If we go back far enough in time all schools used to have effective 100% student engagement. For very good reasons we have renounced the overt violence and rote learning that underpinned those times and places. Despite best efforts, we are still a long way from re-achieving effective 100% student engagement.

Yet, getting to 100% student engagement should be the goal (and maybe it is) but the methods being used seem unable to achieve it.

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The last few years have exacted a toll on staff and student wellbeing. We know that for young people to be able to face up to an uncertain future they need to acquire the full range of 21st century skills, which is best achieved when every student is fully engaged. We also know that engaged students mean productive classrooms and effective teachers.

(Re)Building Teacherly Authority is a one-day face-to-face program plus two 90-minute follow up sessions over Zoom.

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The purpose of focusing on rebuilding teacherly authority on a basis that aligns teacher and student values (i.e., both teacher and student value the capacity the teacher is offering) is to ensure that every student is engaged in every class and with every teacher.

Think about what that makes possible. But there is a lot more.

Obviously, more learning will take place.

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The four capacities that I have discussed in the last four postings (here, here, here and here) cannot easily be put into a curriculum and a teacher is unlikely ever to say “we are having a class on insight today”. Rather, it is in the many one-to-one interactions, where students need insights into their work, how to do their work, how to position themselves vis-à-vis the world around them and, most profoundly, to uncover unsuspected capacities and opportunities that will shape their future lives.

Of the four, caring for others is, perhaps, the easiest of these capacities to model and teach for those who already recognise that relationships are paramount.

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