Tag: community

Openhouse – Online Learning

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I had the pleasure of speaking with the Openhouse Team as part of a Webinar recently, connecting a range of global voices – we discussed the challenges and changes over the past year in regards to online/distance learning. Also on the panel were Allan Shaw, Principal of The Knox School in Melbourne, Saloni Todi, a first year Hong Kong University student, and Yashovardhan Poddar, co founder of Openhouse,

Openhouse is a learning community based in India with a bold mission centred around nurturing a better society for all.

“Our mission is to build a better society by creating powerful communities. We believe visionaries are not born but nurtured. So by redefining how the world learns, we empower students to become thinkers and leaders. Changing society, one child at a time…..”

Openhouse https://www.blog.openhouse.study/our-story

I was delighted to be part of this conversation, listen and learn from other perspectives, and explore how fostering a sense of community has helped support continued learning during this time. Grounding ourselves, and our students, in a shared learning community; one of acceptance, vulnerability and with a growth mindset have all been key. I loved learning about how this looked in different contexts and being inspired by these different voices. You can read more on the Openhouse blog – thanks Openhouse team!

https://www.blog.openhouse.study/online-learning-revised

Reflections on Intercultural Understanding

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I recently concluded two days of listening, exploring and learning about developing intercultural understanding within our school communities. As someone who signed up to participate in the course, I am already committed to the critical nature with which we must address promoting intercultural understanding. Evidence is all around us signalling the need for us to act; learn from the past, and listen, really listen to understand. The two days spent with a knowledgeable and interesting group of people, was insightful, thought provoking and provided me with so many ideas and ambitions as I prepare for the upcoming school year! As we got to know each other virtually, what struck me most is the joy that comes from simply hearing other people’s stories. We shared artifacts that reflected our identities and made connections; reveling in commonalities, and curious to know more about differences that we identified. A reminder of just how important giving space for this type of sharing is as we bring students, teachers and our parent community together.

The Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding Summer Institute was facilitated by three wonderful educational leaders, Debra Rader, Sarah Kupke and Heidi Bachman. The institute was based around the work of Debra Rader, and her development of a Framework for Developing Intercultural Understanding (Rader, 2016), which is published in her book Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding: Engaging Young Hearts and Minds. (Routledge, 2018) A highly recommended book for those of you interested in fostering intercultural understanding with children; it comes with lesson plans and resources to accompany a whole host of high quality children’s literature.

What is Intercultural Understanding? 

This is defined in the book as:

‘…the willingness and ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people different from ourselves, and in diverse cultural settings. This requires knowledge and understanding, beliefs, values and attitudes, and skills and behaviours that are developed throughout our lives.’

Rader, 2018
  • Knowledge and understanding
  • Transformative beliefs, values and attitudes
  • Essential Intercultural Interpersonal and Life Skills 
  • Engagement in positive action

Through exploring the Framework, with all of the diverse perspectives, insights and experiences, it helped me to reflect on how I might envisage using this as a next step in my own school community. These are some of the ways in which I could envisage using the Framework to support further embedding Intercultural Understanding:

Knowledge and Understanding

  • audit our curriculum: Review our Programme of Inquiry to identify where we see different elements addressed, where we see opportunities and how we can deepen learning and understanding.
  • engage our students and teachers in a review of literature and resources used – do these include multiple diverse perspectives? Identify resources to include to support intercultural understanding.
  • identify ways in which our Home Language Program can incorporate elements of knowledge and understanding related to building intercultural understanding
  • use the Framework to review our celebrations, events and traditions. How do we already foster intercultural understanding? How can we do better?
  • when reviewing policies, use the framework as a lens through which to pose relevant questions, identify strengths and gaps
  • explore the routines and rituals we have as a learning community. Identify core questions we can be posing to continually foster deepening knowledge and understanding
  • engage student leaders in identifying ways in which they can promote and share their knowledge and understanding. Where do students have a voice in our community? 

Transformative Beliefs, Values and Attitudes

  • as a tool for initiating discussion within our community about beliefs, values and attitudes. Where do we see our strengths in these areas? What is our shared vision as a community?
  • connect these to our mission, Learner Profile and Educational Philosophy statements
  • make these visible through explicit sharing in our celebrations, school traditions and rituals
  • re-focus the work of our Diversity Committee to explore these transformative beliefs, values and attitudes, and find avenues through which to articulate and celebrate these

Essential Intercultural, Interpersonal and Life Skills

  • review our curriculum to identify where we currently address these 
  • articulate these essential intercultural, interpersonal and life skills through the IB Approaches to Learning skill progression
  • make these skills visible with our students through a split screen approach in their learning
  • use reflective practices that require students and teachers to consider these core elements

Engagement in Positive Action

  • identify ways in which to share, promote and celebrate individual positive actions – within and beyond classrooms
  • incorporate the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework and lens through which to organise our actions as a community
  • encourage and build partnerships within our local community to encourage and model individual and collective action
  • implement our Eco School action plan to unite our community in committing to sustainable practices on both an individual and school wide level
  • identify ways in which to share, promote and celebrate individual positive actions – within and beyond classrooms
  • incorporate the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework and lens through which to organise our actions as a community
  • encourage and build partnerships within our local community to encourage and model individual and collective action
  • implement our Eco School action plan to unite our community in committing to sustainable practices on both an individual and school wide level

What other ideas can you see? How might you use this Framework within your school context? I am curious to learn of other thoughts and ideas and to hear examples of how schools are actively addressing intercultural understanding in their communities.

Joy in the Small Moments

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I recently shared a post with my school community about taking time each day/each week to find joy in the small moments that are scattered throughout our lives.

Joy in the Small Moments

Despite the disruption, confusion and upset all around us during this COVID-19 Pandemic, there is joy to be found in the small moments. These nuggets of joy can act as reminders, inspire us, and fulfil us, especially when our days are all the more stressful, demanding and filled with uncertainty. As we continue to be faced with huge challenges as a result of the world wide pandemic, I keep returning to three different common themes that I believe we have to keep reminding ourselves:

  • This is a crisis – even as we begin to ‘return to normality’ people have changed, our perspectives have been changed, our daily lives have changed, families are changed; our world remains uncertain on a global scale and many lives have been lost. This all equates to an ongoing crisis with impacts that will long be felt beyond when it seems on the surface all is ‘normal’ again.
  • Connection and community are critical to all of our wellbeing. We need to be open to, and embrace, new and different ways to maintain and grow connections and community. For our students especially, our focus needs to be on supporting their wellbeing, hearing their worries, and moving at their pace. We need to listen to them more than ever. We all know that learning requires a safe and secure environment for us to be able to engage and embrace in learning. For many students security and stability are scarce as we move through uncertain times and so providing opportunities to come together and find joy in the small moments.
  • Kindness to ourselves and one another. This for me, is the most critical point – only through kindness and empathy can we find the best pathway forward, one that is sustainable, inclusive and responsive. Showing appreciation, gratitude and finding the joy in the small moments can help us be kinder to ourselves and each other. This can only be a good thing for all of us as individuals and as a community.

As we are in the midst of all of this transition and change, uncovering joy is truly priceless for us all. Finding ways to connect and share with each other, celebrate kindness and be together as a community are all things that will sustain us. It has been noticeable throughout this period how nature is being appreciated more than ever and that much more noticing is happening around us, more time to think and more time to appreciate. Perhaps, it will also prompt us to think, that those small moments are really not so small after all. They are what matters most.


“….Find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all.”


Robert Louis Stevenson

‘Small Moments’

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As we approach the beginning of the new school year it got me thinking about ‘small moments’. Our Writer’s Workshop training has focused us all at BMS on how a story can be created from just a simple ‘small moment’. So much of preparing for the welcoming back to school of our students, teachers and parent community is about communicating ‘the big picture’ and ‘big events’, making a good impression and getting everything ‘right’ (whatever that is!) but it is all the ‘small moments’ which truly matter.

The ‘small moment’ taken to have time for a colleague to chat about organising their new classroom or offering to take a new member of the team for coffee. The ‘small moment’ to listen to a new student and hear their story, to show them their way around the school. The ‘small moment’ of sitting down to lunch together with a colleague we don’t yet know. These are the moments that matter when we are all settling in and finding our way. These are the ‘small moments’ taken to learn about each other which woven together begin to tell the story of a community. This is what creates a climate for exponential learning. These are the small moments that I want to participate in as we start our school year, and I trust that our students, teachers and parent community will write many ‘small moment’ stories together.