Tag Archives: education

Lianne Dominguez

Helping Teachers Flourish: The Heart of School Leadership

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This summer, I had the privilege of teaching and learning alongside almost a hundred teachers and school leaders through two back-to-back courses on instructional supervision and evaluation.

They represented different schools, systems, countries, and stages of leadership. Yet despite their diverse contexts, I was struck by how quickly our conversations converged.

The questions they asked were not just about observations, evaluation rubrics, or instructional frameworks themselves. Instead, they revealed something much deeper.

How do we create schools where teachers continue to grow, so that every student has the opportunity to flourish?

That question stayed with me long after the courses ended because it challenged me to think more deeply about what it really means for a school community to flourish.

We often talk about student flourishing, but perhaps we don’t spend enough time reflecting on what flourishing really means.

To flourish is more than to achieve success.

It is to continue growing.

To be challenged while feeling supported.

To develop confidence through purposeful practice.

To find meaning in what we do.

To belong to a community that believes we can always become better than we were yesterday.

If this is what we hope for our students, shouldn’t it also be what we hope for our teachers?

Teachers do not and should not stop learning the day they enter the profession. Like every professional, they deserve opportunities to reflect on their practice, receive meaningful feedback, refine their craft, and continue growing throughout their careers.

Perhaps this is where our work as school leaders matters most.

Our influence on student learning is rarely direct; it is multiplied through the teachers we support every day.

Throughout the courses, these conversations surfaced again and again through questions like:

  • How do we make classroom observations meaningful?
  • How do we ensure feedback leads to growth rather than compliance?
  • How do we balance operational demands with instructional leadership?

As I reflected afterwards, I realised they were all pointing towards the same question:

What conditions help teachers grow?

Four conditions kept emerging.

  • Clarity – Leaders create clarity by establishing a shared understanding of excellent teaching.
  • Trust – Leaders create trust by making coaching the purpose of supervision.
  • Evidence – Leaders strengthen professional judgment by grounding feedback in evidence.
  • Time – Leaders create the possibility for growth by intentionally protecting time.

Each of these matters on its own, but together they create the conditions in which teachers can continue to learn, refine their practice, and flourish.

Clarity

Teachers deserve a shared understanding of what excellent teaching looks like – not as a checklist to comply with, but as a framework grounded in research and the science of learning. Shared standards create a common language for professional growth and ensure that our feedback is anchored in evidence rather than individual preference.

Trust

Professional growth happens when supervision becomes a coaching conversation rather than a performance exercise. Teachers are far more likely to reflect honestly, take instructional risks, and refine their practice when they know the purpose of feedback is growth, not judgment.

Evidence

Professional judgment should be informed by patterns of practice and their impact on student learning and not isolated observations or personal preference. Evidence collected over time allows us to make thoughtful decisions about how best to support each teacher’s continued growth.

Time

Perhaps this is the condition we talk about least, yet it may be the one that determines whether all the others are possible.

Time to be present in classrooms.

Time to notice.

Time to listen before we speak.

Time to ask questions that provoke reflection rather than simply provide answers.

Time to coach.

Time to celebrate growth.

Time to learn alongside our teachers.

As another school year begins, I find myself returning to one simple truth: leadership is measured not only by the people we help grow, but by what we intentionally make time for.

After all, our calendars are often the clearest reflection of what we truly value.

Perhaps flourishing schools do not begin with programmes, initiatives, or strategic plans.

Perhaps they begin with leaders who intentionally create the conditions in which teachers continue to flourish.

So, as I prepare for the year ahead, I find myself returning to one simple question: What will I intentionally protect this year so that my teachers have the greatest opportunity to flourish?

Conrad Hughes

From Screen Time to Mindful Time: Reimagining Tech in the Classroom 

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The EdTech revolution that swept over classrooms some 20 years ago was a wave of uncritical implementation: whiteboards, cloud-based learning platforms, and 1:1 computing programmes unfurled in a tidal wave of widespread technology adoption with each school following the next eagerly.

There were always those anecdotes that threw up questions: was it true that the CEOs of the very same companies selling software and hardware to schools were sending their children to pen-and-paper institutions? Somewhere in the school community, you would find voices that stood up to questions of data privacy, but these were the exceptions that proved the rule. The essential idea was to go with the flow, which is what most schools did, and the intensification of networks, fiber optic cables, chargers, leasing agreements, charging trays, and the maintenance to supply this, proliferated exponentially. 

This has led us to a highly synthetic classroom environment: it’s possible to see students learning in an entirely paperless environment. Lessons are projected on a whiteboard and homework is done on cloud computing; we navigate learning from one screen to the next. And at break time and after school? Well, out come more screens of course: phones.

More recently, a different type of wave is rising above classrooms, one that calls for a dialling back on screens. From Anna Lembke’s Dopamine Nation (2021) to Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation (2024), more and more voices are asking for schools to reconsider technology, in particular phones and screens. There are worrying correlations in the steepening drop of IQ scores (particularly from 2010) and, with the explosion of Artificial Intelligence on the market, the dangers of cognitive offsetting and deficit due to Large Language Models being available to replace research.

At the center of this is the feeling that we need to regain the community connection between us that is now spliced into separate, individual profiles, isolated yet simultaneously hypnotised by chemically stressed layers of carbon polymers, liquid crystals and rare-earth elements. It takes a concerned effort now to pull us away from screens, to shut them down, to appreciate each other rather than whatever’s happening elsewhere in the tiny prism of light held in the hand or propped up on the desk.  It’s got to the point where parents of a certain generation are nostalgic about watching television, which is somewhat depressing considering the virtues of the couch potato and how watching TV was viewed as a waste of time by many back in the 1980s.

We’ve reached something of a perfect storm with an increasingly widespread consternation that technology is not actually helping learning but getting in the way of it.

Of course, it’s much more subtle than this: AI tutors, adaptive online assessments, online courses, and the democratisation of knowledge through the internet mean that in many areas, learning has never been this available. It is also true that through COVID-19, and today in certain rural educational programmes, literacy rates have increased dramatically because of technology. It remains a double-edged sword, a two-sided coin, a Pandora’s Box with hope lurking inside it.

As educators, the question we should be asking ourselves today is a simple one: how is our use of technology advancing learning? Rather than giving assignments on cloud computing as a reflex, stop to ask why and whether it wouldn’t be better to ask the students to handwrite in the classroom? Rather than rushing to the next PowerPoint presentation or whiteboard lesson, stop to think whether it might not be better in an analogic setting, through a discussion, without screens. Given what we know about the cognitive benefits of reading and writing, how are we as educators ensuring that these practices remain strong in the classroom?

At the International School of Los Angeles, we have laid out our position starting next year. It’s in four parts:

  1. We will be phone-free right the way through the school.
  2. The 1:1 programme will be staggered, starting in the Middle School with a “computer at school only” policy, then computers at home but with a curfew (we will programme the computers to black out at 21h00). Seniors use computers as before, but we will have scaffolded the way there.
  3. A very specific AI programme on tutoring in one subject using a protected semantic field (not the World Wide Web) carefully curated by a resident specialist with an opt-out possibility for parents. This sits over our school AI policy.
  4. A special course on social media for our students for them to understand the way information is distributed and curated.

We will track this carefully and, most importantly, accompany it by discussions and training with our faculty on how to use technology intentionally, with a sense of genuine innovation, but also trepidation and skepticism.

What will your approach to technology be next academic year? 

Works Cited

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press.

Lembke, A. (2021). Dopamine nation: Finding balance in the age of indulgence. Dutton.

Conrad Hughes

Lessons from the Redwoods

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In the Reggio Emilia approach, we say that the classroom is the third teacher, which is why we spend the time we do curating an aesthetic, pedagogical and ergonomic space for learning. To me, nature is by far the greatest classroom as it has an immediately pleasant and welcoming effect on the senses. I have very fond memories of an English teacher in Eswatini who would teach us poetry on a lawn, something I later did with my own students in India. I always encourage colleagues to go outside with their students for some fresh air in the outdoor breeze. It’s something my colleagues do at the International School of Los Angeles quite a bit. Seeing our students writing and reading in the dappled shade of acacias is mindful, especially in this day and age of heavy screen use, artificial light and devices.

While some natural settings are sufficiently bucolic to serve as a backdrop for learning something else, others have a real presence, and are a different type of classroom altogether.

Not long ago, I had the privilege to find myself in a redwood forest in Big Sur, some hundred miles south of San Francisco. Several of the trees stand over 200 feet tall and, astonishingly, are over 1,000 years old. The rich, scented bark is a protection against fire and the canopy so high above creates a mysterious, soft microclimate below. Walking deftly among these prehistoric giants is a lesson in and of itself. Rather than cogitate and project, the mind absorbs and appreciates; rather than processing information and thinking, your whole being simply is.

I think that’s because the sheer magnitude and beauty of the trees, their protective and magnanimous presence overpowers you and is nothing of the blank page or under-stimulating background that a classroom tries to be, it’s a living presence that makes you feel a tremendous sense of humility and gratitude to be alive and to share such a moment. You are swept up by it entirely. Little wonder that so many have seen and continue to see such spaces as sacred.

The redwoods are not a classroom for maths, languages, humanities or even sciences and geography, they are a lesson in being, that mysterious and miraculous thread that binds us all while we are here on earth. The effect of such an experience goes beyond learning; it is a type of deep cleansing of the psyche. Long may the redwoods last and may humans continue to have the wisdom to respect them and leave them to grow, to give, to be.

Lianne Dominguez

We Talk About Peace – But What Does It Actually Look Like in Classrooms?

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Article Series: Education, Identity, and Peace in Kazakhstan

What does it actually mean for education to contribute to peace?

Not peace as an abstract idea or something we reference in mission statements—but as something lived in the everyday interactions between students, teachers, and communities.

We are living in a time where uncertainty feels constant. Across countries, there are tensions—political, cultural, and social—that shape how people see the world and each other. Schools sit directly within this reality.

So the question becomes more immediate: How do we help young people not only to succeed, but to live alongside difference—with understanding, with respect, and with care?

Over the past two years living and working in Kazakhstan, I’ve started to notice that this question is not always named directly—but it is present.

I work in an international school, and many of our students come from different educational and cultural experiences. Some have grown up in systems shaped by the legacy of the Soviet era – structured, academically rigorous, and grounded in discipline. Others are part of a more modern Kazakhstan – globally connected, multilingual, and outward-looking.

What stands out is not the difference between these experiences, but how students learn to navigate them.I remember sitting in a classroom discussion where students were exploring a global issue. What struck me was not just the range of opinions, but the way students approached each other’s ideas. There was disagreement, but it was measured. Students listened, paused, responded carefully. Some shifted between languages to clarify meaning. Others adjusted their thinking as they heard new perspectives.

It wasn’t a lesson about peace.

But it felt like one.

And over time, I’ve started to realise that moments like this are not incidental – they are shaped by something deeper.

What I’ve also started to notice is that this way of interacting does not sit in isolation from the wider culture. Kazakhstan is often described as a country made up of many nationalities, languages, and traditions. There is a strong emphasis on unity – that people of different backgrounds are part of one shared community. This is reflected not just in formal narratives, but in everyday interactions and in how identity is held.

There is a clear respect for cultural and religious diversity, alongside a sense of belonging that does not require people to set aside who they are.

I noticed this most during national and school celebrations, where traditions are not treated as belonging to one group alone, but are acknowledged more broadly – shared, recognised, and valued across communities. It creates a sense that identity is not something that needs to be reduced in order to belong, but something that can be held with confidence alongside others.

At the same time, like any society, there are also layers of complexity. But perhaps that is also part of the point.

Students are not growing up in a perfectly resolved environment. They are growing up in one where difference exists—and where they begin to make sense of that difference, gradually finding their place within it.

Kazakhstan’s history is present in its classrooms. The post-Soviet legacy continues to shape values around discipline, respect for teachers, and the importance of education. These are not abstract ideas – you can feel them in the way students approach their learning and in the relationships within schools.

At the same time, the country is actively shaping a modern identity. Students are learning in multiple languages – Kazakh, Russian, and English – and engaging with ideas that extend beyond their immediate context. They are growing up connected to both local traditions and a wider world. These are not viewed as isolated experiences, but worlds students learn to hold at once.

Working within this context, I’ve become more aware of the role of teachers in shaping not just learning, but relationships.

One of the things I have come to appreciate most is the warmth and care that Kazakh teachers bring to their work. There is a strong sense of responsibility toward students, rooted in values that feel deeply embedded – respect, community, and a genuine commitment to supporting young people.

Students are expected to work hard, to persevere, and to take learning seriously. But this is often held within relationships that feel steady and human. There is a sense that education is not only about achievement, but about how students learn to exist with others.

This is where the idea of peace becomes tangible.

It is not something separate from the classroom.

It begins in classrooms where students learn to listen before responding, where they learn to hold more than one perspective at a time, and where they learn to navigate differences without losing themselves.

In that sense, what I am seeing in schools here feels significant.

Students are not being taught about complexity as a concept. They are living it everyday.

I am still early in my experience here, and I approach this thought with curiosity more than certainty.

But what I am beginning to see more clearly is that there is something important happening in places like this – contexts where history, culture, and change intersect in everyday learning.

This is why I’m starting this 3-part series.

To explore more deeply what it means to educate in a space where multiple worlds meet, and what that might offer to a broader global conversation.

Because perhaps the work of building a more peaceful world does not begin with just policy or strategy alone.

Perhaps it begins in classrooms like these –  where students learn, every day, how to live with difference, how to listen, and how to hold multiple perspectives at once.

This is the first in a three-part series exploring education, identity, and peace in Kazakhstan. In the next article, I take a closer look at what it means for students to live and learn between different educational worlds.

Conrad Hughes

Risk management: the frog and the bat

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There’s no shortage of metaphors for leadership, often using sports, which is not always helpful since running an organisation is not playing a game. Nonetheless, using a metaphor for elements of leadership can help distill values, concepts and skills.

Managing risk is a core part of leadership, in particular in schools since the stakes are high and there is an intertwined network of human emotions, expectations, beliefs and stories to contend with. What sort of leader should we aspire to be to manage risk deftly? The answer is intuitive and not surprising: proactive rather than reactive, systemic rather than improvised, collective rather than alone.

About two years ago, the coach and workshop leader Robert Dilts took me through a powerful metaphor to which I have referred ever since for it exemplifies foundational principles. It’s a dichotomy, perhaps a slightly false one as there is a degree of caricature in it, but I believe it is a helpful schema to use when considering how to manage risk.

The frog

The frog is a cold blooded, fairly solitudinous amphibian, heavily dependent on the specifics of its ecosystem with a short life span (2 to 10 years). Frogs tend to conserve their energy, sit for hours, motionless, until an unsuspecting insect happens to wander by and then, only when very close, will they react. To reproduce, frogs lay massive amounts of eggs on the off chance that one or two will survive and their defence mechanism is essentially camouflage or, in some cases, poison. Frogs only see insects when they move, they are essentially incapable of detecting a stationary presence.

Frog leaders manage risk poorly, by sitting (in their office) and waiting for something to happen. They cannot pick up weak signals and will not survive for long outside of their comfort zone. They have a capacity to disappear in times of crisis.  These leaders act alone, and are therefore prone to mistakes and incapable of focussing on any root cause analysis. Unsurprisingly, they do not last long. 

The bat

The bat is a warm blooded, highly gregarious creature that flies at high speed across large distances. It eats roughly the equivalent of its weight every day in a high energy cycle. Bats are famous for their extraordinary perception, using echolocation to detect extremely subtle and minute objects in darkness. They use hearing to see. Bats live for up to 40 years and will have one pup per year, investing time and effort into the upbringing of their young.

Bat leaders have their ear to the ground and listen carefully. They can pick up very weak signals and pre-empt crises rather than waiting for them to happen. They are present all over the organisation, moving energetically and passionately from point to point. They know how to work in teams. The bat leader invests in people and builds up successors and future leaders (what we could call “metaleadership” – or leading leaders to lead). Risk management is not only done collectively, but using talent and skill from within the group. These leaders stick around.

If you’re a leader, ask yourself these questions to know if you are more of a frog or a bat:

  1. Where do you spend most of your day? Sitting down in your office or moving about? How many different people do you interact with every day?
  2. How would you grade yourself on ear-to-the ground alertness? Do you know what is happening across your organisation and are people confident telling you and unearthing warning signs?
  3. Do you have a solid action and communication plan for crises or do you have a long written risk matrix which is unspecific and is only pulled up to review when there is a problem?
  4. Do you recruit people who are better than you in something and do you learn from them or is your team full of “yes” people”?

As we pre-empt and manage risk, let’s keep these metaphorical representations of leadership in mind and keep asking ourselves tough questions.

Lianne Dominguez

Staying Human in the Age of Infinite Minds

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Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, used a phrase recently that stayed with me longer than I expected.

He spoke about a future where our work is not simply to manage systems or organisations, but to learn how to manage infinite minds. Minds extended by AI. Minds with access, speed, and reach far beyond what we had at the same age.

Hearing this, I took it as a quiet challenge to us as adults—especially those of us in schools.

Working in international education, I see this every day. Our students are already navigating multiple languages, identities, value systems, and expectations. They cross borders physically and cognitively, often before they’ve fully figured out who they are.

AI doesn’t introduce complexity into their lives—it amplifies what was already there.

And that amplification has made me pause, not to ask what more we should teach, but what more we need to be.

I keep coming back to the idea that infinite minds don’t actually need tighter management. They need steadiness. They need adults who are grounded enough not to rush to control, correct, or compete with the technology. Adults who can sit comfortably in uncertainty, who don’t confuse authority with having all the answers, and who trust that learning can be shared rather than supervised.

Trust feels foundational here—not just trust in students, but trust in ourselves to let go of being the central source of knowledge.

Curiosity feels just as important. Not the kind we design into lessons, but the kind we live out loud. The willingness to wonder with students rather than ahead of them. To ask better questions instead of faster ones. In a world where answers are instant, curiosity becomes an act of care. It slows things down. It reminds students that thinking is not about efficiency, but meaning.

I’ve also been reflecting on critical thinking—not as a skill students demonstrate, but as a stance we model. With AI, the challenge is no longer access to information, but discernment.

What do we trust? What do we question? When do we pause?

Students learn this less from rubrics and more from watching how we respond when we’re unsure, when we disagree respectfully, when we choose not to rush to conclusions.

There’s a subtle wellbeing dimension here too—because constant acceleration, even intellectual, can be exhausting.

And then there’s creativity. AI can generate endlessly, but it cannot decide what matters. That decision still sits with humans. In schools, creativity now feels less about performance and more about agency—about giving students space to shape ideas that reflect who they are, what they care about, and the communities they belong to.

What I’m noticing is that this moment isn’t asking educators to become more impressive or more technologically fluent. It’s asking us to become more human.

To shift quietly from managing learning to stewarding it. From directing students to walking alongside them. From certainty to discernment. That feels especially true in international schools, where students are already learning how to navigate complexity, difference, and change.

Right now, I don’t have a conclusion to this wondering —just a question I’m learning to live with.

If our students’ minds are becoming infinite, perhaps the work is not to contain them, but to strengthen the inner parts of ourselves that help us hold them well.

And maybe that work begins not with new tools or frameworks, but with how we show up—calm, curious, and willing to wonder alongside them.

Conrad Hughes

The pedagogy of music and song

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One of the most effective ways of communicating a message is through song and music. It breaks down barriers held by language, can evoke strong emotions and internal reflection, and also opens avenues for collaboration. 

For Arthur Schopenhauer, music is the highest art form because of the ineffable and pure form of its expression. Unlike plastic art, music has no materiality; it breathes a miraculous existence into being from sound vibrations, so mysterious a phenomenon that it features as a central part of trance and prayer across many cultures: it speaks to the unconscious, the subliminal, the spiritual dimension of our being.

For years as an English teacher, whenever we discussed the Romantic movement, I would play Wagner for the students and ask them to share what they heard. I found the experience of hearing the music brought across some of the emotions and key concepts in Romanticism much more than a verbal explanation would.

A workshop leader I know plays music at the beginning of each session as people are coming in, to create an atmosphere and get people to connect with the environment emotionally. I started doing the same in my philosophy classes, playing something related to the philosophy we were studying as students came into each lesson (a Raga for Buddhism, Chinese Guoyue for Confucius, South African choral music for our lesson on Ubuntu, Mozart for Kant, and so on). This creates a unique setting for the lesson, contextualising the learning culturally and historically.

Then there is songwriting, a form of poetry that can distill a message powerfully and musically, not only connecting with students in an emotional fashion but allowing for the whole class to sing together. What a wonderful act of pedagogy, harmonising the same message together.

Recently, I did a string of assemblies for our Primary students across the different campuses of the International School of Los Angeles. I wanted us to reflect together on some educational questions. So, instead of making a speech or doing a PowerPoint, I took my guitar and we sang Bob Dylan’s timeless “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The song is full of questions and only one answer, which we don’t know, for it is blowing in the wind.

I started with the lyrics, asking the students what they thought they meant. What do you think Dylan means when he says, “How many times must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?” And what might he mean when he asks, “How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?” The students gave various responses, ranging from the literal to the symbolic. Everyone had an idea of what the lyrics might mean since the allegorical structure of the song makes it at once accessible and challenging, as any elegant pedagogic structure should.

Then we sang the song, with the students joining me for the chorus: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind; the answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

Music and song together bring joy and emotion into learning; they bring communities together and allow us to enter the world of ideas through some other avenue than the logical and exclusively linguistic framework that dominates so much of what we do in education. 

What music do you play with your students?

Conrad Hughes

Beyond Servant Leadership

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In the 1970s, the American businessman Robert Greenleaf coined the term “servant leadership” meaning that leaders should be at the service of those they lead. On the surface, this seems like a good idea, counteracting the paradigm of the domineering, micromanaging, and self-centered leader who crushes others and takes all the credit. But let’s deconstruct the concept of the “servant” first.

To be clear, a leader who drowns others out is not a good leader; this is an unsustainable way of operating that kills creativity and creates despondency within a team. No one wants a leader who lacks respect for them or refuses to give them space.

But is the idea of a servant leader the best antidote to this and what exactly is a servant? Essentially, a servant is someone who is there to tend to the needs of another person, perform chores for them, and complete tasks that the person being served does not wish to do themselves. Is this what a good leader should be doing?

How do we move out of our comfort zones? How do we become better versions of ourselves? How do we do excellent work that makes us proud? Is it by one person being the servant of another?

The term “servant” implies an overly simplistic, dichotomous relationship; it is a short-termist approach that offers initial gratification to both parties (the self consciousness of serving others and the satisfaction of being served) but ultimately leads to stasis. We should not be afraid to look to become something much more ambitious: respectful but exacting interlocutors, creative business partners, and dynamic collaborators in an ongoing quest that lies beyond our egos.

A good leader is a coach who asks the right questions, knows how to listen, and empowers their team by challenging them, encouraging them to set inspiring goals, and providing guidance; not simply someone who serves others and creates learned helplessness but someone who creates a vibrant culture of coextensive professional excellence.

Ultimately, the world of work, particularly in education, is a place where we bring our passion to the higher service of our mission. Leaders should strive to create other leaders within their teams. This is called meta-leadership: the idea that you do not simply lead people, but rather lead others to become leaders, ideally, even better leaders than yourself.

So, while the intent behind servant leadership may be positive, and while it is vital to put people first and work for the greater good, true leadership requires something more subtle and more valuable than being a servant. I think the essence to retain from the idea of servant leadership is less the act of being a servant and more the position of humility: respecting those you lead and serving them in that sense. One of the greatest ways leaders can nurture humility within themselves, and truly be of service to their team and the organisation, is to empower others and, in doing so, nurture growth from within.

Lianne Dominguez

Hope for 2026: A Quietly Radical Inspiration

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It has been almost two years since I left an organisation that shaped a significant chapter of my professional life. I am deeply rooted and grateful for the work I do now, but as 2026 begins, I find myself intentionally remembering something beautiful from an earlier season of my journey.

Not as a comparison point, and not as something to recreate—but as a quiet reflection on a chapter that helped form who I am today, and why I continue to believe so deeply in what schools and communities can become when belief, trust, and courage align.

Almost eight years ago, I became part of a founding team tasked with building a school from the ground up. For six of those years, that school was not just where I worked—it was where I lived, learned, and grew alongside my family, students, and colleagues. There was an existing model to follow, but it quickly became clear that our context—our place in the world, our students, our families—required something different. So we listened. And then we built.

We opened as a boarding school, and that detail matters. We didn’t just work there—we lived there. We lived in the boarding apartments adjacent to our students. We ate together, studied together, argued, laughed, recovered, and grew together. The community was so tightly woven that some students cried at the start of holiday breaks, grieving the temporary loss of a place that felt more like home than school.

There were many structures in that school that worked well, and many that did not. It was never perfect—and it wasn’t meant to be. What stayed with me were not the polished systems, but the ways of thinking and doing that emerged because of the moment we were in. The timing mattered. The nature of a start-up mattered. There was a shared understanding that everything was in draft form—that iteration was not a failure, but an expectation. Many arrived ready to adapt quickly, to problem-solve in real time, to try again without ego. That created a very different kind of energy—lighter, braver, more honest. If you’ve never been part of a school in its building phase, it’s hard to explain just how unique it is.

There is a rare permission in those early years to imagine freely, adjust boldly, and build together while everything is still becoming.

We reimagined the school day. On Wednesdays, the school day paused. Learning didn’t stop—but it softened and stretched. Students used that time to recalibrate: to seek support, re-sit assessments without stigma, drop into teachers’ rooms for unhurried conversations, study with friends, work on passion projects, or simply breathe.

It was a collective acknowledgment that growth doesn’t always happen on a fixed timetable—and that sometimes the most important learning begins when we slow down.

We introduced Genius Hour, where middle and high school students worked side by side on several five-week projects throughout the year, bound not by age or grades, but by curiosity and shared interests. These were not isolated “projects for display,” but incubators for real ideas. Over time, they grew into not-for-profit initiatives, media teams, redesigned learning spaces, a student-run bakery café, research projects, trips, and programs that became part of the school itself. What began as imagination gradually became infrastructure—student ideas woven into the fabric of the institution.

Alongside this, we designed many bespoke electives shaped around our students’ evolving pathways—constantly asking how we could help them move closer to their goals. Teachers drew on their passions, university experiences, and professional networks to create opportunities that did not exist before.

Everyone looked for ways to connect students with someone, somewhere, who could help them take the next step toward their dreams. This became part of the culture: possibility-seeking, relationship-driven, deeply intentional.

Teachers were alive in their work. Fully present. Lifelong learners again. Many began projects alongside students, modeling growth rather than perfection. They carried a sense of humor too—an ease with one another that made even the hardest days lighter. Life felt simple in the best way: meaningful work, honest laughter, shared purpose.

Every day, I felt an immense sense of gratitude to be surrounded by such a talented, generous group of educators. To serve as their Principal was a privilege—one that grounded me in humility, trust, and deep belief in what teachers can build when they are truly seen and supported.

Our student leaders didn’t just represent voices—they co-authored policies and processes with adults. They did so with care, empathy, and a deep sense of ownership. Everyone—students and staff alike—acted like builders every single day.

In time, very selective universities globally began to notice—not just our students’ academic profiles, but their stories, their agency, and the way they spoke about having helped build their own community. That recognition was never the goal, but it became a meaningful affirmation. We were proud of what we had built—and it mattered to know that others could see it too.

I was supported by a head of school who believed deeply in the cause. Some of our best thinking happened not in meeting rooms, but over barbecues and shrimp boils—living simply, dreaming boldly, hearts fully on our sleeves.

My own children were part of this founding story too. With other founding students, they helped shape the culture, grew up alongside their peers, and shared life in a community where school and home were not separate worlds. We even lived through COVID together—and somehow emerged stronger, more connected, more human.

As often happens over time, governance and vision evolved, and the school chose a different direction. The school was renamed and rebranded to align with the new project. Some of us who were part of the building phase knew it was time to step away too.

I still think about the kind of community we created. How rare it was. How, for a moment, we all glimpsed what school could be when we truly listen to students, trust teachers, and invite educators to help write the story rather than simply deliver it. That experience left me with enduring lessons about what it means to build a school—lessons rooted not just in structures or schedules, but in relationships, shared ownership, and belief.

This experience also helped me understand something about myself now. Why conversations about possibility with students still energize me. Why imagining new pathways with colleagues feels expansive rather than exhausting. Why I remain hopeful and deeply optimistic about education, even in complex times. I’ve seen what can happen when people are trusted, when imagination is taken seriously, and when community is built with intention.

It didn’t last forever. But it existed. And because it existed once, it continues to shape how I lead, how I listen, and how I dream.

As 2026 begins, I carry that chapter with me—not as nostalgia, but as a compass. I want to continue bringing the energy of that time into my current work: the willingness to keep iterating, to move forward thoughtfully, to make things better without losing sight of the people and the process along the way.

Whether I am in a start-up phase or building on an existing legacy, I hold onto the same belief—that when we lead with humanity, curiosity, and care, something extraordinary remains possible, again and again.

Conrad Hughes

Early years teachers: the unsung heroes of education?

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The other day I was walking the school at one of our campuses and enjoying some early years teaching. Observing some of our master teachers, three points came to mind:

1. Malleability and Foundational Development

Although the preconception that neuroplasticity stops in adults has been debunked to show that neuroplasticity is far more dynamic and contextual to experience, there is still an abundance of evidence to show that the neural connections made in children early on are extraordinarily voluminous and particularly important for their subsequent cognitive development. It is in the developing brain of early years that the foundations of learning are constructed in what’s known as exuberant synaptogenesis, an overproduction of synapses (over a million a second). This allows for fluid and fast skill acquisition (López, et al., 2024), making those years particularly important. On this note, it is not only the cerebral and cognitive impressions that make deep inroads in students’ minds during this phase of learning; behavioural norms and ethical standards (the “rules of the game” as it were) are forged. In other words, this phase of development is particularly crucial and sensitive. 

2. The Holistic Challenge of Early Years Teaching

All teaching is holistic, and no teacher is merely teaching the academic dimension of being; they address psychological and emotional needs at the same time. However, teaching behavioural regulation alongside cognitive development to children below 5 is particularly challenging. Teachers need to be expert pedagogues, differentiating not only the Vygotskian Zone of Proximal Development (which is so very different for each child), but creating learning episodes that hold their attention and gently socialise children to manage themselves and learn to live with others, each at a different pace. Children under 5 can be impulsive and emotional: they have not yet mastered the codes of social organisation. The management of a group under such circumstances, let alone the task of educating foundational skills and knowledge within such parameters, makes the mission of early years teaching truly holistic. In short, teaching very young children is teaching to know, to learn, to be, and to live together; something that is exceptionally rich, complex and multi-facetted in design.

3. Curating Insatiable Curiosity

Young learners’ curiosity is insatiable: the barrage of questions, the overflow of enthusiasm and desire to participate, the constant flow of queries, thinking out loud and testing boundaries can be overwhelming for a parent. Imagine navigating that for a dozen children! Early years teachers have to show exceptional empathy and patience; they need to fuel such curiosity while curating it, to ensure that the students’ cognitive development is steady and positive while not letting the coherence of a lesson be taken off track. Psychologically, we are trying to teach young people to walk a straight line and to remain focused, thus exercising their executive function, while at the same time keeping the flame of inquiry alive, not clamping down on the extraordinary creativity and mind-wandering of young children. The science and art of early years teaching is a tightrope between socialisation and nurturing the sacred garden in each imagination: no mean feat. 

Supporting these heroes

I say that our early years teachers are unsung heroes because, worldwide, they are paid less than secondary teachers (OECD, 2025) and when it comes to the 44 million dearth of teachers across the globe, a major problem, a key component, is early years teacher attrition (UNESCO, 2024): there is an exodus of primary teachers in general from the workforce, no doubt because of suboptimal conditions. 

This means that school leaders, ministries and all those with decisional power in education have to make sure that we nurture, appreciate, and recognise the powerful work done on the frontline by early years teachers: they are pivotal in forming the future.

Three concrete ways to do this are: pay parity with secondary teachers, public celebration of their work and ensuring that on committees and at the decision table, the early years voice is heard and respected.

References

López, E., Alcaraz, R. S., & García, C. (2024). Econeurobiology and brain development in children: key factors affecting development, behavioral outcomes, and school interventions: Frontiers in Public Health, 12, 1376075.

OECD. (2025). Education at a Glance 2025: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris.

UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030. (2024). Global Report on Teachers: Addressing teacher shortages and transforming the profession. UNESCO Publishing.