Tag Archives: international schools

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.

Matt Brady

Why Is Your K-12 Learning Community Tech Rich But Systems Poor?

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You Can’t Name It? You Can’t Tame It.

Schools invest millions in learning management systems, collaboration platforms, and digital tools, yet many teachers avoid technology, IT departments still field the same support tickets, and administrators struggle to measure real impact. The problem is that we’re trying to solve 21st-century collaboration challenges with 20th-century change management approaches.

Walk into most schools and you’ll find the digital equivalent of archaeological layers. Managebac sits on top of Google Classroom, which overlays the legacy SIS, all while teachers maintain their own spreadsheets because the systems don’t talk to each other in ways that actually serve their work.

We implement technology as if schools were machines where you can swap out parts, rather than complex adaptive systems where every change ripples through relationships, workflows, and cultures.

Why Traditional Change Management Fails

Schools are collaborative ecosystems. Teachers need to coordinate across departments, IT needs to balance security with usability, and administrators need to support innovation while maintaining compliance—all simultaneously. Each group operates from their own expertise and constraints, often unaware of how their work impacts others.

Traditional approaches assume you can plan change, implement it, and then maintain it. But collaborative work is emergent. The best solutions arise from the intersection of different perspectives, and you can’t mandate perspective-sharing any more than you can mandate creativity.

When we try to force collaborative systems into hierarchical change processes, we get what systems theorist Peter Senge calls “complexity catastrophe”—the harder we push for change, the more the system pushes back, and we get what we see today:

Kabuki Integration: Adopting some of the performative language of innovation while core structures & workflows remain unchanged.

Weak matrix paralysis: People who understand the work (teachers/integrationists) do not direct it, and those who direct it (administrators, IT departments) do not understand it.

Solution proliferation: The tendency to adopt a new tool for every new problem, creating a disconnected digital environment.

The Missing Piece: Transparency for Alignment

School systems don’t need more management; they need more transparency. When stakeholders can see how their work connects to others’ work, when they understand the constraints each group faces, and when they have shared language for navigating complexity together, alignment emerges naturally.

This isn’t about consensus—it’s about clarity. It’s about creating conditions where:

  • Instructional technologists can design with teachers’ actual workflows in mind
  • IT can anticipate needs rather than just respond to crises
  • Teachers can adapt tools to serve learning rather than just comply with initiatives
  • Administrators can measure what matters rather than what’s easy to count

What’s needed is a framework that honors the collaborative nature of educational work while providing concrete steps for navigating the messy, non-linear process of sustainable change. Not another top-down initiative, but a way of working that grows from the ground up through transparency, shared understanding, and aligned action.

This is where the EdTech Synergist Protocol begins. What actually happens when smart, committed people have the language and tools for thought to collaborate effectively across the community?

I spent 15 years battling across this dysfunctional gap and built the tools bridge it. The free, open source project will drop just in time for Christmas.

Lianne Dominguez

Safeguarding Voice: Who Gets Heard, and Who Gets Silenced?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about this third and last piece in my safeguarding series — what to bring into the light, what to hold space for, and what has become so normalized that it deserves attention. And the more I sat with it, the more I realized that this next part of the safeguarding conversation is not about students directly. It’s about the adults who protect the students — and what happens when their safety is quietly eroded.

One uncomfortable truth is that we cannot safeguard children if we don’t safeguard the adults responsible for them. And yet, across countless professional conversations, accreditation visits, coaching sessions, and quiet after-meeting walk-and-talks, I keep hearing versions of the same thing:

  • “I didn’t feel safe speaking in that meeting.”
  • “My idea only landed after someone else repeated it.”
  • “I don’t want to challenge him — it always becomes personal.”
  • “People like me aren’t listened to here.”
  • “I don’t want to be seen as the difficult one.”

These are not isolated stories. These are patterns that form culture. And culture, more than any policy or protocol, is where safeguarding either strengthens or breaks.

Voice as a Safeguarding Issue

Psychological safety is not a leadership trend — it is one of the conditions of successful safeguarding. Research from Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School) shows that teams with low psychological safety underreport concerns, stay silent in the face of potential harm, and rarely challenge power dynamics — even when something feels wrong.

In schools, that silence is not abstract. It lands directly at the feet of our students. When adults don’t feel safe to speak truth, children have no one left to speak for them. And this is where voice becomes more than a wellbeing issue and becomes a safeguarding responsibility.

Power in spaces can create an imbalance.

Unconscious bias is not malicious — but it is powerful. In school leadership spaces, certain voices are at times unintentionally elevated:

  • the confident, fluent speaker
  • the senior leader
  • the person with historical credibility
  • the charismatic personality
  • the culturally dominant group or gender
  • the one who takes up space easily

And just as quietly, other voices shrink:

  • new teachers
  • International or local hires
  • minority staff
  • reflective, quieter thinkers
  • women whose tone is judged before their ideas
  • people with less political capital

No one announces this imbalance. It simply becomes the room. And when a room is imbalanced, safeguarding is imbalanced.  Safeguarding depends on the voices most willing to notice, question, and disrupt harm — not just the ones who speak the loudest.

What is the cost of unsafe leadership spaces?

People don’t leave schools because of workload. They leave because of what happens in rooms where decisions are made. The latest reports from ISC Research (2022) and Education Support UK (2023) note that:

  • lack of voice and psychological safety is one of the top 3 reasons teachers resign,
  • minority staff report double the levels of “dismissal of concerns,”
  • women in leadership experience more frequent interruption, contradiction, and tone-policing,
  • schools with low psychological safety have significantly higher rates of safeguarding near-misses — because concerns stay unspoken.

These aren’t abstract statistics. They explain something we’ve all seen before: when adults do not feel safe, they stop challenging. They stop reporting, noticing, or caring out loud. And a school where people stop caring out loud is a school where safeguarding is already compromised.

When “Harmless” Behaviours Become Harmful

Culture doesn’t break in dramatic moments. It breaks in subtle ones.

  • A sexist joke passed off as humour.
  • A colleague dismissed mid-sentence.
  • A leader’s idea always chosen first.
  • A microaggression reframed as “not a big deal.”
  • A person’s concern minimised as oversensitivity.
  • A boundary pushed “just this once.”

Individually, these moments feel small but collectively, they form a climate where harm can grow quietly. Safeguarding literature calls this the continuum of harm: micro-behaviours → normalisation → silence → risk. This is why safeguarding must extend beyond child protection training. It must sit in the DNA of how adults treat one another.

So what can you do when speaking up feels unsafe in your community?

1. Trust your discomfort. It’s professional evidence. Your instincts are shaped by experience, pattern recognition, and emotional labor. If something feels off, it’s worth noting. Write it down. Keep it factual. Collect clarity, not “evidence.” Silence thrives where intuition is dismissed.

2. Use policy as protection — not confrontation. Policies exist to protect both children and adults. You can ground your concerns in neutral, non-personal language such as:

  • “Our safeguarding code of conduct notes that…”
  • “KCSIE highlights our duty to…”
  • “The whistleblowing policy protects staff when…”

Policy removes emotion and hierarchy. It makes the conversation about safeguarding, and not personalities.

3. Don’t go alone — use the processes and key people available in your school. When a culture is resistant, use structure. A collective voice has protection that an isolated one doesn’t. Here are some key people that you can approach: DSL, Deputy DSL, Line manager, HR, Whistleblowing channel, or Safeguarding governor

4. Focus on impact, not intention. This defuses defensiveness and keeps the conversation about safety. Impact shifts the conversation from accusation to understanding to action. 

  • “I know the intention wasn’t harm, but the impact was…”
  • “This landed differently to the way it was meant.”

5. Leaders: repair culture in the smallest moments. Culture doesn’t shift in big speeches. It shifts in micro-courageous actions like: 

  • Interrupt the biased joke.
  • Invite the quiet colleague to speak.
  • Name the dynamic you observe: “I think we just talked over her.”
  • Publicly credit people’s ideas.
  • Protect the person who raised a concern.
  • Model humility, not dominance.
  • Ask, “Whose voice haven’t we heard yet?”

Safeguarding begins long before crisis. It begins in the spaces where adults gather, decide, and lead. And if we want safer schools, we must commit to safeguarding voice — every voice — with the same vigilance we promise our students.

Safety is not built by power but by consistency. In the end… safeguarding is not only about children. It is about protecting the adults who protect the children. It is about creating rooms where voice is safe, not only strategic. It is about building cultures where courage is shared, not punished. And above all — it is about choosing the kind of leadership that makes safety visible, dignity possible, and silence no longer the easiest option.

So as you look around your own school, ask yourself one final question: Whose voice is truly safe here — and whose isn’t?

Lianne Dominguez

The Hidden Risk in Every Interview Room and How to Stop It

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Safeguarding Series #2: This article is the second in my ongoing Safeguarding in Recruitment series—written for anyone navigating the critical decisions of hiring season. In Part 1, I explored how safeguarding must be the heart of the reference check—not the afterthought. In this follow-up, I dive deeper into the quiet risks we often miss during recruitment conversations—and how shifting our approach can build safer school cultures from the start.

Most interviews start with: “Tell us about your teaching philosophy.”

Maybe they should start with: “Tell us about a time you made a student feel safe.”

The truth is, you can have every certificate laminated, every reference polished, every acronym memorized — and still not be someone a school would trust around a child, a teenager, a colleague.

We don’t talk about this enough: competence doesn’t equal character.

And yet, many schools hire mainly for competence all the time.

The Illusion of “Safe” Hiring

We love systems that make us feel safe — background checks, reference calls, forms that promise transparency. But safety isn’t paperwork. It’s people work.

Safeguarding isn’t a document you sign once a year; it’s a daily decision to do the harder thing: to pause before you react, to challenge a colleague, to admit you were wrong.

And that’s what interviews should reveal.

Not just what a person knows, but what they will do when no one is watching.

According to NSPCC Learning (2024), 47% of safeguarding failures in UK schools over the past decade were linked not to missing procedures, but to staff attitudes, culture, or failures to act on instinct. In short — schools didn’t hire the right people for the culture of vigilance they needed.

Character Isn’t Found in a CV

CVs tell you what candidates want you to know — results, roles, titles. They don’t tell you how those results were achieved or what values guided them.

Character hides in the small things:

  • The way someone speaks about a “difficult” student.
  • Whether they use we or I when describing success.
  • How they talk about colleagues they’ve disagreed with.

Integrity leaks through language. So does ego. So does entitlement.

Listen for the small power cues — the ones that reveal whether a candidate sees children as partners in learning or problems to control; whether they speak with respect or about behaviour.

The Questions That Matter

It’s been years as a senior leader when I stopped asking: “What’s your classroom management style?”

Now I ask:

  • “How do you repair trust after a mistake?”
  • “Tell me about a time you had to call out a colleague’s behaviour — how did you handle it?”
  • “When have you witnessed bias or exclusion, and what did you do?”
  • “How do you respond when a parent challenges your authority or makes you uncomfortable?”
  • “How do you ensure every student — regardless of gender, background, or ability — feels equally seen and respected?”
  • “What kind of humour belongs in a classroom, and what doesn’t?”
  • “How do you model boundaries with students on social media or in public spaces?”

These aren’t trick questions. They reveal reflexes, empathy, and blind spots.

You’ll see it instantly: Some candidates pause and think deeply — humility lives in that pause. Others get defensive — ego lives there too.

You can train skill but you can’t fake compassion. You definitely can’t perform respect for long.

Screening for Toxic Patterns

As safeguarding leaders, we must go beyond detecting risk to children and start detecting risk to culture.

There are red flags that deserve naming:

  • Misogynistic or gender-coded language (“the girls are more dramatic,” “the boys just need firm discipline”).
  • Toxic masculinity disguised as “banter” or “relatability.”
  • Blame-shifting when discussing conflict with colleagues (“I’m just straightforward — some people can’t handle that”).
  • Subtle victim-blaming when describing past safeguarding incidents.
  • Lack of curiosity about diversity or inclusion.

These are not personality quirks. They are early indicators of boundary failure, bias, or coercive dynamics. And schools that overlook them often pay the price later — in grievance meetings, parental complaints, or damaged student trust.

When Politeness Becomes a Mask

Not all safeguarding risks look like aggression. Some come disguised as professionalism.

There’s a particular kind of candidate — calm, articulate, “respectful” — who uses courtesy as camouflage. They speak softly, but hold power tightly. They talk about standards when they really mean control. They demand “respect” when what they want is compliance. It’s self-righteousness masked as morality, and it’s harder to spot than overt misconduct.

You’ll hear it in the phrases:

  • “I’m very principled — I just expect others to meet that.”
  • “I tell it like it is — people sometimes find that intimidating.”
  • “Students need to learn respect first.”

What sounds like confidence can, in reality, be covert narcissism — the kind that erodes trust under the banner of “high expectations.”

In safeguarding, this is dangerous because it silences others. Staff hesitate to challenge. Students hesitate to speak. The culture bends around ego instead of care.

During interviews, listen for:

  • A moralising tone — “should,” “always,” “never.”
  • Defensiveness when discussing feedback or disagreement.
  • Politeness that feels performative — control disguised as calm.
  • Lack of curiosity or self-questioning (“I’ve never had issues with boundaries.”)

These traits rarely show up on safeguarding checklists, but they can quietly corrode a culture of safety. Respect that demands silence isn’t respect — it’s domination dressed up as virtue.

A Practical Toolbox for Interview Panels

If you’re leading or sitting on a safer recruitment panel, use this DSL-aligned checklist to anchor the conversation:

Focus AreaWhat to Listen ForRed Flags
Attitude to PowerSpeaks about safeguarding as shared responsibility; values accountability.Deflects responsibility; uses hierarchical language (“that’s SLT’s job”).
Gender & RespectUses inclusive language; avoids stereotypes; names bias when seen.Jokes, generalizations, or discomfort discussing gender or harassment.
Boundaries & RelationshipsDescribes warmth with professionalism; distinguishes care from familiarity.Over-emphasis on “being friends” with students; blurred boundaries.
Conflict ResponseMentions listening, reflection, repair.Blames others; views disagreement as threat.
Emotional RegulationOwns mistakes; names stress responses.Minimizes pressure or emotional triggers (“I never lose my cool”).
Cultural HumilityShows curiosity about local norms and diversity.Talks about “fitting students to my way.”

Culture Fit vs Culture Alignment

Too many schools hire people who “fit.” Fit keeps things comfortable. Alignment keeps things honest.

When we say, “They’ll fit right in,” what we often mean is, “They won’t make us uncomfortable or feel awkward.” But safeguarding thrives on discomfort — on colleagues who ask, “Are we sure this is okay?”

The best safeguarding cultures are built by people who can challenge without arrogance and care without agenda.

The adults we hire don’t just teach subjects. They teach norms. They model what power used responsibly looks like. They teach young people what respect looks and sounds like. They teach what it feels like to be listened to.

When we hire for compliance, we get professionals who follow the handbook. When we hire for character, we get people who live it — especially when it’s inconvenient.

The Real Question

When you sit across from a candidate, ask yourself: Would I trust this person to stand up to a colleague making an inappropriate joke? Would I trust them to protect a student whose voice shakes in silence?

If the answer isn’t an immediate yes — it’s a no. Safeguarding doesn’t start when something goes wrong. It starts right there, in that chair — with the courage to choose people who make safety visible and dignity non-negotiable.

Safeguarding isn’t about credentials; it’s about character. It lives in the questions we ask, the biases we challenge, and the courage we show when it’s uncomfortable. In the end, safer schools aren’t built by policy—they’re built by people who choose integrity over ease.

Conrad Hughes

Educational Lessons from the Getty Villa

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The oil merchant tycoon J. Paul Getty was an avid art collector and took his passion to extraordinary heights with the building of the Getty Villa. Off the Malibu coast in the dry Californian hills, he commissioned the building of a palace modelled on that of a Roman patrician’s palace in Herculaneum. Not only is the building a sublime replica of a Roman villa, it contains a wonderful collection of Greek and Roman statues which Getty purchased, mainly in the South of Italy, with passionate attention to detail.

There’s much to be said about museums, and not all of it is positive, since they are an ideologically and philosophically problematic assertion of decontextualised and frequently stolen works crowded in a slightly ersatz setting. I’ve often felt, wandering through the Louvre or the Prado, mild symptoms of the so-called Stendhal syndrome, a type of dizziness created by the sheer concentration of art. In fact, after an hour or two, no one can seriously take in yet more art, especially when it is crammed in such an industrial, exhibitory fashion. This is why it’s often more pleasant to view a single work, or a few, in their original setting, like Caravaggio’s paintings in the churches of Rome or the magnificent Colossi of Memnon in Luxor. In any case, I take little pleasure in viewing obelisks in the middle of Paris, Rome or London and even less the Elgin marbles packed in a type of curio shop of Graeco-Egyptian relics in the British museum only to find the frieze of the Acropolis’ Parthenon in Athens bare!

The comparison with education is simple: too often our curricula are jam-packed with items of decontextualised knowledge, sequenced in such a manner that the experience of incorporating all that information is neither ergonomic nor particularly enjoyable. It’s a kind of conveyor belt of transmission, forcing learning disparate “units” in a concentrated setting, ending with the fairly brutal episode of very high-stakes and narrow assessments which are equally compressed. Getty’s Villa, on the other hand, contains two extremely powerful lessons on the curation of art and, by analogy, the creation of curriculum design.

First, the aestheticism. Between the tall cypress and carefully planted pomegranate trees, the wistful stone pines, bronze statues in hedged gardens, marble-floored peristyles, fountains and gorgeous views of the Pacific Ocean, some of the most sumptuous sculptures, urns, and mosaics have been assembled at the Villa. One can stroll in and out of the spaces, from an exhibition hall to an outdoor cloister to a reconstructed temple at the end of a breezy vista. The whole experience has been crafted meticulously and lovingly, meaning that there is a harmony and construction in the viewing. This is how curriculum should be organised, as a story, with powerful concepts that cohere with one another, as an aesthetic experience that takes the learner on an unforgettable journey. In my philosophy classes I always teach the ancient Greeks within the overriding concept of the “Arche” – the fundamental stuff of the universe, and African thought systems such as Ubuntu and the Yoruba cosmology within the conceptual framework of ancestry and spirit, to make the learning flow like a narrative, to give the students some pleasure and interest in the story rather than the lesson. This is also why I’ve always been in favour of giving the history of the subject and some intriguing anecdotes about the people involved in whatever we teach. It’s pretty boring to simply hammer out science, mathematics, the arts and the humanities without some of the fascinating details of the lives and passionate stories behind the findings.

Instead, too often curriculum design treats learning it as a type of incoherent and strictly utilitarian assembly of subjects timetabled incongruously next to one other like an ugly city with buildings from different times dumped jarringly side by side with no urban planning, no rhyme or reason. This is why units of inquiry (although I’m not in love with the term “unit”) and transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary learning experiences are preferable to mere topic coverage: there is an architecture, a structure. It is the svelteness and elegance of cogency that makes the Getty Villa so much more than a simple museum and almost forces anyone strolling through it to slow down and appreciate everything around them as a whole.

Second, the fact that the villa is a reconstruction, carrying with it, of course, the hubris and potential kitsch that such an ambition announces, is nonetheless something that plunges you into the past wholly and remarkably, as if you were living as a Roman during the Roman period itself. Everything has been lavishly restored, the colours are vivid and alive. It is nothing of the grey and broken atmosphere of a ruin or the funereal, high-ceilinged abstractness of a museum for the sake of a museum. You feel transported to the South of Italy and at least 2000 years back in time. Likewise, curriculum should be contextualised in such a way that the imagination is plunged into its world. It should be relevant and vivacious to the learner just as standing on the beach means that you feel the salt of the sea on your face. It is the power and the imagination of the teacher who can do this, by evoking the universe of the subject and not just the content matter, by bringing the curriculum to life.

Whenever I speak at an assembly for students (and by the way, assemblies are part of the curriculum, please make sure they are not boring), there will be a story, and I always make sure that the story is framed in a setting with atmosphere, details, smells and textures, so that it does not come across as inert and dry information but rather as a psychic experience. This helps students connect with the information and remember it. Too often we rush from one lesson to another and “there is not enough time” to discuss the history of the subject because we have to “get through” what’s on the test. And yet, without the storytelling and the musical pacing, without the ability to slow down and unpack the wonderful anecdotes and intrigues within the history of the subject, without the necessary time etched out to focus and bring out some of the character of the subject matter, the enterprise can be fairly stagnant and uninspiring to the imagination. So very often, we need to stimulate the imagination for deep learning to occur.

The Getty Villa is a true gem and reminds all of us in education of the importance of beauty, and context; that curriculum is not an exercise on paper but a living, active phenomenon that, if assembled the right way, can have a deep and transformational effect on the mind and spirit.

Lianne Dominguez

Hiring Is the First Act of Safeguarding

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Safeguarding Series #1: A Perspective on Safer Recruitment in International Schools from My Role as a DSL

When people ask me about safeguarding, they often expect to hear about policies, disclosures, or risk assessments.

As a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), I’ve come to understand that safeguarding doesn’t begin with a form. It begins with a person. And often, that person is not a student. It’s an adult we’ve just hired.

Safer Hiring is serious business.

And yet, many of us know—quietly, sometimes reluctantly—that these measures alone are not enough. Not in international schools. Not in a world where teachers move countries every few years, where systems vary, and where reputation can hide risk.

Let’s name the quiet truths:

  • References can be vague or overly polished.
  • Background checks may only tell us who was caught—not who caused harm and moved on.
  • Some candidates smooth over CV gaps with charm or vague reasoning.
  • In our global school network, we often mistake the absence of a red flag for a sign of safety

We assume that familiarity equals integrity. That silence equals clearance. That good schools only hire good people.

There are moments I pause and quietly ask myself: what if?

I remember the references that made me pause—but came from schools too prestigious to question.

And the time we stopped at two references. It felt efficient. But now, with hindsight, I can’t help but ask: what didn’t we see?

I think about the one candidate I didn’t feel quite right about—but didn’t want to seem “overly suspicious.”

More than anything, I think about how often safer recruitment is quietly treated as HR’s job. In reality, it belongs to all of us—especially to those with the power to decide who walks into our schools.

As a DSL, I know that one poorly vetted hire can undo years of trust built with students and families. That’s why hiring isn’t just the first HR task. It’s the first safeguarding decision.

Practical Questions We Need to Ask (But Often Don’t)

  • Have we actually spoken to the person who worked most closely with the candidate?
  • Are we accepting clearances from countries that don’t share information across borders?
  • Have we asked about safeguarding concerns—not just performance reviews?
  • Have we reviewed the candidate’s relational conduct with both students and adults?
  • Are there any patterns of emotional manipulation, boundary-pushing, or staff conflict that raise concern?
  • Is our interview panel trained to detect grooming behaviors masked as charisma?

Most importantly: Are we willing to pause the process when something doesn’t feel right? Because when instinct is paired with professional judgment, it becomes valid evidence—not just a gut feeling.

A Call to Senior Leaders, HR Teams, and Governors

If you’re on a hiring panel, you are part of the safeguarding team—whether or not you carry the DSL title.

Ask the hard questions. Push for the third reference. Slow down when the pressure says move fast. Question the “but they’re from a good school” mindset.

And never forget: a charming interview does not equal a safe adult.

It’s easy to overlook red flags when time is tight. It’s tempting to shift responsibility elsewhere. But in safeguarding, what’s easy is rarely what’s safe.

We owe our students more than good teachers. We owe them safe ones.

And “safe” doesn’t just mean free of criminal history. A safe teacher is someone who will never shame a child for struggling. Someone who won’t belittle, mock, or emotionally manipulate a student—no matter how talented they are at teaching.

Harm doesn’t always show up in obvious ways. Sometimes, it’s subtle—a comment meant as a joke, a tone that cuts too deep. Sometimes, it hides behind charm, or behind standards that feel just a little too high. And sometimes, it goes unnoticed—tucked into the corners of decisions made too quickly.

Emotional safety matters just as much as physical safety—and that starts with hiring adults who are not just competent, but compassionate. Not just experienced, but ethical. Not just impressive on paper, but principled in practice.

So the next time we sit at a hiring table, let’s remember: The decision we make isn’t just about filling a timetable. It’s about protecting our community.

In the end, hiring is not just operational. It is ethical. It is relational.

And in international schools—where mobility is high and memory is short— hiring is foundational.

Conrad Hughes

Teaching to be an Upstander: Education and Bullying

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Many of the competencies and values we aim to develop through education are cognitive and technical: conceptual understanding, skills, knowledge and the transfer of knowledge, innovation and creativity, criticality, and reflection. The radical transformation of the generation and distribution of knowledge by artificial intelligence is reshaping the importance and form of some of these facets of learning.

Then there are the more intrapersonal, ethical, and social aspects of an education: social and emotional learning, wellbeing, building self-confidence, civic responsibility, skills, and approaches to being linked to the way we live in society and in our environment. Anxiety, mental illness, difficulties navigating childhood and adolescence in a fast-moving and fast-changing world are more and more prevalent and shape the expectations placed on educators today much more than 100 years ago. It’s good that we understand that vital interrelationship between learning and emotions today, for this means that relationships with students tend to be curated more subtly, encouragingly, sensitively, and mindfully than they were in the cold Dickensian classroom of the 19th Century where humiliation, corporal punishment, and sarcasm reigned freely. Research in cognition shows us fairly clearly that these inhibit learning, they do not encourage it. 

One of the major challenges facing educators is bullying. Students are bullied in and out of school in a number of ways, and more and more online. Often bullying takes place in “friend” groups and is characterised by a persistent mocking or humiliation, or physical torment, of another person in front of a group. It is the persistence, accompanied by an imbalance of power, that characterises bullying.

When a child is constantly bullied by another student, going to school becomes a traumatic experience. The learning in the classroom is far from the main preoccupation, which is keeping safe and away from the bully. Parents will feel exasperated when their children come home with horror stories and it seems as if the school is doing nothing about it. From a disciplinarian point of view, such scenarios can be complex to unpack, for the bully might feel bullied themselves, and narratives around what is happening are difficult to unpack, the truth not easy to determine, especially since it requires evidence that may not be at hand.

This much said, it has to be taken seriously, and schools have to do what they can to tackle bullying, to stamp it out, and to ensure that children grow up free from such major distress. How can this be done?

There’s no easy answer. Responses range from positive discipline and restorative practices to more traditional and stricter, less collaborative approaches. In truth, it’s a long and arduous journey to change the dynamic in a relationship between students where bullying is occurring, to make it stop, and to reinstate confidence in the bullied child.

One thing that is vitally important to recognise and encourage is the power of the upstander, and to develop the strength to overcome the fear of the bystander. One of the most pernicious aspects of bullying is that when it happens people turn a blind eye to it, often out of fear or apathy. The bullying carries on in broad daylight in front of others, and nothing is done to stop it. At some point, someone has to have the courage to step in and say “enough”, “stop”. Needless to say, this is much easier said than done. 

It’s an important message to send out to students in assemblies, discussions, and when handling individual cases: to involve the group and not just two individuals, and to remind everybody that as a community we are no stronger than the weakest link in the chain; that if we all remain silent while someone is being persecuted, when we are persecuted, no one will stand up for us (Martin Niemöller’s famous poem comes to mind, as does the quote by the British philosopher Edmund Burke about evil proliferating because good men do nothing).

As adults, the place to start is with ourselves, for no moral education can be carried by rhetoric alone; it has to be modelled and delivered through example. Too many cases of bullying exist in the adult world—through mobbing, email assaults, unkind words—especially when there is an imbalance of power, and it is a person who is organisationally more powerful than another who is doing it. In how many cases does the group (department, team, or boardroom) simply keep quiet, out of fear, when this is happening?

If you find yourself in an environment where someone else is being humiliated, downtrodden, maligned or threatened, don’t be afraid to speak up. This gives enormous strength to the person being attacked and makes the persecutor think twice. So often, all it takes is for one or two people to stand up for the behaviour to cease, but who will be the person who manages to break the silence and step forward?

Teaching these profound leadership moments is less about lessons and concepts and much more about a culture where kindness is venerated and the practice of calling in and being an upstander has become normalised. It takes years and, if truth be told, few institutions will truly manage to get there, for human beings can be cruel by nature and culture is morphed by all sorts of hidden and surreptitious, changing forces. But if we keep our eye out for it, if we are serious about combatting bullying and treat signs of it as every bit as important, if not more so, than other signs of learning, the first step will be taken.

Leaders have to emphasise the message that we will not tolerate certain types of behaviour, model vulnerability so that there is enough freedom in the community for others to stand up and speak, even against the leaders themselves. That is the open society as the great philosopher Karl Popper called it—a space where those in power allow themselves to be criticised, refuse to take it personally, and never respond with vindictiveness or vengeance. This models that people in power know how to step back and allow others to express themselves.

Let us keep educating for the moral courage to call others in, to step up, to help each other out. All the talk of 21st Century learning in the world won’t mean much if the wellbeing and psychological safety needed to flourish is not taken care of first.

Lianne Dominguez

What’s Really Holding Your Team Back? The Confidence–Competence Gap No One Talks About

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There’s a look I’ve seen often — that pause after I introduce a new task.

Not resistance. Not laziness.

Just a subtle pause.

Sometimes it’s a look of “Are you sure I can do this?”

Other times it’s a confident “Yep!” — followed by an outcome that quietly says… maybe not.

It took me years (and a few humbling leadership stumbles) to realize that behind every reaction to a task is a quiet dance between confidence and competence. And here’s the kicker: that dance plays out not just in others, but in ourselves too.

We lead people.

We assign things.

We expect initiative.

And sometimes, we walk away from a task handover feeling like: Why didn’t that land the way I thought it would?

When you zoom out, it’s often not about the task. It’s about how people see themselves in relation to it.

Confidence and competence are two different muscles. Some have both. Some have one. Some have neither — yet.

Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory offers a timeless truth: effective leaders don’t lead the same way all the time — they adjust based on who they’re leading and what the task demands. Depending on a person’s readiness and skill, we’re called to direct, coach, support, or delegate.

That model has been a compass in my own leadership journey — but over the years, I found myself craving something even more grounded in the lived reality of schools. I started collecting observations — scribbled on post-its during meetings, noted in margins of agendas, shared over hallway check-ins. Real stories. Real reactions.

Over time, a pattern began to emerge. From those small but telling moments, I developed what I now call my Confidence–Competence Lens — a tool that builds on Blanchard’s work, but reflects the heartbeat of real school life. It’s the tool I turn to when deciding not just what needs doing, but how to support the person doing it.

Because leadership isn’t just about assigning tasks — it’s about noticing how people meet them, and knowing what to do next. Here’s how I use the lens to guide both leadership decisions and support strategies:

Competence & Confidence Lens in ActionHigh ConfidenceLow Confidence
High CompetenceEmpower & Trust 
✓ Let them lead key initiatives or mentor others. 
✓ Give stretch goals that build mastery and ownership. 
✓ Involve them in co-creating strategy or vision. 

Watch for: Overcommitment or burnout due to over-reliance.

Say: “I’d love for you to lead this — I trust your judgment and skill.”

Coach Quietly 
✓ Affirm their strengths privately and publicly. 
✓ Give them low-risk opportunities to lead. 
✓ Provide examples of their impact they may not see. 

Watch for: Impostor syndrome, reluctance to speak in groups. 

What people say: “I’m not ready”

Say: “You already have what it takes — let’s find a space where you can try it out without pressure.”
Low CompetenceMonitor Closely 
✓ Pair with a mentor or buddy. 
✓ Break tasks into steps with checkpoints. 
✓ Provide scripts, models, or exemplars. 

Watch for: Missed details, inconsistent follow-through. 

What people say: “Got it!” (but no follow-through)

Say: “Let’s work through the first part together — I’ll check in after Step 2 and help you course-correct if needed.”		Mentor Patiently 
✓ Teach explicitly. Model tasks. Role-play scenarios. 
✓ Normalize learning curve — give space to fail safely. 
✓ Celebrate growth, not just outcomes. 

Watch for: Avoidance, anxiety, or misdirected effort. 

Say: “This will take time — but you don’t have to do it alone. Let’s focus on progress, not perfection.”

Reflection Starts With Us

In the day-to-day pace of leadership, we’re often focused on how our team is reacting — who’s leaning in, who’s hesitant, who’s dragging their heels. But it’s just as important to pause and recognise where our own reactions as leaders show up most strongly.

Is it in our resistance to trying a new system?
Is it that voice in our head saying, “This won’t work for our context,” or “I’m too busy for this”?
Or that burst of enthusiasm for a new idea — followed by quiet procrastination?

We’re not immune to the same gaps we recognize in others. And asking ourselves why we hesitate can be just as important as noticing it in our teams.

Whether we’re assigning a task or facing one ourselves, the same lens applies. This isn’t about judging — it’s about being curious, and matching the right response to the human need, in others and in ourselves.in ourselves.

Leadership isn’t about having all the answers.

It’s about noticing what gets in the way, and doing something about it.

We’ve all been the confident beginner, the quiet expert, the reluctant participant, the over-eager new hire. We’ve all needed someone to say: “I see what you can do. Let me help you get there.”

So the next time a task falls flat or a team member pulls back — Pause.

Ask: “Is it confidence? Competence? Or both?” Then lead with what they need. Because when we grow both confidence and competence — in others and ourselves — we don’t just build better teams. We build braver ones.

Stephen Dexter

Tick Tock: The O.G. Decision

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(ChatGPT generation with prompt: person looking window at Big Ben)

I wish I had time to humor you with the series of creative prompts that led to this masterpiece, but this is the best I could to on a Sunday afternoon.

Not that any international educators are looking out their apartments with a view of Big Ben wondering what to do next, but you get the symbolic metaphor.

It’s time.

It’s time to take stock, to give notice (earlier than ever in school history which is an entirely other blog that I will write about) and make a decision about next year. I’m so old that I remember when the notice period was January for a January-February hiring season. Yes, I know. A full winter break to contemplate the future. I get it.

But here we are, just barely crawling out of the startup typhoon and there’s a memo in your mailbox: ‘So are you coming back next year or not?’

If this were a dating situation, it would be a marriage proposal when you opened the door to go to a movie for the first time. Do people still go to movies on dates?

There are few things more difficult than having to decide if you want to go back to a school for another year, and few things more insecure, especially if you have young children. It’s brutal. I’ve been there. I went overseas when my kids were 7 and 2. My youngest just graduated from my school and you can hear the sigh of relief across continents.

But I digress.

There are two simple things that hopefully drive this process for you and as much as you try, you cannot have both.

  1. Do I want to be happy professionally?
  2. Do I want to be happy personally?

What do we want? Both.

Not going to happen. Well, I not going to say never, but once you decide which is more important, you have made up your mind about why you want to stay or leave. Since 2009, I made only one decision to be professionally happy. The rest was all about the family. Yeah, it’s hard.

When we decided “this is the business we have chosen” we made a pact that it would be a very insecure existence, albeit temporarily comfortable for the most part, in faraway lands with lots of adventures. This transaction for lack of security is hard. I gave up a sure pension in American public schools to raise my children overseas and I don’t regret anything other than the fact that my son says he won’t take care of me when I’m eating out of a straw. (I think he was kidding).

Everyone’s circumstances are different. Singles. Families. Dependent spouses and partners. Teaching couples. Distance from relatives. Life changes, etc. etc. The one thing that ties it all together is that you have to be true to yourself and what you want out of this experience.

Yes, it’s earlier than ever and for the time being we cannot change that. Make that list of pros and cons for staying or leaving. Decide if this is for personal or professional happiness (refrain from the greedy both) and go for it.

You can do it. The world needs you now more than ever no matter what you decide.

BONUS INTERVIEW QUESTIONS WHEN IT’S YOUR TURN…

  1. What do you most love about working at this school and what do you think needs to change the most?
  2. What’s the value added proposition to this school that no other school on earth (or the country/region) can offer?
  3. If you offer me a position, what’s the most important thing that I need to know on day one?
  4. What is the school’s top strategic priority and how can I help with it?
  5. They say that schools often take on the culture of their host country environment. How has that happened here and how have you leveraged this culture to enhance the educational experience?
  6. How would you describe the relationship between local and expat staff?
  7. If you could invent a position that the school wishes it could have, what would it be called?
Lianne Dominguez

From Performance to Presence: Reframing the Trap of Performative Leadership

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There’s a TikTok trend going around called “the performative man”—a satirical take on guys who do the bare minimum but make it look like maximum effort. He’s flipping a pancake like it’s a CrossFit workout. He answers one email and immediately announces it’s time for a break. He slams cabinet doors with dramatic flair, sighs like he’s solving world peace, narrates every move loudly, and enters rooms with an air of exhausted importance—so everyone knows he must be doing something significant.

It’s hilarious. It’s ridiculous. And it’s… painfully familiar.

It made me realize that somewhere in every organization—there’s a version of that performative guy.

And maybe, at one point—when I was just starting out as a teacher, then a middle leader, and later as a senior leader—every time I stepped into something new, especially in those early months, that version was me. Maybe it’s all of us, at some point.

  • The teacher who performs certainty to hide fear.
  • The leader who overcompensates because they’re new, or unheard, or exhausted.
  • The woman told to “sit at the table” but now wonders if she’s mimicking a leadership model she never even liked.

When Performance Replaces Presence

Performative leadership is what happens when we start acting out the role instead of living the responsibility.

It often looks like:

  • Always having an answer (even when you don’t)
  • Replying to emails at midnight to prove commitment
  • Jumping into every conversation just to be seen
  • Leading meetings as monologues, not dialogues
  • Protecting your image more than your integrity

The hardest part? It rarely comes from arrogance.  It usually comes from fear. Or self-doubt. Or the overwhelming pressure to prove ourselves in roles we genuinely care about.

Let’s be real—leadership is vulnerable. We enter a new role and instantly feel the need to be: liked, respected, credible, and visible.

So, we perform. We become overly polished, overly busy, overly certain—because we’re trying to outrun the voice that whispers: “Am I enough for this?”

But the irony is: the more we perform, the further we drift from trust—the very thing we’re trying to build.

Performative leadership slowly chips away at authenticity. It trains people to follow your persona, not your principles. It breeds compliance, not commitment.

It creates distance—because no one can connect with the version of you that’s always right, always “on,” and never unsure.

Tips & Reframes: Moving from Performance to Presence

1. Notice your signals: When you find yourself saying things like: “We’ve always done it this way,” “Just trust me,” or even silence that masks discomfort—pause.

Ask yourself: Am I leading… or protecting something?

2. Watch your mirrors: Who do you shrink around? Who do you perform for? These instinctive reactions often reveal internalized fears or survival scripts from past environments.

3. Reclaim your authenticity: It’s okay to say: “I don’t know yet.” “Let’s think about that together.” “You tell me—what do you need?”

You’re not losing authority. You’re building trust.

4. Call in, not out: When you notice performative patterns in others, don’t shame. Invite.

Ask: “Is this what we actually value here?” Create space for real talk, realignment, and shared vulnerability.

Reframe: Presence Over Performance

Leadership isn’t about being the most impressive person in the room. It’s about being the safest one to stand next to.

And that often looks like:

  • Saying “I don’t know”—and meaning it
  • Letting others lead meetings you’re used to owning
  • Prioritizing reflection over reaction
  • Normalizing questions, doubts, and slow starts
  • Protecting your boundaries, not just your reputation
  • Speaking last, not first
  • Asking “What do you need?” instead of “How do I fix this?”

Practice: How to Start (Without Needing to Be Perfect)

1.Name the pattern: When you feel yourself shifting into “polish mode”—pause. Ask: Am I here to serve, or impress?

2.Choose one space to stay messy: A team meeting. A student chat. A parent call. Let go of the need to have it all together—just be present.

3.Build one relationship where you can be fully yourself: Find someone who sees the real you—and reminds you that’s enough.

4.Let your team breathe: Permission is powerful. Normalize uncertainty. Invite feedback. Celebrate rest.

5.Be patient with yourself : This isn’t a one-time fix. It’s a muscle. You build it slowly—through daily reps of showing up real.

If you recognize yourself here, know that you’re not broken. You’re not failing either. You’re probably just trying really hard— to care, belong,and lead well.

But what if this week you could try to let go a little?

Speak softer. Think longer. Show up real, unsure—but deeply grounded.

Because that version of you? That may be the leader your school needs most.

This post is your permission. 

To feel the tension.

To stay when it’s hard.

To lead with integrity.

To change your mind.

To drop the act.

To begin again.

You can love the school, the team, the mission…. And still long for a kind of leadership that feels more like home.

And maybe… just maybe… that’s the beginning of something better.