Today I have the honour to bring to you Natalie Nelson. Natalie is the principal at Ashburton primary school. Her school never received much money since the 1920’s and were therefore entitled for a redevelopment. Natalie’s school received a big cheque which enabled her to bring the school to the next level of education.
Natalie tells her story of how she started on a journey to transform the school to a place of future education. Her approach is quite different to many others. She calls it design from the inside out. I give you an example what that means: After coming up with key principles what school should be about, they asked the children to create their new future school. You will learn why Ashburton primary has floor to ceiling windows or different learning areas for different students.
We talk about what it means to grow up in our complex world of today. What skills the kids need to learn which (by the way) are far beyond reading, writing and maths. Kids today need to learn how to keep their energy level in balance, how they can relax their mind and how to deal with complex problems in general. Those skills become much more valuable in the future. Today’s schools focus on deep thinking techniques because it is necessary for real creative work. You can outsource the process of writing but you can’t outsource the creativity. Through that we talk about the three levels of thinking and how to get down to the core thinking where the creative magic happens.
I think we all can do something about the future of our kid’s in the way they learn and even further in the way we all work together in our modern world. The insights from Ashburton primary school are not limited to school education at all, they are applicable to the way we work together in our offices as well.
So while you listen to this podcast think about who else would be inspired by the story and pass the ball on so that more people get in contact with the future of education. I hope you enjoy this episode with Natalie Nelson, principle at Ashburton primary school.
Finally, if the interview inspired you to improve your own creativity and visual thinking skills then you are welcome to come around to one of the bikablo® trainings. If you are in Europe jump over on bikablo.com and when you are in Australia or New Zealand have a look in the training section of my website and check out the training program there. Next one is coming up in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and depending on when you book there might still be an early bird available. So jump over onto the website and book your next career step as a visual leader. Thanks again for listening – See you next time.
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
