Reflections as a Global Educator
‘Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions’ It certainly doesn’t need a blog post to make this statement clear and obvious to anyone who has children or thinks in the longer term. Or cares about the future even. But sometimes even the most obvious truisms need repeating from time to time. When… Continue reading Teachers are our precious assets.
“In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life; it goes on” Robert Frost I’ve decided not to go all out with New Year’s resolutions for 2023. If the 2020s has taught us anything so far, it is the sheer unpredictability of our global society and almost the fear of it… Continue reading Life; it goes on
Don't it always seem to goThat you don't know what you got 'til it's goneJoni Mitchell “Big Yellow Taxi” There are a few well worn phrases, overused in education that exist in all staff workrooms & faculty lounges around the world such as “don’t smile until Christmas” or “when is the vacation?”. Perhaps the most… Continue reading Defining Global Britain in the 2020s? It is already here. In praise of the British Council
I cannot remember ever being on school front gate duty staring up and down Beachley Road half expecting tanks to appear from the A48 as I found myself in Chisinau, this February looking out at the relative calm of Dacia Boulevard. Will those in the future ever believe some of the stories we will pass… Continue reading Books not Bombs; The future has to belong to our children.
“Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you hardly catch it going”. Tennessee Williams As the plane took off from Chisinau airport on a Saturday morning, to cross Europe and take me back to my family and the UK for the October break, my mind did take… Continue reading Making the moments matter
We will lead not merely by the example of our power, but by the power of our examplePresident Biden, inauguration speech at The Capitol, 20th January 2021. There have been many surreal moments over the last year in the lifespan of this pandemic. Sometimes, it feels as if we are barely holding on with our… Continue reading Perspective and agency for now; any potential paradigm shifts are for later.
Children are the priority. Change is the reality. Collaboration is the strategy”. Judith Billings, Superintendent of Schools, Washngton State. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decision”.Stephen R Covey. There are two recent stand out moments for me this month regarding leadership, especially moral and values based leadership. The… Continue reading The leadership we need for our school communities now.
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tideHenry Wadsworth Longfellow Since I returned to Moldova on the 16th August, starting in earnest the preparations for what we all knew would be like no other academic year, there have been two distinct moments of complete relaxation where my thinking switched only to time, moment, place.… Continue reading The myth of ‘Covid secure’ and other gobbledygook starting a new academic year.
8th May The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk. Hegel "Congratulations, dear Robert!!! It is a really very very important activity the job your school is doing for our young generation, Thank you very much for such investment in our generation of new citizens, citizens of the future of the Moldova state. This is a very… Continue reading We made it and we are still here thanks to our whole school community; Hope, speranţă, надежда
Mr. Rob : Lighthouse Keeper March 13th 2020 This has been an extraordinary and unprecedented week in the life of our young school. I write this completely without hyperbole and after 25 years in education; half of these as a senior leader leading schools and working with schools and their communities around the World. The… Continue reading Notes from the Lighthouse
Mail from Moldova 