Why We Teach

Making a sustainable difference to student learning and outcomes

The new book is coming out soon (next month).  Where Red Brain Blue Brain and Student Feedback were ‘what’/’how’ books, this is a ‘why’ book.  Why we need to make systemic changes and what their nature is.

About 80% of school operating costs are made up of salaries, a systemic change to raise student learning and outcomes sustainably, comes down to teachers becoming more valuable to their students.  Being more valuable necessarily means a change in behaviour.  It really is all about relationships, relationships, relationships.

This book lays out the two main behavioural changes that add significant value to students through relationships that support young people’s need for autonomy and relationships that support their capacity to handle greater complexity and wider perspectives.  Both these capacities underpin 21st century skills.

Other professions are also making the shift from a focus on purely technical skills to broadening out their capacities to how they engage with their clients at a human level.

Like teaching, there is usually a large minority who are already some way down the path because they simply followed their clients’ (students’) needs as those have evolved.

By making these new behaviours explicit and making the new value a desired outcome of the system, then the minority can grow into a majority and the impact goes up by an order of magnitude.

We are getting closer and closer to the tipping point.

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.

• To purchase a copy of Red Brain Blue Brain or Student Feedback go here