Focusing on Values Over Academics
“It doesn’t matter what they become. I tell them every single day, ‘I don’t care what you become—it’s who you become and what you’re going to do with that light inside of you.’” —Teacher at a SPARK School in South Africa
Giving Students Real Power
“It works because we give the students the whole responsibility. . . . Trust is the foundation of high expectations.” —Principal at Unterstrass Comprehensive School in Switzerland
Most schools don’t do anything as drastic as leaving students fully in charge, but every excellent school I have visited understood that helping students develop responsibility means giving them the power they must be responsible for. At Riverside in India, it means using design thinking to create initiatives for the school and outside communities.
All of the top-ranked schools I visited were different. They were all rooted in their local contexts and informed by the unique personalities of their leadership. But I was truly amazed at how consistently the three practices above reappeared over and over, even in the most distant corners of the world. Together they come down to a belief in people and a belief that education is about experiences as much as content.
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