How I First Heard The Term I came across the phrase "adaptive teaching" while completing the assessment-only route to QTS earlier this year. In my first meeting with an assessor from the provider — an interview that followed their audit of my practice — I raised the idea of differentiation, which I'd always understood to be a good, standard part of teaching. The assessor stopped me. Differentiation, she explained, isn't really a term (or an idea) that's looked upon well i

Every year, I start my Grade 10 Ancient History course with this question, and I never tell the students the answer. Instead, I hand them a stapler. Or a paperclip. Or a clipboard. Whatever happens to be lying around the classroom, really. The task is simple to explain and surprisingly hard to do: pick an object, describe it in as much detail as possible, and never once say what it is or what it's used for. No naming it. No explaining its function. Just size, shape, color,

I picked up Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team because I'm stepping into a new role next year as my school's PD coordinator, and I wanted to start building a small library of leadership reading before I'm responsible for actually managing anything. I didn't expect a book about a fictional Silicon Valley startup to make me think so hard about staff meetings, department culture, and why some school initiatives quietly die a year after they're rolled out. The F

I recently finished the book “Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-Creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations” by Sam Kean and REALLY enjoyed it! It made history feel human again. Too often, the ancient world is reduced to dates, kings, empires, and artifacts sitting silently behind museum glass. Dinner with King Tut does something very different. It recreates the physical reality of the past — what people ate, how they slept, how t

The classroom after the students leave — where much of the reflection, planning, and thinking behind teaching actually happens. In my last post, I shared that after than a decade of teaching internationally, I finally decided to formalise something I had already spent years doing professionally: becoming a licensed teacher through QTS. When I first started looking into the Assessment Only Route to QTS, I honestly did not fully know what to expect. I had read a few blog posts,

After more than a decade of teaching internationally, I finally decided to formalise something I had already spent years doing professionally: becoming a licensed teacher through QTS. For years, I’ve taught successfully without holding a formal government-issued teaching licence. I do hold a CELTA, but that is designed for ELT rather than mainstream school teaching. In many schools around the world, especially in the international sector, teachers can build strong careers w

One of the most challenging things to teach in history is not content—it’s thinking. How do we move students from simply seeing something to actually understanding what it tells us about the past? I designed a lesson for my Grade 10 Ancient History class on “What is a Civilization?” in an attempt to do this. Below is the lesson. Starting with a Simple Question Rather than beginning with definitions, I started with a task. Students were given a set of images showing differen

One of the ongoing challenges in teaching is finding the right balance between intellectual challenge and accessibility. This tension became particularly clear to me while teaching a lesson based on Jared Diamond’s The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race , an article that presents a provocative and evidence-rich critique of the Agricultural Revolution. The article is powerful, but it is also demanding. It contains dense academic language, unfamiliar disciplinary

I love reading. It’s one of the few activities that is deeply individual yet collaborative when shared through a book club. Over the years, I’ve started book clubs with friends and colleagues, and the experience has always been worthwhile — as long as the book is good and the members are committed. Earlier this year, while preparing for a professional development session I was to lead on AI in teaching, the idea resurfaced. I had bought a small selection of books to inform

A couple of Saturdays ago, I led a PD workshop for our teachers at AIAN on the theme of AI. The goal of the session was not to provide a list of tools or tips, but to start a meaningful conversation about how we, as educators, can use AI thoughtfully and creatively in our work. Before the workshop, I had reached out to staff to learn how they currently use AI. The responses were diverse—some teachers use AI for lesson planning and feedback, others for generating assessments o

As teachers in international schools, we know that many of our students are learning content and language at the same time. This is where...

One of the most rewarding parts of teaching is designing activities that help students make meaningful connections between the past and...

The website Our World in Data has a fantastic population cartogram that I printed out as a large poster and hung in my classroom. As a...

In today’s world, being able to interpret information presented in visual forms—such as graphs, charts, maps, and infographics—is a vital...

There’s no doubt that the development of farming was one of the most consequential moments in human history. It allowed for an...

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to lead a professional development session for 16 teachers at my school, Access International Academy...

My teaching philosophy is grounded in the belief that I should build positive relationships with my students. I try to do this through...

I asked AI to draw a globe with people, goods, and ideas flowing around it to show interconnectedness — and here’s what it gave...

In a previous post , I shared a lesson introducing students to the complex nature of geography and how it combines both physical and...

The 10-mark essay question in IB Geography HL Paper 2 is a crucial component of the exam, testing students’ ability to think critically,...