and 2025, Jacob was among more than 60 education leaders who took advantage of international learning opportunities with Digital Promise, focusing on two timely topics: whole-child development and the future of technology-enabled learning.
Held in Helsinki, Finland, in 2024, and Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2025, these international study tours are part of a collaborative learning program. Throughout the 12- to 18-month engagement in an implementation cohort, education leaders gain perspective on how other countries address key challenges. They also learn how to translate those insights into actionable strategies for their own districts, drawing from one another’s local contexts as well as from the systems they experience firsthand through the study tours.
“The ideas that you get from those different countries just help you do so much better [locally],” noted Jacob.
One such idea came from Helsinki, where Jacob and her team learned about the “Fox Book,” a citywide environmental curriculum that teaches elementary students about sustainability and how to solve problems. The characters are based on animals in Finland that the children are familiar with, like arctic foxes, moles and herring.
“It resonated with me so much,” said Jacob, especially coming from an animal-loving, rural school community.
“So we created ‘The Goat Book.’ It stands for Growing Our Awareness Together,” she explained. Each story follows the Finnish Fox Book examples, but the characters are local Pennsylvania animals, including a goat like they have on campus. Jacob worked with grade-level teams and used AI tools to develop the cartoon characters, build the narratives and align to state standards.
These classroom learning opportunities, coupled with cultural experiences that can only come from being immersed in a global culture, give district leaders a new perspective — one that they take back to their districts to address real-world challenges and create practical solutions.
Bringing a Finnish Whole-Child Approach to Connecticut
How can districts provide academic as well as social, emotional and physical support when working with students from vastly different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds?
This question drove Sandra Faioes, deputy superintendent for Norwalk Public Schools, to join the Digital Promise Whole-Child Development Implementation Cohort (Whole Child IC). At Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut, the community is diverse and growing. They are welcoming an increasing number of multilingual learners from around the world, while also supporting more students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch.
Recognizing that a whole-child approach was key to ensuring every child in her district was well-supported and ready to learn and thrive, Faioes looked abroad. Helsinki, Finland, is well-known for its comprehensive approach to education. Visiting these schools offered an opportunity to learn from an exemplary whole-child-centered educational model with other like-minded peers.
“Everybody that's [in the Whole Child IC] has either tried something out, is in the process of actually building or enhancing these initiatives, or is seeking to learn what other people are doing. It was great to be with people who are all striving toward a similar goal,” she said.
During the trip, Faioes was struck by how Finland built a culture that prioritized outdoor play and exploration. At one school visit, she learned that students spend two hours outside before beginning problem- and project-based learning. After another midday break outdoors, they returned for more classroom work before the end of the day.
Back home in Connecticut, Faioes hosted a professional development session for elementary school educators on the evidence-backed merits of play-based learning and how to integrate those practices in their classrooms. The goal was to show educators that small, research-based changes can make a meaningful impact.
“As a leader, [international study tours] inspire you to want to push people and reach for more,” Faioes said. “It inspires you to push the boundaries.”
Transforming Technology in Colorado with Uruguay Insights
Simply seeing examples of global education systems and how they work isn’t enough to evoke change at home. Solutions-oriented examples must be put into a real-world context, recognizing the complexities of various education ecosystems and contexts. By pairing these authentic examples with on-the-ground experts, such as leaders from education organizations and edtech companies, district leaders can craft an action plan to bring these changes back stateside.
As a longtime edtech innovator and former district leader in Denver, Colorado, Kellie Ady, senior director of education strategy and learning innovation at PowerSchool, joined the study tour in Montevideo, Uruguay.
In Uruguay, the study group saw firsthand how the country built and supported its national efforts toward providing equitable access to digital learning inside and outside of the classroom. They learned how teacher training sessions leverage technology in rural and urban classrooms. They visited school sites, connected with scholars and education leaders and saw education programs that incorporate AI and emerging technologies across the country.
“It’s so easy to get stuck in your own context and only know the way you do things. An opportunity like this to not only step out of your own context, but step out of your own country context and learn from somebody else, and then have a network of people you're also learning alongside — it’s hard to quantify what an amazing experience that is,” Ady said.
Powerful learning cannot happen in a silo. When district leaders are offered opportunities to collaborate and widen their horizons through global learning opportunities, they can identify new and innovative educational approaches that they can take back to their home districts.
This year, especially, district leaders must make smart, research-backed decisions on how to spend their dwindling district budgets. Collaboration is critical to making such decisions. And, thankfully, district leaders don’t have to go it alone.
Stay up to date on future international learning opportunities with Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools.
