Interview with experts: How can schools strike the right chord?

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Speaker A Hello and welcome to Education Sense, the podcast by Teachers for Teachers. You're listening to episode three of our new podcast with me, David Marshall. And with me I have Richard Dunn and Hilary Wyers. We're going to be looking at the question, how can schools strike the right chord to explore the idea of harmony in our educational settings? And it will be clearer in a minute why we're looking particularly at the word harmony. To start off with, I want to introduce our two wonderful people who are with us today. Richard is a former state school headteacher with a 30 year career in education. He is founder and director of the Harmony Project, which puts nature and sustainability at the heart of learning. The Harmony Project works with schools both in the UK and around the world to develop harmony in education. Hilary is the head of St. James Prep School in London and has been the head at the Lyceum, is a school's inspector and has been teaching the last 30 years, having taught between nursery and A level. St James's where she is now, is a unique school unlike any other, which teaches Sanskrit and begins and ends every lesson with a mindfulness pause. Hilary and Richard, welcome to Education Sense and thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker B Thank you.

Speaker C Great to be here.

Speaker A To begin with, I thought we would look at this idea of harmony. Seeing as the project is called the Harmony Project, would you be able to tell me a little bit about the word harmony and what we mean by it, perhaps in an educational setting?

Speaker C Well, I think if we think of the word harmony, we go to music and the beautiful sounds of a choir or an orchestra performing together. The word harmony itself is an ancient Greek word, harmonia, which means joined or connected. And I hadn't really thought a lot about the word harmony until I read a book written by the then Prince of Wales, now the King, called harmony a new way of looking at our world. And in reading the book, I realized that this word harmony was all about how life works through relationships, through connections, in natural form, in human form. So it's a lovely way of exploring education to see it through the lens of harmony and joined up ness rooted in wholeness, as one of my team would like to say. So, yeah, it's a lovely word and I think when we think of harmony, we think of things working together.

Speaker A Yeah. Rooted in wholeness and joined upness, this sounds exactly what we need in education. Hillary, is there anything you want to add to that from your own experience and feelings about the. The word harmony?

Speaker B Yes. So, having been in education for many years and been in leadership for about 17 of them. I think that the main thing is this kind of harmony of purpose in a school so that you have everybody, the parents, the pupils, the staff, the office team, every single person, the maintenance team. You're all working together for a common goal, which is the flourishing of the children. And I think when you get that sense that we're devoted to these children and making sure that they walk into an environment that's happy and calm. I'm very passionate about emotional contagion because I believe that children live in the emotional atmosphere that's created by the adults around them. And so if you can create a harmonious, calm, happy space, they walk into joy. And the way to do that is through communicating together as a team and making sure your common aims are very clear. I just love doing that, that kind of sense of joy and harmony of everybody working together for the flourishing of the children. And I think the work that Richard's doing is very exciting and accords 100% with what I do and what I feel passionate about. So I'm very excited that we're here talking together.

Speaker A Me too. It reminds me of something that the educator Vivian Robinson talks about and she's focused on mainly on ed and development, staff development. She talks about a virtuous cycle, getting into that virtuous cycle where things just keep improving. And that seems very similar to what you're speaking about in terms of harmony across a whole body of people. That word emotional contagion also perhaps post pandemic, makes us think of various sort of airborne diseases. But actually this is a positive word. It's being used as a sort of sense of the joy that can be contagious in an environment.

Speaker B I think it's very important that the team are as stress free as possible because the emotions of the staff and of the leaders are like a wave when a boat goes through the water, the wake, and it affects everybody. So if you can just keep an eye on the emotional atmosphere of the school, it can be very positive. But you can also then help people if they're not feeling so positive. They can go to the meditation room or come and have a chat if they need to de stress. That's really important that teachers are in a really good emotional state. Walking into the classroom, I feel.

Speaker A And behind that I feel there's. The inference is that there's a sort of responsibility to keep an eye on our own emotional state because that's what sets the state for others. And maybe this is something we'll come on to talk about a bit more because I know, Richard, it's central to the work that you've been doing as well. Before we get into that, I just want to go to the opposite, because to understand harmony, perhaps it's worth thinking briefly about discord. That's something which we experience in education all too frequently. What does this word mean to you, Richard, in an educational context?

Speaker C I mean, I think in relation to what we've just been talking about in terms of emotional well being and the well being of our staff as much as our children and our wider community. It's often very challenging in schools, isn't it, that we have lots to do with, under lot of pressure. There are a lot of demands both within the school day and beyond. Whether that's, you know, the, the expectations on the school, whether it's parents. There are a lot of, a lot of different factors that are at play in making life in school often very full on, very demanding. So your point is an important one. We need to really work out where there is that discord or stress, if you like, how do we manage that? And I think coming back to what Hillary was saying, as a leader in a school, it's really important to keep monitoring how well is my team, how are they doing and what will help them. It's almost the opposite of that busyness. It's trying to alleviate things, to lighten things, to make things easier or to make things certainly more manageable and realistic. So I think if we go from the discord or sometimes even the chaos to the other extreme of harmony, it's about bringing things back into balance. So, so things don't feel overwhelming. It is manageable. It is something that your team and your, and ultimately then your children feel they can cope with. And, you know, we live in a world where there's a lot of mental ill health, where people feel unwell in that regard. So it's a hugely important factor both within education and within schools and more broadly. And so I think the question of finding harmony, finding that sense of inner peace, of well being, of everything is, is okay. That I'm not feeling overwhelmed by what I have to do is really, really important. So it's something that leadership needs to be monitoring really all the time.

Speaker B I think, I think we're lucky at St. James because we have this thing called the pause. At the beginning and end of every lesson, the children and the teacher just pause for a moment, come into the present moment and actually dedicate the next activity to their highest self. So they're going to do their very best it for the Next activity. The other thing I do, which is quite magical on a Friday is I have tea and toast. So afternoon tea with my year sixes and the smell of toast releases endorphins. And especially when they're going through their 11 plus stress, they're in the staff refectory with me, the year sixes, and we have a piece of toast and a cup of tea and we talk. And I give the staff chance, half an hour a week just for the teachers to talk about their stresses and how I can help to relieve their stress. And similarly with the assistants at the school, they have another half an hour session as well. So I think it's about listening, picking up the sound, hearing how people are and then making adjustments as you need to. There's no hand towels or photocopies not working. You can kind of sort out the little bits of stress to try and bring this harmony. And we know it's a stressful job, but it's also a joyful job when we're all looking after each other.

Speaker A Do you find that the conversation itself is helpful for resolving some of those discords that you get in the school day? Just having the conversation.

Speaker B It's so important to give people time in such a busy environment to actually say, I value your emotional well being so that I will give you time and listen to you. I think that's really important. And also for the parents. So we, we have a staff parent choir and on a Thursday they come and sing. We all sing together and I'm there as well. We make a beautiful sound together and the parents come in, they're stressed as well. We need to look after them. So we've got a cafe for the staff to have coffee in the morning. They can sing, they can do art, they can learn Sanskrit. You know, we kind of look after the parents too because if they're relaxed, the children will be relaxed. So it's about the whole community. It's not just the children we're looking at, we're looking after everybody. That's important.

Speaker A Sign me up for that too. That sounds really lovely. I wanted also to sort of think about, in this area, I want to think about nature because, Richard, I know this is central to what you do. Nature and sustainability. Hilary, I know that schools are increasingly wanting to become eco schools and to make not just the environment central to what they do, but also make sure that the children get access to nature. Would you both be able to talk a little bit about how nature can help a child find harmony in their life?

Speaker C Yeah, certainly. Very happy to start that response, you're right. I mean, nature is critical to a good sense of well being. There's so much research out there and the listeners may know of Miles Richardson, Professor Miles Richardson at the University of Derby, and he's doing a lot of research into nature connectedness and the importance of nature connectedness. We often in, in our learning, we learn about nature which can still be in a classroom, in a textbook or on a screen rather than in nature. So I think it's really important to find opportunities to shift from just learning about nature to actually being in it. I mean, there are lovely examples like Forest School, but it can go beyond that, of course, into lots of different aspects of learning in nature. And then for us, it's also this learning from nature. What is nature teaching us here? What are the, what we would call principles of harmony that are the guiding principles that inform all life? So principles of cycles, of diversity, of interdependence. These principles are, are what makes nature work so well and work in harmony. So it's really lovely to be able to say when you're in that nature environment, a natural environment to say to children and indeed the adults, you know, what, what is this telling us? What, what can we learn from this? And I think the final element of all of that is to get children to see that they're part of this, you know, the separation which we start with, with education actually by separating and siloing learning. But this sense of separation creates a disconnect. And I think what we're trying to do through this work of harmony is to help young people see that they are part of nature, that they are part of this extraordinary world and to really engage with that.

Speaker A And that has to be experienced, I think, to be understood, doesn't it?

Speaker C Very much. Certainly experience is one of the things I feel. Learning can often be quite dry, maybe even dead. When you bring in experience, as you say, then suddenly learning comes to life. And that's what we want. And they're the memorable things. When we learn and have experiences of learning, then we remember things and that's really important.

Speaker B Well, it's interesting because I think children naturally connect with nature. They absolutely, you know, that is their element. And being outside in the elements is really, really important. And what I think is really sad is, you know, we do lots of lovely things in, in schools with early years and, you know, the nursery. Children in, in every setting have to have a certain amount of time outside. But what about the older ones? You know, what, what do they, how are they accessing all that and just being outside in the fresh air is really important. I mean, as an inspector, I go into a lot of different schools and the most passionate groups are the children. Eco groups. You know, those ones with the eco badges, they're leading it in schools. They're going, you can't have the lights on. You know, what, where does that recycling go? And, you know, our eco team wanted to see the recycling bins and where the recycled rubbish was, was going, you know, they're like showers and we want proof. But I think schools can do, even London schools can do a lot with their local area. We've got this school gardens. Each year, group's got their own raised bed. And it's incredible the things that you can grow. I mean, we've got enormous sunflowers, we've got sunflower growing competition at the moment. And in art, they will then study the sunflowers. They will make them out of clay and then they will do observational drawing of the sunflower and look at the patterns. And that kind of. Children understand that they are connected to nature and they love to see things grow. They are so excited that they planted that seed and then they were able to actually grow. We grow a huge squash and they were carrying it around the school going, look what we've grown. We're lucky because we have a cooking kitchen here as well. They all learn to cook vegetarian seasonal food, so we're able to link the garden with their cooking lessons as well, so we know where our food is coming from. But, yes, I think a lot more can be done in terms of getting children out, especially the older ones.

Speaker A It sounds like you do make the space for it and you're in a prep school and you've mentioned it can be harder for senior schools as well. I wonder how we can make space for children to connect with nature more while also balancing all the priorities in education today.

Speaker C We have to see that it's not another thing to do, it's not more to do, it's just a different way of doing what we would be doing anyway, because we know that in a demanding school environment, it's not easy to add more to that. In fact, it's often pretty impossible. I think it's about shifting the focus, being realistic about that. You know, we're not going to do it all the time, every day, but seeing where there are opportunities to do that, particularly in the summer months, maybe, or out of times when there's maybe more pressure on exams, that sort of thing, or assessments. So, yeah, finding the opportunities to rethink the learning and to say, actually we could deliver this learning in a different way, beyond the classroom, out in a natural environment, and as Hillary said, you know, seeking ways of doing that out in the, maybe even with links to the community. I mean, we put a big emphasis on partners in learning. Who are the people that can add value to that kind of learning? Often people in our communities who've got great experience themselves and great knowledge and expertise who can really add value to, to how we do that. So yes, it needs creative thinking, but I think if it's, if it's something that a teacher wants to do, it's very possible. There's a lovely teacher called Sophie at Westenbert. She's in a secondary school, you know, a senior school, and she's just done an amazing project with her students linking science and geography and geometry into the learning. And the feedback from her students was incredibly positive. They said, please, can we do more of it?

Speaker A This word geometry, you don't hear it used very much in education as it is and it sounds like an almost old fashioned word to me. When I think of geometry. It sounds like I'm reaching back into the sort of the 1950s or something. But there's a real focus on geometry in the Harmony project. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why you put that importance on that?

Speaker C Yeah, I mean, I think it's an amazing area to explore and we see geometry and patterns in nature everywhere and we see them in microform and we see them in macro form. It's just an, it's a really interesting area for students, children to explore and to really start to notice that there is a pattern to life. When they start to recreate those patterns through the process of geometry, they really get a deeper sense of these patterns at work. And I think the other side of it is it helps them to be very calm, to pay attention to detail, to notice the detail of those patterns. I mean, you know, in a, in the great traditions of the world, the great civilizations, the great religions and so on, they've always understood that there is a geometry and a pattern to life and they've revered that. So it's a lovely way of helping young people really tune in to this order, some would say a sacred order to how things are. And of course it creates beauty. So when we see geometry in the world, but when we also recreate that geometry, we recreate beauty and there's a feel good that comes from doing that. So I've seen lots and lots of children love doing Geometry because it makes them feel calm, it gives them a beautiful outcome of learning and something they feel very proud of and feel good about. So it's a really interesting aspect and as you say, maybe a bit old fashioned, but my sense is it's something that could come back more and more. I hope it does.

Speaker A Hillary, do you work with geometry at St. James's or something similar?

Speaker B I think we have a phenomenal art department and the prep school has an art room which is full of art and light and absolutely incredible. And the art teacher very often uses shells or flowers, gets the children to look at the patterns and then recreate those through 3D art. So we have our own kiln, so they'll be making things and then actually doing observational drawing. I think that kind of focus that you're talking about, Richard, comes as well through life drawing. So one of the skills she teaches the children to do is to. Is to draw flowers from life and really, really study. And I think that brings that same sense of happiness and joy and focus. And I think it is all about teaching children how to focus on something very deeply, almost in a kind of a meditative way and stay focused. Because that's the difficulty these days with this lack of ability to maintain concentration and things like geometry and really, really fine art have that ability to focus the mind.

Speaker A And it's a way into maths through art as well. For some children who feel less confident with maths, I'm thinking there's a wonderful book called Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths by Mais Chan, which is an absolutely hilarious read. I'd recommend it. And he is not very good at maths, but he gets into it. It's a bit of a spoiler, but he gets into it by. He finds a Romanesco cauliflower, I think, and he starts drawing it for his maths projects. And he's kind of basically drawing the Fibonacci sequence. And that's how he realizes that he can do maths just through his artistic sort of side. Stephanie can see how art is a. Is a way in through geometry to all these other understandings of the world.

Speaker B World.

Speaker C And I think what you've highlighted there is this importance of then linking maths and art. And this is what a lot of education doesn't do. It keeps every single subject separate. I would go as far as to say I think education for the most part is random. It's just all over the place. And children go from one subject to the next to the next and nothing really connects. So immediately you do something like geometry and you link your maths learning to your art, you've got a connection. That for me is where we should really be focusing more, where we could really build something amazing around joined up learning. That just has this lovely sense of children understanding why they're learning and how it all links together. And too often I don't think it does that. There was a lovely school I was working with last year and two girls in year four said because their teachers had started to do this, we've really noticed that our learning is different at the moment. It seems to be changing and things are linked together and we really like it. And it was an overheard conversation, but they had really observed this change and they were very happy about it.

Speaker A That's really something. It shows there's things happening there. Particularly when you get the pupils observing their own learning and thinking about it. That's kind of dreamy as an observation as well. It's what every educator loves to overhear sounds almost made up, but I'm sure it isn't. What about. Well, we've talked a bit about art and I'm thinking also about things like music and dance, which along with art and the more artistic sides of curriculum have been somewhat relegated a bit in the last few years. To me, they seem to be very important in learning and in thinking. Hilary, I know it's such an important feature of St. James's can you talk a little bit about this in the setting in St James's well, I've always.

Speaker B Been struck by E.M. forster in Howards End saying, only connect and how through the dance, through the art and through the drama. The children not only connecting their head with their heart, but connecting with one another. And it's that unity that they get when they're performing together. When we have a dance festival, we put on a Shakespeare festival. So all the children learn Shakespeare from 2 years old and they absolutely love it. The Shakespeare festival. Even the little tiny ones are on stage for their little moment in Shakespearean costume and they learn it. The iambic pentameter is quite rhythmic for them to learn. And their sense of satisfaction and delight of working. Not only that they have performed something, but they performed it together. There's a real sense of connection with each other and a celebration. And the St. James children do remarkably well in. In all these competitions against other schools because they just have this confidence about speaking aloud. They learn Sanskrit, as we talked about, as well that. And they chant together. So there is just a sense of the harmony that comes with learning something by heart together and then performing it and the delight that that gives everybody. So now I'm in the Shakespeare Festival and the Sanskrit competition are kind of like real highlights at St. James. And people flock to see these children on stage, just so confident. It's amazing. We had the 50th celebration of St. James and we had. The alumni came and sang with the parent staff choir and with the senior girls, senior boys and the prep school choir, and they all sang together, part of Vivaldi's Gloria. The children joined in with the bits they knew, but the alumni knew it all off by heart. They were the part of the orchestra, the soloists. And people were just blown over by the fact that if you went to St. James, you knew how to sing, you could play an instrument and you could be part of something. So I think that is a real legacy of the St. James. Education is music and being able to perform on stage very confidently. Did you find that when you were at school?

Speaker A Because. Yes, I went there for two years, but only for sixth form, so it wasn't the sort of foundational years, but. But my classmates had sort of had Midsummer Night's Dreams, since they were four and a half, or hamlets, plus lots of singing. No, I do remember the singing, actually. That was. We did the Magic Flute when I was there, which was great fun and. Yeah, on a. On a. On a London stage. I remember it was. It was. It was quite a big operation. They didn't do things by half. It was always go big.

Speaker B It's still like that. It's still like that. But it's all of those opportunities, you know, you think that this is. This is education giving them that. I just wish I'd been to a school like St. James myself.

Speaker A Yeah, it's an extraordinary place. One thing that's been running through our conversation is narrative about stories that we tell. The stories that we tell about schools, the stories that we tell about what's important in schools and who's important in schools. I wanted to ask a little bit about the story in education going forward. What do you see as the important stories that we need to tell about education? Does that make sense?

Speaker C I think it does, and it's an interesting question because we have a system and, you know, my teaching was primarily in the state sector. I think the state sector is very under pressure and I think it's become a monoculture. I think a lot of education is very similar. So how do you get the balance between making sure that the core skills, you know, in. In the primary sector, you know, you're reading, you're writing, your maths and phonics and so on, that they're secure because they're the access points into learning. But then how could learning be framed around projects, inquiries, themes that really engage young people in a journey? In a journey from, I would say, half termly, from the beginning of that half term to the end, where at the end there is what we've just been talking about, some kind of performance or celebration of what that learning was all about. And the ideal is that every half term it's a different performance or presentation. So children get really varied, diverse experiences of how they want to present what they've done. So that would be my hope, that there is, there is flexibility and opportunity to do that more. Therefore there's a little less pressure on the demands of the assessment exam, whatever we want to call them systems to saying actually learning is more than that. It's about nurturing the flourishing, as Hillary has said, of these young people, so that they feel confident and are able to present and perform in a range of different contexts based on what they've learned. And that's when their passions will come through, their deeper sense of the learning will come through, and where their sense of self and their confidence, which we've already touched on, will be so much stronger. So looking ahead, I think we have to therefore give a little bit. We need to just say there's more scope for that and in fact, that's what we want to see. So, you know, we've talked about this idea of harmony and unity, but I suppose it's more than that. It's about diversity and unity, that we're all working towards the same goal of educating our young people. But actually the richness will be the diversity of the outcomes of what schools in their different local contexts, in their different community contexts do and achieve. So the richness will be in the diversity. Just a quick reference. In Wales, they have a beautiful word. I think it's called cynefin and it means rootedness, a sense of place. So the curriculum for Wales now is encouraging schools to really embed their learning in their place in their community, in their geography, in their history, in their landscapes, in their cultures and traditions, so that those children really understand where they come from and the cultures plural of that place. So it's a really great word and I think what it does is it gets schools to really think about what their learning means for them, rather than just some kind of monoculture. We've all got to learn these things through our curriculum, so we need to give space for that. We need to give schools time to develop that. I think that's where for me, the opportunity lies.

Speaker B That was brilliant. And I love this idea of finding yourself. And I think the children that are going to go on into out into the future generations, into the work, the jobs that we think they're going to be doing, they won't be doing. They have to have very different skills. And those skills are going to be about communicating. They're going to be about being creative, being flexible, being resilient. And I believe that holding on firmly to the arts is key. And the. The wonderful things that. That being done about Harmony and the Harmony Project to give those children, when they leave school, they need different tools. They don't just need to be able to answer questions for exams. They need to be able to think on their feet, be creative, work as a team. All of the things that we've been talking about today from things like the Harmony Project, working together, seeing connections, and seeing that they have an impact on the world. And I went to an incredible school where every child, every sixth former, had a vision for how they could make the world a better place. And I think we need to see education not as something for children to come out the other end, you know, with a certain package of knowledge, but we have inspired them to see that they have an impact on the world and they themselves can make the world a better place in every single thing they do. They can be kinder, more thoughtful and spread joy to other people. And that is something that you get with the children that come out of St. James. They're very polite, thoughtful, kind, but with the sense of, I can do anything. Tell them they're limitless, they can do anything. It needs to be joyous. It's very sad when children come out the other end of school and say they didn't enjoy their day or, you know, I think a school should be a joyous occasion. Childhood is short. So let's make a school, our education system, where children want to go to school. They've got engaging teachers who love their subjects, tell them stories, not just give them devices, inspire them with their love of their subject and what they love doing. So those children will have that spark when they go. I'm gabbling, but I'm saying we need education to be different. It needs to be colorful and joyful, not grey. And the children need to come out inspired.

Speaker A I love the. We've talked about bringing all of these elements into education, getting rid of some of those silos. We've talked about the sense of joy that you can get from that. And of course, I think we all agree education should be joyful. Yes. We've got to fulfill certain needs and regulations and of course, we've got to provide. Provide qualifications going forward. But if there's not joy, then what is education for? And just to finish, Richard, with that word, I don't know if I'm saying it correctly, but you mentioned the Welsh word. Is it kneven?

Speaker C That's right. I think that's the correct pronunciation.

Speaker A I will be looking that up. That's an. That's a sense of place and rootedness with where we are and what we're doing really feels essential. Well, thank you so much for making time to be here. It's just been wonderful listening to you both and having this conversation. Really appreciate it.

Speaker B Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker A You've been listening to Education Sense. My name is David Marshall. If you have anything you'd like to chat to us about on this podcast, please do. Email education sense podmail.com you can find us on LinkedIn. And you can also look out for our next episode coming soon.

Interview with experts: How can schools strike the right chord?

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