International educator, Dallin Bywater had not expected to become a Stay at Home Parent. It was the right choice, but not an easy one and led to a broader perspective on life.
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Well Being
When architect John Diffenderfer asked Anna Harrison what would be the ‘sticky’ changes in education after Covid, five clear answers emerged from a wide-ranging series of interviews.
Measuring the social and emotional skills of 10 and 15 year olds
A recent study by the OECD strikingly confirms the importance of holistic education. Andreas Schleicher looks at the outcomes of their 2018-20 global Survey of Social and Emotional Skills.
Teachers’ leadership styles and student performance
Do ‘inclusive’ leadership styles in teachers motivate students? A study by Paul Parham and Gloria Moss at Sevenoaks School suggests there is a significant correlation.
Charley Openshaw, IB teacher and Head of Art at Sevenoaks School recommends the virtues of careful observation and drawing as useful techniques for wider learning.
Planning effective pre-clinical interventions for young people
Claire Sewell looks at a new Post Graduate diploma course for 2021 which will help schools – including international schools – become more self-reliant in making a range of positive interventions.
Resetting service learning programs
In the context of continuing uncertainty, Megan Flottorp asks service learning guru, Cathryn Berger Kaye how schools can develop their programmes for ‘21-‘22.
Resource development for Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)
Rachel Coathup looks at the development of two video resources from ClickView for teaching Relationships and Sex Education, now available free to schools and parents around the world.
Five suggestions
Sir Anthony Seldon reflects on five restorative practices that have a positive impact both on ourselves and on those around us.
A guide for international educators
Dietitian and international teacher spouse Breanna Baildon knows what it’s like for busy teachers – but that’s why our eating habits have to change.
“There is more in you than you think”
Phil Mathe looks at the profound international legacy of one of the twentieth century’s greatest educational thinkers. You may not have heard of him but his influence suffuses international education.
How the pandemic is affecting practice in international schools
Sam Fraser, leader of the ISC Research field team reflects on how the pandemic has changed international education in ways of which we should all be aware.
Supporting Year 13 / Grade 12 in uncertain times
Careers and Universities Counsellor, Paul Yap, looks at how graduating students can ‘win the wait’ imposed on them as they plan for the future during lockdown.
A disability unit in South Australia is striving towards ‘deep inclusion’
Clare Taylor loved teaching internationally, but having seen what can be done in South Australia, she suggests international schools could become more fully inclusive.
Self-aware leadership
Rob Stokoe shares ideas about self-aware leadership and reflects on an emerging pandemic legacy of resilient, positive headship.
From KL to Rotterdam
Gail Schoppert looks back at a lifetime spent in international education and with international teachers, reflecting on the changes he has seen since the late 70s.
Reaching for the oxygen
For Angelo Castelda, if you are going to help others effectively during the ongoing pandemic, you have to make sure you look after yourself as well.
The lessons of the corona crisis in Denmark
Kevin Goggins, Head of Skt Josef’s International School, Denmark considers how the Danish experience of the pandemic may point the way to more lasting educational change.
Helping Uganda Schools
Set up to provide a great education in self-supporting schools, HUGS is a model for the development of low-cost, sustainable learning, as Dr. Richard Bircher reports.
New FOBISIA inter-school event takes off during lockdown
Andy Homden looks at a competition for international schools that simply would not have happened without lockdown, and seems destined to grow quickly.
Get them outside!
Covid has brought home the value of getting outside. Nicholas Chaddock looks at why reevaluating the importance of outdoor education is so important for all of us in 2021.
The importance of sport to a school community in 2020
Far from being marginalised, sport moved centre stage at this UK day and boarding school during a difficult year, as Ed Buck, Director of Sport reports.
Art and wellbeing
Becoming totally absorbed in painting increases a sense of wellbeing, but there may be more to it than that writes Peter Hudson.
Supporting military children in school
As a result of frequent relocations and long periods of family separation, the children of military personnel need empathetic support in school, writes Louise Fetigan.
SLT wellbeing during the pandemic
Following an October 2020 survey of over 700 school leaders, former international school head, Dr. Helen Kelly concluded that colleagues in leadership positions ended 2020 under unprecedented pressure.
The foundation we forget to teach
Whatever you teach, argues Richard Evans, helping students know themselves is equally important. Acquiring emotional literacy transforms lives – yours and theirs.
Learning synthesis
Holly Warren describes Think Tank, an innovative studio environment in which children learn to synthesise their learning experiences as new design and art pieces.
The Think Tank environment.
The Think Tank (Warren, 2015) is an immersive, interactive studio setting (atelier) designed by students and an atelierista (art studio teacher) to celebrate, stimulate, enhance, and develop creative thinking patterns that connect children with a range of other experiences, both inside and outside a school. The concept was initially inspired by the educational approaches of pedagogues Loris Malaguzzi, Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner and Kieran Egan, which allow a child to express ideas, interests, concepts and theories by creating visual narratives without restriction. This approach sets the ground for exploratory adventures that will tell the story of a child’s research and findings and has evolved into what the children have described as “the place where your ideas come true.”
The Think Tank never requests, it proposes, shares, presents, and inspires its community to create art pieces that are expressive of their own experience. A constant inter-action with the students’ environment allows an ongoing dialogue of the parts. Think Tank therefore embraces and celebrates the different environments in which the students work, whether at home or at school.
Materials
Designing and making activities in Think Tank draw on materials which are readily available and are sourced locally either at school or at home. Recycled, repurposed and natural materials are valued, while the language, movement, and sounds that are part of the materials are used to enhance, document, and create narratives.
Think Tank is also a research hub for children’s ideas, concepts, and interests. As a child-centred learning setting it documents the ever-changing processes and themes the children spontaneously engage in.
How experiences unfold.
During Think Tank sessions, the mentor meets small groups of 6 to 8 children in a Pow Wow format to share ideas and thoughts. These can be experiences, recollections of past explorations or new proposals. If needed, a quiet moment of recollection/thinking is proposed as a way of linking with the students’ self. Then the group creates a dialogue and decides how to proceed. This is the three-step process of visible thinking that accompanies the experiences.
The environment is set up with a selection of materials that the Think Tank mentor proposes in different areas of the room. These could be glass bead on the light table, a video installation with sounds and an area for exploration with light such as light pebbles and fairy lights.
Having welcomed each other, participants start a conversation about a continuing project or make an initial exploration of something new. Beads can turn into spaghetti in a make-believe restaurant, the video installation might become a walk in the woods or the lights may turn into a fire requiring firefighters to design a new generation hose.
Recently, due to the requirements linked to the pandemic the students have been given working and exploration areas that are not shared with other classes but are still trampolines of inspiration.
Links with class work and the curriculum
The Think Tank is its own setting, created with the children’s input. It is dynamic and changes according to the moment, the situation and the projects involved. This requires a space that can morph and adapt easily, but its salient characteristic is the mental space needed to create it.
However, there are strong links to what children are learning elsewhere, and which they bring to the studio quite naturally. Think Tank enables them to talk about these ideas and skills in a new context, which is invaluable. Surface learning becomes embedded into deep learning as the children make connections that are meaningful to the projects. Think Tank discussions therefore involve personal know-how and knowledge acquired in class from all areas of learning. Literacy, numeracy, knowledge and understanding of the world, social and emotional skills and predispositions, fine and gross motor skills, creative thinking and problem solving meet in the Think Tank, demonstrating the uniqueness of each student that becomes a vital element in the creation of projects that celebrate multi-perspectives:
“Nothing of me is original, I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve known.” (Palahniuk, 1999)
Celebrating community.
Think Tank therefore celebrates and brings together the school as a learning community. Parents become partners in exhibitions and performance art pieces when everyone adds to the outcome. During the lockdown parents themselves became Think Tank mentors themselves by stepping inside the experiences and working with the children to produce family pieces in a process of incredible educational value.
Student perspective
The richness of the Think Tank experience is best expressed in the words of the children themselves, as in the poem spontaneously presented by a seven year old participant to her parents as a gift:
The Think Tank is full of ideas,
If you listen with your ears, just peer through here,
And maybe you will see a pear,
You will see oysters and monsters.
But don’t worry you don’t need to say sorry.
Now watch this film (Ripples) and you will be surprised
With what your child has learnt.
Holly Warren is an atelierista, or art studio teacher, working in an international school in Italy. She is the creator of Think Tank – a new project environment that links the creative process of art with Montessori, Steiner and Reggio Emilia educational methodologies.
To learn more about her ideas see:
Images kindly provided by Holly
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Renewal time
Reviewing a school’s medical insurance can be a technical, painstaking business. Rachel Thorpe looks at how to compare apples with apples and secure the best cover for your staff.
Achieving deep awareness
For Felicity Gunn, enhanced intercultural mindedness, when practiced by the whole community, can take any school or business to new heights.
Picking up the baton
It’s been a long time since Ken Robinson’s famous TED talk in 2006. Andy Homden asks whether the baton of the learning revolution has been picked up by a new champion who is already putting ideas into practice on a large scale.
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What lies beneath?
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Don’t judge a book by its cover
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Community based teacher training in rural Nepal
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Animal power
A new book by Helen Lewis and Russell Grigg explores the way that animals can affect children’s learning and wellbeing.
Whole person virtues
If you are conducting a review of your school values and philosophy, Roger Sutcliffe suggests that you should do so philosophically.
Understanding exponential growth
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A global mission with International School roots
Matt Harris Ed.D. reports how a significant gap in safeguarding training for schools is being filled by an innovative group of international educators.
Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and effective teaching
Discovering CLT was a eureka moment for Steve Garnett – so important he felt compelled to write a new book for teachers. Here he shares 4 key ideas.
Who are we now?
Elly Tobin, senior consultant at Consilium Education, has been listening to teachers and students talking about their experiences of online learning.
Becoming me
In the second of two articles Ger Graus argues passionately for changes to the curriculum which will excite the imagination and raise aspirations.
Medical insurance in schools post COVID-19
Covid-19 has challenged so many assumptions about teaching overseas. One pressure point is the provision of adequate medical insurance, as Rachel Thorpe reports.
Unconscious bias in international schools
In the light of questions being asked about racism in 2020, Gwen Byrom thinks we all need to take a hard look at the cultural climate in which international learning is taking place.
Transforming Early Years education in the Himalayas
When they were living in Nepal with their twin toddlers, it was difficult for teacher Fionna Heiton and her partner Durga Aran to ignore the challenges faced by local schools. Fionna takes up the story.
On their own two feet
Whether you are a teacher or a parent, wanting to help or protect the children for whom you are responsible is natural. But there are limits, says Nicola Pearson.
Dipping into online learning as an adult
Having had a long and very happy association with distance learning, Professor Helen Bilton of the University of Reading suggests it opens up new worlds for adults as well as for children.
Developing good habits for the next stage of learning
Statistics show that ‘Dropping out of uni’ is getting worse, not better. David Craggs thinks that schools have a major role to play in addressing the issue.
Recalibrating our schools
Education has become a rushed process, and the skills that young people most need are in danger of being left behind. Time to recalibrate, says Robert Lloyd Williams.
Developing constructive confrontational skills and emotional intelligence
Stephen Walshe argues that engaging young people in philosophical enquiry creates an environment conducive to building constructive confrontational skills and emotional intelligence.