Living Among the Oxymorons “We live our lives filled with wild contradictions” David Berliner It’s fairly clear I’m an oxymoron. Or at least, I live among them. This morning, as we tried to leave the house, my daughter told me she was “nearly done”. Sadly, we were already late. And anyway, that phrase never means what […]
An old colleague said to me recently, with predictable exasperation, that students who do not hold the door open simply do not have good manners. “Manners maketh man” and all that. Forget our current crop of unhinged dictators; apparently, the real threat to civilisation is the child who lets a door swing shut behind them. In this […]
The point of any conference is not just to meet people, but to help us think better. I was lucky enough to attend the Global IB Conference in Mumbai last week. With more than 1,000 educators and speakers gathered from across the region, it had something of a Tatooine spaceport about it: a busy meeting […]
“Other people, with their differences, can also be right.” International Baccalaureate Mission Statement I’ve done a fair bit of school leadership training over the years. None of it led with a chapter on understanding your parents. Which is peculiar if you think about it. We spend considerable time learning to lead learning, staff, budgets, navigate […]
AI detection is dead. Long live authentication. I came through airport security yesterday. He let me keep my flip-flops on, but he was determined to have my fabric belt and watch off before I dutifully laid out my laptop, chargers, liquids, glasses, coins, and mints in the tray, raised my arms to the correct angles […]
When communication systems grow large enough, the problem is rarely the number of messages. It is the uncertainty around them. A few weeks ago, colleagues surfaced something we all know has become a source of pressure across the school. Can we do something about email? At first, it sounded simple enough. But the more we […]
I don’t travel well at the best of times. By the time I reached seat 40K, found no room in the overhead locker, then realised the in-flight entertainment system wasn’t working, I was already flustered. By the time I had absorbed the delayed take-off, agonised over the slow progress of the food trolley, tried to […]
A Review of the Standard Type Framework (1958–2037) Extract from the National Institute for Productive Development, 2075 Retrospective Edition Prefatory Note Systems rarely falter because they lack standards. More often, they falter when the story that justifies those standards begins to thin. I write this as someone who works within a high-performing, mission-aligned educational institution, […]
If you know what “cowabunga!” means, then we’re probably friends. The latest Magic: The Gathering set to be released next weekend is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and so I’ve naturally signed up for the pre-release party with some of my nerdier friends. I shared this news with my kids this morning as we sat around […]
First Learn Stand, Then Learn Fly. Nature Rule, Daniel-san, Not Mine. Mr Miyagi, The Karate Kid Wax on. Wax off. Begin What do you think about “gap” years? I was asked this question again recently, and it struck me how different my answer is today from the one I might have given at the start […]
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