Finland does a number of things to support their children well, but one of the big factors is that they have strong teachers. With the US drifting down the international depth chart of educational performance, what can reformers and teachers do to ensure they learn from the world's best and transform their teaching profession in a way that makes sense for an American context? In the last two years, much of the state-level debate has been focused on crafting fair evaluations of existing teachers. If done well, this could open the door to identifying new career paths, determine where extra help is needed, and weed out those for whom the profession is not a good fit. However, despite these potential benefits, teacher evaluation policies have become mired in complex technical debates, strained some already fragile teacher-administrative relationships and may, in fact, not be addressing the most meaty problems. As Americans move forward in this work, the author hopes they keep the rigor of countries like Finland in mind. One element the Finns have built over time is "trust." In Finland, that trust was earned by crafting a system in which only the top ten percent of college graduates teach and by demonstrating consistently high results year over year. (Contains 2 endnotes.)