World School
Part of our purpose at St Paul’s School is to prepare Global Citizens. Another aspect is to support the development of every child’s thinking skills. Being able to think, and then collaborate with others will help solve some of the immense issues our globe currently faces.
This week we welcomed delegates from the 22 member schools for the Annual World School Forum. They are looking at the issues of water and food security. These are complex problems, and ones for which there are not simple solutions.
When I spoke to the Forum, I said that we have a super computer to solve these problems. Super computers are simply a network of single computers. When networked, you vastly increase the computational power and ability, far exceeding what a single computer can do.
With 64 students from 22 countries, we effectively have a super computer: a group of people with all sorts of perspectives on the same issues working together to create solutions. We will only solve the world’s issues if we have the ability to think, to build relationships and collaborate. This is why our Realms are so important (teaching students to be creative, to innovate and be entrepreneurs).
Being the hosts, we have designed the program for World School. Using the Design Thinking Realm and a scenario to provoke understandings and preconceived notions, the students are working away on various prototypes. St Paul’s is sharing its unique approaches to teaching with each of the member schools and they are incredibly excited by our methods and how it enriches learning.
If you would like to see what is happening, feel free to drop into St Paul’s during the course of next week. The students will be working in the Walker Centre, with the closing ceremony next Friday afternoon. Perhaps you might like to bring your son/daughter along to see what ideas have been generated.
Dr Paul Browning – Headmaster
