Welcome to The Idiosyncratic Classroom.
In this world of ever-increasing educational standardisation and pressure, this newsletter explores the importance of our idiosyncratic quirks when it comes to learning.
And I’m not just talking about kids. The quest for excellence and progress means schools and everyone in them are being starved of personality and life. People can’t be, they have to perform.
But, with a few tweaks and a subtle reframing of what’s seen, a classroom can become a place of idiosyncratic flourishing even in the driest of contexts.
Those tweaks I have found fall under three categories:
Dispositions unite the disciplines, broaden skills, and grow our unique style.
Playfulness injects joy, adventure, and the chaos necessary for discovery.
Relationships bring care, respect, and inner knowing.
The Idiosyncratic Classroom seeks to help educators understand these in deeper ways so that they can use them as a lens through which to see their learners in all their idiosyncratic glory, and also feel more capable and creative in their own practice.
Even, perhaps, find joy.
