Masterclass With Fearless Educator

Virginia Kung is an experienced school leader, an Adjunct Lecturer for the University of Auckland and the Deputy Principal at Newmarket Primary School in Auckland, New Zealand. Newmarket Primary School is an inner city school established in 1887. Auckland City has built up around the school. Currently, the school has a diverse migrant roll, which includes 10% of students from India.  She has been a member of the senior leadership team for 11 years. She has expertise in using Structured Observed Learning Outcomes Taxonomy (SOLO) to enhance learning outcomes and raise student achievement. In addition, she regularly mentors teachers in the use of SOLO for teaching and learning. 

 Over the past two years, Virginia has focused her teacher inquiry around the "Plan to Pedagogy Project".  http://www.iletc.com.au/

The Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILETC) project is an Australian Research Council Linkage Project funded led by The University of Melbourne. The project investigates how teachers can use the untapped potential of Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) to improve learning outcomes for students. The collaborative research will identify whether there is a link between quality teaching and effective use of ILEs and develop practical tools to assist teachers to adapt their teaching practices to maximise deeper learning. Currently she is also champion of the Flexible Grouping Initiative where she mentors two Across School Leaders and eleven In School Leaders in the Auckland Central Community of Schools Kāhui Ako.

 Virginia is passionate about building and establishing strong relationships with all stakeholders. Her school leadership work with The Springboard Trust involved working on the “Schools@Heart Project”. The outcome guided Newmarket Primary Schools Strategic Plan. She believes that the key to educational success is to make meaningful and respectful connections with students, teachers, parents and the community.

In 2014, she was invited to travel to China as part of the New Zealand Principal’s delegation. In 2015, she attended the World Educational Leadership Summit in Singapore and had the opportunity to personally meet and listen to Professor Sugata Mitra.

In 2018 she was certified as a Seesaw Ambassador and also as a Hapara Certified Educator.  She completed her Digital Passport with Mindlab. In 2020, she certified as a Book Creator Author and attained Level 1 using Microsoft FlipGrid.

Je’anna Clements (BA Psychology Hons) is co-founder and facilitator at Riverstone Village, a Democratic, Self-Directed Education community in South Africa. Following her degree in Philosophy, Political Science and Psychology, Je’anna trained as an Aware Parenting Instructor, counsellor and educational play facilitator. She is passionate about child participation and co-facilitated child participation discussions for Save The Children Sweden. During this process she became aware of how many young people found their education to be oppressive and limiting rather than empowering. After becoming a mother in 2005 she had to consider which education approach would be most compatible with her family's best interests. She convened a reading group on alternative education, but found that the more she explored alternative approaches such as Waldorf and Montessori, the more she felt dissatisfied with the level of empowerment of the young people concerned. 

She registered for her Masters in Philosophy of Education in order to design a progressive school model that empowered young people to optimise their own education. She soon discovered that formal tertiary education suffered from the same disempowering and limiting structures and protocols that she was aiming to remedy for education in the K-12 range. What is becoming known as the 'Gated Institutional Narrative' (GIN) meant that she was simply not 'allowed' to study what it was that she knew she needed to study. Deciding to transcend the limits of formal course requirements, she embarked on a decade-long journey of informal study through reading, discussion, and practical experimentation, co-founding and collaborating with numerous alternative education startups on the way. She eventually settled on Self-Directed Education as the one approach which both optimised childhood experience and the fulfilment of young people's human rights, and was likely to best prepare them for the uncertain future humanity faces. 

Both of the young people who call her mother have self-directed their education since birth. Je'anna is also a writer and her articles have been published by various South African and international publications including Save The Children (Sweden), the Children , Youth and Environments journal (Univ. Colorado, USA), and Tipping Points magazine (by the Alliance for Self-Directed Education). She is the author of Help! My Kid Hates School , as well as What If School Creates Dyslexia, and the Helping The Butterfly Hatch series of books for facilitators of Self-Directed Education, on How SDE Works and Why as well as on How To Support Young People In Self-Directed Education . To date some of her writings have been translated into Chinese, French, and Dutch.

Chelsea Thomas Profile :

Chelsea Thomas lives on the West Coast of Canada and is an unschooling mom of 4. She is completing her PhD (ABD) in Education at the University of Victoria and she regularly involves herself in advocacy projects within the university and community. Her most recent community based learning and healing projects include a community-school-university partnership project focused on integrating Indigenous ways of knowing and being into the BC K-12 science curriculum www.livinglabproject.ca and advocating for educational choice for families with www.welearnnaturally.com , an organization committed to advancing children's rights and youth allyship. Her doctoral research will focus on how Canadian families from a poverty-class heritage who have been historically excluded from equitable educational opportunities including home learning, perceive and describe their uncommon experience of unschooling in terms of both nurturing a sense of belonging and as a decolonizing approach to learning, education and life.

Erin Fleming Profile :

Erin Fleming is an unschooling mom of 3 near Toronto Canada. She has worked as a teacher in provincial public schools, developed self directed education programs in the private sector, and dedicates her time to projects related to helping families see the possibilities within education. She currently works as an unschooling and parenting coach. For Future School Leaders Chelsea and Erin will be sharing how intrinsically motivated learning is heavily dependent on the environment in which a learner finds themselves. If they are in an environment that is supportive and meets needs for safety, belonging, and freedom, the learner can experience an embodied, deeply meaningful experience. If they are in an environment that is not meeting some of their needs for safety, belonging, freedom, and choice, the learning will feel “outside” of them and the learning possibly less likely to be retained. As teachers, educators, and administrators, you play an important role in creating an environment for learners to flourish and experience the joy of embodied learning - the type of learning that leaves the individual feeling excited and passionate and eager for more. In this session Erin and Chelsea will walk you through the process of intrinsically motivated learning and how you can create an environment that is aligned with your values to support learners in their personal journey of learning and connection

Marko Koskinen, 47yo, from Finland is the founder of Phoenix Online School, a K9 elementary homeschooling alternative for students in Finland. During years 2017-2019 Marko was a member of the Council of the European Democratic Education Community (EUDEC) and has been an active member of the Democratic Education community for over two decades.

Marko began his revolutionary education career as a student at the Helsinki University by initiating a student movement at the Helsinki University Education department demanding change in the teaching practices. The end result was a formation of a new kind of teacher education line, where the teacher students decide themselves about their curriculum. There are no tests and the evaluation is mostly based on peer evaluation and mentoring.

Marko has worked as a teacher in pre-primary, primary, secondary and adult education for 15 years. His experience has led him to affirm the many critiques towards the education system he already had when he moved from ITC to education field in his early twenties. The main critiques include age segregation, hierarchical governing system, evaluation systems based on rewards and punishments, pre-designed curriculum and the focus on academics instead of well-being.

In 2001 Marko participated in an internship program at a private K12 democratic alternative school, Sudbury Valley School, in MA, USA. This experience helped him start his own school in Finland in 2005. The Phoenix School was operational for three years. After the school closed down, during years 2009-2010 Marko travelled for four months in India and studied some Indian philosophers like Sri Aurobindo and Krishnamurti.

In 2010 Marko started working on the online school. As an ICT professional he was able to combine Information Technology with education and in 2011 the Phoenix Online School was officially released. 

The aim of the online school was to allow easy access to homeschooling. During his years as a teacher in public education sector, Marko had seen in practice the many problems of the education system. Even though the Finnish education system is considered to be one of the best in the world, it still has most of the same structures as other education systems and suffers the same problems stated above. With the online school Marko wanted to create a system that would put the student in the center of his/her own studies and give the student and the family as much freedom as possible while still fulfilling the mandatory national curriculum. The solution was to abolish all study content and give the student only questions and tasks. The student was free to decide how to study, when to study, with whom to study and due to the flexibility of the system, also in a great degree, what to study.

The Phoenix Online School has been now running for ten years and at the moment has about 90 students, which is about 20% of the homeschoolers in Finland. The online platform has also been successfully tested in regular classroom settings inside Finnish and Spanish public schools.

My name is Margo Bruins, I am Born in the Netherlands and I see myself as a world citizen.

I created a democratic school together with other people in 2003.

I work as a staff member at democratic school DeRuimte Soest.

I discovered years ago that I am free and capable to change the world. And my domain is to do it through educating youngsters.

In the Netherlands almost all of the democratic schools work with the consent methode.

That is a way of democratic decision making without stride, without discussion, or trying to convince other people.

It is a method of using each other's mindsets, to get better, richer proposals and decisions that everybody wants. 

I would like to inspire people to be bold and believe in the change we all can make. Little or big:)

I also want to explain in the video conference how decision making by consent-method works in our school and what it does in creating world peace.

Jean Lomino holds a Ph.D. in Leadership with an emphasis in Environmental Education. She was a classroom teacher for 20 years, and since 2000 she has been an adjunct professor for a Master’s Degree program in Outdoor Teacher Education. Jean served as Executive Director of Reflection Riding Arboretum and Nature Center in Chattanooga TN from 2005-2013. In 2015 she co-founded Wauhatchie School, the first forest kindergarten in the state of Tennessee which in the past five years has grown to include four forest school sites in the Chattanooga area with an enrollment of 160 students. Jean is also founder and lead trainer of the Forest School Teacher Institute and has trained over 200 forest school teachers from the US, Canada, China, Korea and South Africa, including two months working with teachers at No Boundaries Forest Kindergarten in Guangzhou, China.  In 2018 she collaborated with Dr. Jiyoun Shin, Vice-Chair of the Korean Forest Kindergarten Association, to conduct research concerning Character Development in Forest Kindergarten. Jean presented at the International Symposium of Forest Kindergartens in Seoul, South Korea in 2019 and continues to be a speaker/advocate for forest school throughout the US.  

Over the past 40 years as a classroom teacher, outdoor educator, college professor, nature center director, teacher trainer, and a forest school founder and director, Jean has gained a unique perspective about how children develop a connection with nature. By observing thousands of children in their nature explorations, she has come to believe that a friendship with nature is developed through several distinct behaviors. She recently wrote an article explaining this process and how the pandemic has created an opportunity for nature-based education to become a worldwide movement.  She believes that today’s children have been the most nature-deprived generation in human history, spending much of their lives confined within walls, eyes locked on screens in temperature-controlled, cushioned, artificial environments, insulated from the natural world. Their well-being has been compromised with staggering results, including serious physical, emotional, social and cognitive disorders. Time spent in nature helps children understand the world as large and complex, but also abundant with interconnections. Learning and playing in nature leads to a kinship with the natural world which then grows into love for the earth and an instinctive desire to care for it.  Jean believes that these experiences in nature represent the greatest hope for the future health of planet Earth, because today’s children will become its stewards through the rest of the 21st century. 

Jean’s current projects include working with public schools to implement nature-immersion experiences for all grade levels, developing a network of neighbourhood forest schools, and writing a guidebook to help teachers, parents and other caregivers provide experiences that will help children develop deep friendships with the earth.

Kevin Fullbrook is the Deputy Director at Al-Bayan Bilingual School, Kuwait. Having started his career as a Math and Physical Education teacher in a remote Australian school, he then worked at a range of schools across the country, before serving in leadership positions throughout Australia, China, and the Middle East. Having participated in the Think Tank on Global Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2016, Kevin then went on to be named one of 'The Educator' magazines Rising Stars of Education under 40 years old.

Kevin is passionate about fostering innovation and creativity in education. He is the country lead innovation ambassador in Kuwait for the HundrED project out of Finland, a not for profit organization that seeks out and shares outstanding educational innovation around the globe. He is also a member of the LearnLife network alliance. He has a Bachelor of Applied Science, Bachelor of Education, and an MBA, and is a fully qualified Justice of the Peace.

Nuwan Dissanayaka is a renowned educationist in the field of innovative education. By profession he is a teacher as well as school administrator. His teaching and learning concept "Feel and Learn" got recognized as the best educational research at The World Conference on Education 2017. He is the one who introduced the concept of "Most Innovative Teacher" Award for Sri Lanka, which was then replicated by many schools around the country as well as around the world. Moreover, He is the founder of "A Sri Lankan Dreams" an independent education movement which organizes workshops around the country catering both students and teachers with international standards. For these initiatives he was awarded with Gold award for Service of Excellence in Sri Lanka for year 2019.  

Mr. Dissanayaka is also the founder of "VOICE" concept which is an international event where students around the world are given an opportunity to raise their voice directly to education policy makers in order to create a Democratic environment in the field of education. Moreover, He is the founder of the Sri Lankan Democratic Education movement. For these initiatives he was awarded with "Global Teacher Award" in 2019. When it comes to the field of educational administration he works as a lecturer of Education at a Governmental Institute as well as he provides educational consultancy services for many leading school networks around the country as well as around the world.  Furthermore, In 2020 he introduced "CHEMPLAY" product series which will cater activity based learning within the classroom and it was recognized at GESS education awards for best initiative for inclusion and wellbeing. Moreover, He is the author of "Educate The Child To Make Tomorrow Brighter Than Today"

Shri Jyotinivas Kumar Sinha was born on 16th of July, 1945. He did his schooling from St. Xavier’s School, Patna. Thereafter, he joined St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, in 1961 and graduated with History (Honours) in 1964. He did Masters in History from the Delhi University in 1966 and joined the Indian Police Service in 1967. He was allotted the Bihar Cadre but served in his home state for a very short period and went on deputation to the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India in 1971. During his service with the Cabinet Secretariat he served in India and abroad with great distinction. He was awarded the ‘Indian Police Medal’ for meritorious service in 1987 and the ‘Sarvottam Seva Suraksha Patra’ for distinguished service in 2000. He retired as Special Secretary in 2005.

Some photographs of the life and activities at the school are attached.  Shoshit Seva Sangh has a very elaborate website and the address is www.sssfoundation.org.

Founder : Abheek ; Centre for Experiential Learning

From humble beginnings, to exploration with a desire to excel!!

I am Indraa Raju, from Bengaluru, South India. A journey of a young girl to becoming an entrepreneur in the field of education, is my path of learning. An avid follower of Swami Vivekananda , my philosophies to life grounded me to connect with nature , Indian traditions and learnings.

My journey with my elder daughter (Trupthi) showed me great disparity in the education system which helped me to explore opportunities for my experiences to float newer learning and unlearning past systems. In my search towards holistic education, I experienced various avenues, met great educators and personalities who guided me to become an entrepreneur. The early part of my journey as a trainer and facilitator took me to the challenge of protecting and nurturing the goodness and innocence in children, making headway to the growing demands of the contemporary world.

My dream found its ground when I began my start up a of play school named “Nurture”, for my son (second child ) ,creating a place for joy and learning . My son became the inspiration in bringing about a change to the outlook towards the education system and I grew as a mature human , understanding the philosophies and building deeper connect to the human kind . My deep explorations and engagements with alternative forms of schooling have now manifested as Abheek - an ever-evolving space that invites students, educators and parents to participate in the act of living, learning and sharing. Abheek enters tenth year of a joyful space of learning this year.

My love for learning, theatrical presentations, accepting and developing changes, engagement with individuals , all brought out to create a community with a deep concern for growth. My enthusiasm never stops to identify varied discoveries, accepting newer theories and meeting prolific leaders in this venture. My dream is to build this space , expand to all areas and create a role model ,bringing more children to learn joyfully. Being the enthusiastic Captain of Abheek , I wish to create a space not just for students, but parents and educators and find a strong ground to build a space of human kind to explore and live in harmony.