334: Boundless Life with Suzanne Perkowsky
Boundless Life build a collection of thoughtfully designed communities located in beautiful destinations around the world comprised of private homes, co-working spaces, a school system based on experiential learning and locally adapted recreational hubs where like-minded families can develop connections, work, sustainably explore different parts of the world and be immersed in the local cultures.
Suzanne Perkowsky is the Head of Academics at Boundless Life. She was the co-founder of New Nordic Schools, a Finnish education development company that created the Nordic Baccalaureate based on the Finnish education system.
She has been in the education field for over 30 years as a teacher, leader and trainer, setting up and working in schools in Finland, Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia, UK and the US. She has been involved in the set-up of over 15 new schools or campuses.
Suzanne has qualifications from Finland, UK and the US which has been key in understanding global education, its accolades and its shortcomings to best inform current best practices. She believes there’s always something more to learn no matter how experienced or educated you are.
Revolutionising where, when and how children learn.
Inspired by the world-renowned Finnish system, Boundless Education was developed by taking the finest ingredients from the world’s best educational practices to build one coherent system to follow your child anywhere. Boundless Education is a transformational learning system that lays the foundation for innovation, maximizes experiential learning, and creates meaningful connections to ourselves, our communities and the world.
Along with rigorous academics, our education centres leverage local cultures and environments to deliver an unparalleled learning experience including arts, music and nature exploration.
Join a flexible, forward-thinking education programme for your children.
Website
Social Media Information
www.instagram.com/boundlesslife/
www.facebook.com/myboundlesslife
twitter.com/boundlesslife
www.linkedin.com/company/boundlesslife/
Resources Mentioned
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – March 2023
Book NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit
333: Creating art to be and stay human with Michaell Magrutsche
Michaell Magrutsche is an Austrian/Californian multidisciplinary artist, awareness and creativity educator, speaker, and author.
Michaell’s dyslexia and dysgraphia forced him to develop an awareness of seeing the world purely from a human perspective. Creating art completed his awareness of what it is to be human-relevant vs system-relevant.Michaell’s talent is recognizing awareness to seed a new consciousness that allows us to unveil the untapped superpowers of human’s limitlessness, art/creativity, healthy discourse and adaptability to make all humans fit within our human tapestry.
Because Michaell has been a sick child also dyslexic and has dysgraphia (hand eye coordination) he could only navigate in very few systems. Michaell was forced to find his salvation in art. Interacting and creating art outside of systems helped him feel humane and got him through life. Michaell is completely self-taught. Art allowed him to experience life with other humans and 5 books later, Michaell produced with Robert Evans and became a City Arts Commissioner etc. etc.
Michaell discovered that creating art is humans greatest inherent superpower, followed by healthy dialogue and our adaptability. These superpowers are applicable to everything from Creativity, Leadership, Business, Education, Relationships and what else humans focus on.
Today, Michaell keeps unveiling the limitations of all man-made systems like technology, science, economy and generalized knowledge to change systems to be more human adaptable instead of humans keep forcing themselves to be system adaptive.
Michaell’s mission is to show us something very different.
Website & Social Media
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – March 2023
Book NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit
332: What is self-efficacy and why should we be paying attention to it in Primary Schools?
RS Assessment conducted a study among 21,000 key stage 2 pupils in English schools recently. The study was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and aims to better understand the longer-term impacts of the Covid lockdowns on this cohort of kids’ attainment, wellbeing and attitudes to learning.
What is self-efficacy and why should we be paying attention to it in Primary Schools?
We talk a lot about self-esteem in our children, but what is the connection between self-efficacy and their achievements? Our research shows that the majority of Key Stage 2 pupils report feeling some vulnerability in self-efficacy, with large (greater than 7 Percentage Point, or 14%) drops since the pandemic. Professor Clare Wood and Katie Blainey, Director of Assessment at Hodder Education talk about the role of self-efficacy in improving pupil outcomes and how we can we restore our children’s sense of their ability to achieve – both in the classroom and at home.
Website
www.risingstars-uk.com/rs-assessment/whitepapers
www.schoolsweek.co.uk/whats-up-with-year-3-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/
Watch the live recording of this podcast at www.youtube.com/@educationonfire5530/streams
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – March 2023
Book NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit
331: Sustainability in schools with Shamanth Pereira
With a background in finance, an aha moment from an exhausted mother of 3, Shamanth Pereira, occurred when cleaning up her then-4-year-old’s hundredth toilet roll lovingly placed down the loo. This waste and the fact that we cut down 27,000 trees daily just to wipe our bums fuelled Shamanth to create ‘Something Cheeky’, a bamboo, fully decomposing, organic toilet and kitchen rolls delivered to your door without a piece of plastic in sight. The Something Co now delivers toilet rolls and kitchen paper towels across the UK from Loch Lomond to Lands End. Their mission is to offer a range of sustianable everyday essentials to consumers.
We discuss how schools can utilise this resource and it can inform teaching sustainability in schools.
Website
Social Media Information
Instagram – @somethingcheeky.co
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – March 2023
Book NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit
330: Khalifa International Award for Early Learning (KIAEL) with Prof. Nirmala Rao
The new Khalifa International Award for Early Learning (KIAEL), funded by the United Arab Emirates, wants submissions from UK academics, projects, schools and nurseries displaying brilliance and innovation in the early education sector.
Two winners in each of the categories “Best Research & Studies” and “Best Programmes & Teaching Practices” will receive $50,000. The recipients will be announced in June 2023.
The KIAEL Awarding Committee, which features Professor Iram Siraj, Professor of Child Development and Education, University of Oxford, are looking for high-quality, evidence-based research and impactful programmes, methodologies, and advanced teaching practices. Early education is defined as anything aimed at children aged eight and under.
Initiatives for children with disabilities are particularly welcome.
The prize was founded by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Deputy Prime Minister, and aims to improve the standard of early childhood education around the world.
It is open to entrants from any country, including developing nations.
There have already been more than 40 prize registrations from the UK, but the organisers want many more through January and February.
“Our mission is to identify and reward research on early-childhood education, care that supports improvements in practice and exemplary programmes or teaching practices demonstrated to improve quality and/or the learning and development of young children,” says Professor Iram Siraj.
Professor Siraj is one five internationally renowned early learning experts who make up the KIAEL Awarding Committee. They also include: Dr Steven Barnett, founding Co-Director of the National Institute for Early Education and Board of Governors Professor of Education at Rutgers University in the US; Dr Nirmala Rao, a Chair Professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong and Serena H C Yang Professor in Early Childhood Development and Education; Fatma Ahmad Abdulla Al Bastaki, Cluster Manager, Emirates Schools Establishment, Ministry of Education, UAE; Dr Jana Fleming, Director, Early Childhood Development, Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation, Abu Dhabi.
Judging will place a firm emphasis on rigorous evaluation and impact to recognise initiatives and research in early childhood that can be globally inspirational due to measurable positive results.
“All programmes submitted for consideration should have been subject to an evaluation of implementation or outcomes that provide strong evidence of current or potential impact,” said Professor Siraj.
The deadline for entries is the 28 February 2023. Applications need to be submitted online at https://el.khaward.ae/.
Nirmala Rao is a Serena H C Yang Professor in Early Childhood Development and Education, Chair Professor of Child Development and Education, and Director of the Consortium for Research on Early Childhood Development and Education (CORE), Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong (HKU).
She is a Developmental and Chartered (Educational) Psychologist by training and has conducted research on early childhood development and education in Asian cultural contexts. Professor Rao has published widely and serves on the Editorial Board for premier scholarly journals. She is a regular participant in high-level international meetings, written advocacy material, and undertaken consultancies for international organisations. Professor Rao has received awards for both research and teaching.