As always, I am writing this whilst it’s still fresh, because I want to capture how inspiring, energising, and hopeful yesterday was.
I delivered a whole-school PD for our educational staff and leadership. Admittedly, I am now completely shattered because I gave all of me to build the day for the people in front of me. I always do. Every workshop is designed for the client, the culture, the moment, and so designing a day that had the potential to open up new ways of thinking in my own college came loaded with personal hopes and potential.
Today, I’m not thinking about ‘success’, but the feeling that something opened across the staff team. It felt collaborative, human, and joyful. I don’t remember feeling that level of connection with colleagues in a long time.
Experiential learning isn’t an extra here. It’s the point.
The day worked because people lived it. It wasn’t abstract; people were up, moving, cutting, rearranging, debating, laughing, making collaborative decisions: you could physically see thinking happening. This is the ‘embodied’ stage of the workshop where feeling uncertainty and collaboration in your body enables deeper-level understanding. Supported by initial theory, we literally entered an experience and let it teach us. We lived experiential learning as far from a side dish at UWC, but central. It’s in our DNA. It’s the Kurt Hahn thread running through everything we do: young people grow when they are trusted with challenge, responsibility, and real collaboration. This is why experiential learning in schools matters: it changes the quality of thinking.
The IB was originally built for the UWC context; rigour and humanity together, and a curriculum designed to serve internationally minded education, not to flatten it. So, when people position experiential learning as “the UWC bit” and the IB as “the academic bit,” I think we miss something essential. These strands were always meant to be woven. Yesterday felt like they were weaving again.
Uncertainty: the point isn’t to remove it, it’s to work inside it
The heart of the day was uncertainty, not as a problem to fix, but as a space we can learn to work inside. This is where Creative Intelligence becomes very real across all subjects: noticing how we think (metacognition), staying open when things aren’t clear, collaborating well, making discerning choices, and following through with integrity. It’s not “artistic talent”, and it’s not a personality type – it’s a human capacity.
Yes, AI sits in the background of this. It’s not because we’re competing with it, but rather it forces the question of what education is really for when confident answers can appear instantly. For me, it’s simple: we have to return to being human again. We need students who can think, choose, discern, and find meaning, not just produce outputs.
Olli-Pekka Heinonen’s inspiration
One important moment of the day was reading a text that Olli-Pekka Heinonen, Director General of the International Baccalaureate, generously shared with me. It was so beautifully aligned with the day because it anchored this whole conversation where it belongs: not as “an art teacher’s thing,” but as a serious educational responsibility sitting right inside the IB’s own thinking.
That distinction has stayed with me: certainty and security are not the same thing, and uncertainty can be safe. We’re not throwing rigour out of the window, and we’re not ignoring curriculum. We’re creating learning environments where the unknown doesn’t automatically mean danger, because when the unknown is treated as danger, students contract. When it’s held as possibility, they grow.
The questions asked, and why I’m still processing them
The best part of yesterday wasn’t my “content”, but the quality of thinking through questioning the tension we all live with: curriculum, accountability, time, pressure – and the comfort of doing what you already know works.
They weren’t questions looking for the right answer. They were the kind that unsettle certainty just enough to open something new. I’m still processing some of them now, which is how I know they were good. They create a small pocket of uncertainty that doesn’t feel threatening, but alive – more like, oh, there’s more here that I haven’t fully seen yet.
The afternoon taught me something important.
As the questions continued, I could feel “disrupt” getting misread by some, as if it meant destruction, or change for the sake of change. Then Gery, our brilliant experiential learning lead, offered a thought that came out of that questioning: we don’t always need to disrupt. Sometimes disruption isn’t the point. Discernment is. What’s working that we should protect? What isn’t working and needs attention?
It gave language to what I could sense but hadn’t fully articulated, and it reminded me that this work is meant to be lived, not performed. We became a team in that moment: teachers voicing the challenge, Gery seeing something outside my frame, and together we reshaped the task into something that fit. It felt aligned, genuinely in sync.
That’s Creative Intelligence in action: staying open, letting the room teach you something, and allowing the work to get stronger because it becomes responsive. It’s the same capacity we’re trying to grow in students.
State before strategy: why the nervous system comes first
One thread ran through the day and it’s something I’m researching and understanding more and more: state before strategy.
When we’re tight, defensive, rushed, or performing, our thinking narrows. We reach for certainty and we stop seeing options. When we’re grounded and open, we can tolerate complexity long enough for meaning to emerge.
I saw the same thing with my students this week, and the impact was unmistakable. I built in one non-dramatic shift before ideation and the change was immediate. Their thinking opened, and ideas flowed. It was a beautifully clear example of why state so often matters more than instruction.
What I’m taking forward
People lost a day they might have planned differently, and I’m not naïve about that, but I do think the majority took something real from it because the room was engaged and thinking. If some weren’t ready, that’s information too. Change isn’t a switch – it can only meet people where they are.
I feel, and hope, that something is incubating across our staff team now. It didn’t feel like an ending, but more like the start of a shared language: one that brings IB rigour and UWC experiential roots into a more seamless, future-fit relationship.
Now comes the challenge: the follow-up. How do we keep this alive without turning it into another “initiative”? How do we make it light enough to be sustainable, but real enough that it doesn’t evaporate? I don’t want it to become “remember that great PD day.” My great hope is that it initiates a shift in how we teach – small pockets of uncertainty across subjects, so students learn how to be inside not-knowing without fear.
More to come.
If you’re curious about bringing this kind of work into your school/team and want to see what’s possible, feel free to get in touch. No pressure, no obligation – just a conversation.