Thanks for calling in!

It’s amazing that the blog has reached colleagues in the United States, Russia, Germany, France, New Zealand, India, China, Canada, Ireland, Singapore and Australia as well as colleagues all over the UK this week.

What I have learned from my visits to these places is that we all share the same passion, the same commitment, the same challenges, the same problems and together we can find the solutions. We need to personalize the offer we make to our children, recognizing their uniqueness, their talents and their intelligences. We need to flip our classrooms to focus on the things that make the greatest difference to their learning: feedback, coaching and teamwork. We need to develop character, resilience and grit alongside literacy, numeracy and learn to learn skills and increasingly we need to recognise that every child need to develop higher level global skills alongside creativity, innovation and enterprise.

We must understand that we all operate in different contexts and we need to create a culture that develops positive attitudes, positive behaviours and high expectations. We need to understand that the child spends most of their time in their family and their community and connect our offer to understand that learning is 24x7x365 and we need to understand the importance of relationships, conversations, and learning journeys. 

Our greatest challenge isn't catching up with those countries that lead the world in PISA but celebrating, recognizing and rewarding the ordinary colleagues in every country who are releasing an extraordinary magic with their children. We must share, network and learn from these stories and these examples and create a community of learners in learning schools and learning organizations across the world who constantly ask themselves these questions to create brilliant learning in brilliant learning places;

• what is extraordinary about what I am doing that I can share?
• what is not good enough and what can I do about it?
• where can I find examples to help me develop what I am doing?