How are you feeling? How are you feeling? Somebody asked me that this morning and I stopped to think. How do I feel? Confused, was the first word that came to mind. Unmotivated, uncreative. I want to do practical things: painting, sanding, repairing, mending, constructing. I can’t write. I feel I should be writing wise […]
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Preparing for futures unknown “Knowledge is changing so fast that we cannot give young people what they will need to know because we do not know what it will be” Guy Claxton. This, by now, well-known quote in many ways sums up the challenges faced by education today. From a personal point of view, it […]
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Here’s an article I wrote which can be found in Teach Middle East
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It is worth writing a book, isn’t it? How V&V has helped us through You have an idea for a book and you get started. You write, you revise, you refine, you research, you rework until you are satisfied with the words. Then come the pictures. That is fun too. You trawl your albums and […]
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It is finished! Last week, Values and Visions went to press. After three years of writing, editing, drafting, re-drafting, sourcing images, seeking permissions trialling, adjusting according to feedback and everything else that you forget goes into producing a book of this type, Values and Visions was dispatched last week to become an e-book and a […]
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A New Year’s Message to Inspire This week I received the new year’s message from Avaaz, an organisation I support and greatly admire. Their message could have come straight out of Values and Visions. Ricken Patel says, “Powerful forces are moving in our world. It feels like much is waiting to be born, both great […]
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A Practical Tool for Living in a Volatile World “One autumn morning the wind had blown all the leaves off the trees and was trying to blow the branches off. Piglet’s ears streamed behind him like banners. ‘Mind you don’t get blown away, little Piglet.’ said Eeyore. ‘You’d be missed”“ (Milne, A. A., 1979). Right […]
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Building community in your classroom It was the first advisory of the year: Forty minutes to spend with the group of grade 7s (year 8s) I would see every morning for registration. I wanted us to bond as a class, feel part of a team; in short, become a community. In Values and Visions we […]
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Potatoes and Plates: An Affirming Start to the New School Year We all want to know our new students’ names and have creative ways of doing this. My favourite, however, is a classic Values and Visions activity (from our section on SELF). I have been using it for years and find the students love it. […]
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Walk the corridor in their shoes Back-to-school for teachers generally means getting back into gear, checking your timetable, preparing your classroom and first-day-handouts, organising the first week’s lessons, reminding yourself why you are doing the job and making a fresh start. But what does it mean for students? Back-to-school for students means a return to […]
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Will robots take over from humans? No, they will not, according to a fascinating BBC Radio 4 programme I heard last week. In How Do Our Kids Beat the Robots? Sathnam Sanghera explored the idea that technological developments are happening so fast that we cannot possibly teach students all they need to know to tackle […]
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Last week I had the pleasure of seeing the newly released documentary – “Won’t you be my Neighbour?” highlighting the life of the remarkable Fred Rogers. Growing up in the U.K., I had not been exposed to his long-running children’s TV programme and was slightly confused at first. However, I was soon drawn in by […]
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