A Christmas wish!

To speed up the transformation of our education systems

Almost everyone has experienced the - lifelong - effect of an outstanding teacher, a teacher who pays full attention, free of judgement or comparison and who responds, always, with kindness and compassion, even when enforcing necessary sanctions.

Such teachers represent about 5% of all teachers, a percentage which seems to be stable over time, and they seem to be heterogeneously spread throughout our schools.  From interviews, I know that they are created despite the system, not because of it.

At some point in the future, all teachers will be like this.  How could it be otherwise if we want the very best outcomes for both children and adults?

That is my vision for education.

Heidi Malott - Christmas Tree Winter Evergreens

We know what such teachers do and how they do it, we know that these are learnable skills (and thus teachable, too).

It really is just a question of mapping out the pathway - the changes to the system that encourage the adoption of new behaviours - for developing every adult involved in education to move in this direction.

Most development effort is still going into curriculum and pedagogy, the area of behaviour is an area that is lagging behind, partly through ignorance of what is possible and partly through inertia – it is so much easier to do what we have always done, been who we have always been.

Wouldn’t it be great if in 2020 this area was addressed with focus and intent, after all it is the missing part of the pathway to a transformed education system and society?

This is the last blog for 2019, wishing all my readers a happy and safe end to the year and a successful start to 2020.

 John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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