Tag Archives: learning

Conrad Hughes

Parenting: The Difficult Art of Letting Go

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The other day, a parent described himself to me as a “Train Schedule Dad”, a term I was not familiar with. This is someone who manages family trips and daily life with the precision of a railway conductor. This can be added to the different descriptions of parenting in the 21st century that we have become familiar with over time: the snowplow (also called a lawnmower) parent, who endeavors to remove all obstacles from the child’s pathway; the helicopter parent, hovering above their child, checking every move and surveilling their every movement; and the tiger parent, fiercely driven to ensure their child achieves peak academic and extracurricular success.

As such, a strong paradigm of the 21st century is the overinvolved parent who wishes, perhaps understandably, to pave the path for their child, predicting every step, cushioning every blow, and intervening at the drop of a hat. However, how sustainable is this?

In 2019, Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center developed the SPACE program, which focused on stopping “family accommodation”—the habit where parents constantly check on or rearrange schedules to soothe an anxious child. By teaching parents how to step back from this over-monitoring cycle, the study showed a dramatic drop in both the children’s anxiety levels and the parents’ own daily stress. It proved that giving children the space to navigate discomfort is often the best way to heal the whole family.

The point is that this study was not only about the child’s anxiety and also about the parent’s anxiety and how it could be reduced. In fact, when parents let go a bit, their anxiety levels go down and so do those of their children. It turns out that overinvolved parenting creates a huge amount of stress for both parties.

As we enter a particularly complex stage of history, with many “known unknowns” ahead and a pressing need to build up resilience and autonomy in young people, parents have to learn the painful but necessary lesson of letting go. This means allowing their children to fend for themselves, to find their own personalities, and to progress without constant intervention from the adults—who should be supporting them from the sidelines, while understanding the necessity of stepping back.

This will become increasingly vital as we enter a world where the ability to stand on one’s own feet and think for oneself will be critical to human flourishing. Letting go is not easy, but it is healthy, necessary, and par for the course.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.