Joanne Mcpike [00:00:00]:
Yeah, we have 30 kids from 21 different countries. Right? And they learn as much from one another as they do from the country that they’re in.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:11]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:14]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:17]:
This is the fueling creativity and education podcast.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:21]:
On this show, we’ll be talking about creativity topics and how they apply to the field of education.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:26]:
We’ll be speaking with scholars, educators and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and digging deeper into new and varying perspectives of creativity.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:36]:
All with the goal to help fuel the more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers and parents with knowledge they can use at home or in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:44]:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:47]:
Welcome to another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And today we welcome Joanne McPite to our show. Joanne is the founder of Think Global School, which is a truly global learning environment built on the foundation of empathy, diversity, resilience and self reflection. Joanne has dedicated her life to pursuing her passion for world travel. She grew up in New Zealand and developed a desire to explore the world at a young age. To date, Joanne has traveled to over 73 countries, which has helped her develop a rare perspective on the multicultural aspects of our global society. As a photographer, she has worked to capture the diverse layers of meaning inherent in a given snapshot of life and published a book on her photography titled think in 2008. Joanne, welcome to the show.

Joanne Mcpike [00:01:36]:
Thank you very much. It’s wonderful to be here with you both.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:40]:
Now, Joanne, Cindy and I have had the opportunity to explore your school on your website. We think it is absolutely amazing or a little bit envious that we didn’t have an opportunity to join the school when we were young. But for our listeners, we wondered if you could tell us a little bit about the think global school and also how it came about.

Joanne Mcpike [00:01:58]:
Sure. It’s funny you say that because I always say I started a school that I would have wanted to go to when I was a teenager that wasn’t around. So think global school is a traveling boarding school, nomadic boarding school. For the last three years of high school, we travel to four countries a year for three years. The children get to experience twelve different cultures, get twelve different perspectives on life. We are a project based learning school. We are student led, student centered. Our students are in charge of their own learning with, of course, our help and guidance.

Joanne Mcpike [00:02:42]:
But we allow them to follow their own curiosity and creativity. And it came about because we traveled a lot when my son was young and by the time he was 13, he’d been to over 72 countries and we saw the benefits that travel had as we moved around the world. We took him out of school. We put him back in school when we were back in the Bahamas. And so when it came time to go to high school, we kind of looked around the world to see what kind of school we wanted to send him to. And if you go to school in America, you learn to think like an American. If you go to school in France, you learn to think like the French, or in Italy, like the Italians. And we wanted him to carry on having sort of this global perspective that we’d be given him when he was young.

Joanne Mcpike [00:03:37]:
And so we were at dinner one night, and I said to my husband at the time, I said, why don’t we just get a boat and sail around the world with a tutor and teach him as we go? And he said, that would be really boring for him. He said it’d be more fun if it were a bunch of kids. And I said, okay, fine, I’m going to find a bunch of kids and some teachers, and we’re going to travel around the world, and we’re going to learn as we go. And he looked at me and said, you’re nuts. Nobody is going to send their child to a school like that. No teacher would want to teach. And I said, yes, they will. Yes, they will.

Joanne Mcpike [00:04:11]:
And I set about finding 15 very brave children and 30 very brave parents who entrusted me with their 1415 year olds. And we started in Stockholm, Sweden. I think it’s almost 13 years ago, and we’ve been going ever since. And it has been a ride. It has definitely been a journey of learning for us as well, because it had never been done before. And it really is like a military operation moving, at this point, 60 hormonal teenagers around the world. But it is, I think, one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done in my life, other than raise my own child.

Cyndi Burnett [00:04:56]:
So you’ve been doing this for 13 years now. And how many students have gone through the program?

Joanne Mcpike [00:05:02]:
I’d probably say a couple of hundred have gone through.

Matthew Worwood [00:05:05]:
I’m just trying to keep thinking about the structure. So it’s probably cohort based. Is it different cohorts per semester, or is it cohorts throughout the year? And when do they typically start?

Joanne Mcpike [00:05:20]:
We have two cohorts of 30 kids. Our semester system is seven weeks on, five weeks off. So the children are in country for seven weeks, then they’re at home for five weeks. So I tell the parents, just when you’re getting sick of them, they go away. Just when you miss them, they come back again. We don’t have the long summer break that most school systems have. They just have that five weeks, and then they’re back again in July. And then the teachers travel with the students, and they’re housed in different places in different countries, depending on where we are.

Joanne Mcpike [00:06:00]:
It could be the floor of a small hotel. It could be apartments that we find or a boarding school that we partner up with and the same know classroom space. Could be a coffee shop in. Could be. I think one of my favorite lessons ever was on Boston Common. Our english teacher did an english lesson on Boston Common where they drew on the pavement and chalk and interacted with people who were passing by, moms pushing strollers, and people out jogging. When you learn in an unconventional way like that, the learning sticks because the memory is stronger. It feels more powerful when you’re not sitting in front of a blackboard.

Cyndi Burnett [00:06:52]:
So what kind of students does it attract? And I would say families as well, because obviously the parents have to buy into this first and then the students. So what kind of students do you attract?

Joanne Mcpike [00:07:04]:
Well, actually, it’s the students that find us, and it’s the student that has to apply, not the parent. And what does the TGS student look like? Curious, creative, adaptable, resilient, caring, intelligent, fun, enthusiastic. They want to be there. They’re not there because they have to come. They come because they want to. They want to take charge of their own education. They want to see what’s different out there.

Matthew Worwood [00:07:37]:
We have in the show, touched on the idea of shifting perspectives many times, I think, probably for our listeners, Janine Letford spokes a lot around this idea of shifting perspectives and intercultural creativity. And I think that one, as we think about many of the challenges that we’re facing are global challenges that require cooperation and interaction with people from other cultures. It strikes me that it’s more important than ever before that we don’t just teach students to think like an American or think like an Italian. So I’m just wondering, could you tell us a little bit about the changes that you see in your cohorts as they progress? And I’m interested to see whether or not those changes occur quite quickly or do they occur over time?

Joanne Mcpike [00:08:30]:
They occur very quickly. I mean, kids, they’re so curious. And let’s say one cohort in particular. We have children. We have students from. We have 30 kids from 21 different countries, right? And they learn as much from one another as they do from the country that they’re in. It leaves a lasting impact. I remember I think it was in our second year, we had a lovely young man jawed from Afghanistan.

Joanne Mcpike [00:09:03]:
The day he left Ecuador, there was an explosion in Kabul, in the market. And when he got back for the next semester, he sat with all of our kids around a bonfire and was telling them how afraid he was that when he got to Kapoor, he didn’t know if anybody was going to be at the airport to pick him up. Now, that brings what’s going on in Afghanistan into your life in a way that you feel it. It has an impact. You’ll never look at Afghanistan or the news or anything ever again because you know, somebody who is personally affected by, and, you know, they learn so much from one another’s cultures and perspectives, and you can sit around a dinner table and have a conversation on, I don’t know, death, for instance. Right. What are the traditions in your country? How do you feel about it? Those kind of conversations you don’t normally have in life? Normally, not just in school.

Matthew Worwood [00:10:15]:
I connect to this a little bit. Nothing to the level that you’re talking about, Joanne, but I didn’t get on a plane until I was 18. But then the first place I went was to Australia. Then that sparked an interest in travels. But I also cherished opportunities later in my life where my boys have now visited southern Italy. And the reason why I bring southern Italy up is because you don’t necessarily think like an american, per se. It’s a very small community. You work to live.

Matthew Worwood [00:10:45]:
The whole mentality of it’s all about you working as hard as you can to earn as much money as you can in order to obtain wealth and power, right? And then you measure your success on wealth and power. That doesn’t seem to exist in southern Italy. And all of the supermarkets closed between eleven and two. And the supermarket workers would sit out and just have lunch and you saw them giggling and laughing. The families would have their dinner late, and after their dinner they would have a coffee and then go and walk the town at 09:00 p.m. At night. And they’re just interacting and smiling. The shops, no one’s working 24 hours a day.

Matthew Worwood [00:11:25]:
The coffee, the local bread shop, they’re making enough bread to sell for the day. Their profit margin seems focused on making enough to live. It’s not about growing and franchising. Their bread shop, for example. And the reason why I bring this up, one of the affordances that we’ve been able to give to our children is exposing them to other cultures. So I don’t know if they would ever have an opportunity to go to a think global school? But just exposing them to other cultures, exposing them to discussions, has opened up their view on life to such an extent that I don’t think they necessarily think like an american. They don’t think like a british person. They don’t think like an Italian.

Matthew Worwood [00:12:08]:
They kind of, like, just think. I think they think in a different way. And I’ve already noticed that just from the little bit of traveling that we’ve done.

Joanne Mcpike [00:12:17]:
Yeah. I mean, what you’ve done is you’ve opened their minds. Right. And once a mind is open, they’re allowed to fly free. Exposing them to a culture like that of southern Italy, where the stores close at lunchtime and people are sitting around laughing and smiling also helps redefine what success is for them. Right. And what happiness is for them. Right.

Joanne Mcpike [00:12:45]:
What is happiness? Is happiness really that big house and that big plane and the big car and all the money in the bank? Or is happiness really a sense of community, knowing that you’re valued within the community that you’re in, that you take enjoyment and are appreciated for the bread that you bake every day? And a book just came out that the Harvard study. I’m sure that you’ve seen it, the results of that. I think it was an 80 year long study into what makes people happy is exactly that, that sense of connection to other people. Right. That is the biggest marker of a happy life, is that connection.

Cyndi Burnett [00:13:35]:
And I love the connection of bringing not only students to other countries, but bringing students together that are diverse. So you mentioned 21 different countries and 30 students, which is unbelievable to me. I mean, that in itself is a gift to give students that opportunity to learn with people from different cultures. I’m really curious from a curriculum standpoint. So can you take us through an example of you taking a group of students to a country and the kinds of things that you do there?

Joanne Mcpike [00:14:09]:
So it’s PBL. It’s project based learning. The students have a personal project that they work on, and then they also have a teacher led, educator led project that they work on. They have process portfolios that they work through. They have rubrics that they follow. They set learning targets. One of the most interesting things is because we don’t do exams. When you have a student arrive and you tell them that, well, we don’t do exams, and they’re like, well, hang on.

Joanne Mcpike [00:14:44]:
If you don’t do exams, how do we know where we stand in class? And you’re like, well, it doesn’t matter where you stand in class. What matters is where you stand in six months compared to where you are now. So we’ll do an assessment. Now. You set a learning target, and then at the end of six months, you sit down there with the educators and you decide whether or not you’ve reached that target or not. And then you reassess, right? And so they’re learning. And then, of course, the modules that they do are based on the country that they’re in, depending on. I don’t know.

Joanne Mcpike [00:15:22]:
Every country has different modules, and it’s all based on their own curiosity and their own creativity. I mean, my goodness. I mean, we know every single human being is born curious, is born creative, and has born with a sense of determination. It’s funny, I had somebody question me that on once, and they said, well, what do you mean determination? And I said, have you ever tried to take the spoon out of a one year old’s hand when they are feeding themselves? They are not going to let that go. Have you ever stood behind a child who’s walking, learning to walk, and they fall down and they get up again? This is built into us. This is an innate part of our beingness. And then you go to school and they start teaching it out of you.

Matthew Worwood [00:16:21]:
You had mentioned community. When I’ve done some reading around comparative education, it talks a little bit about western education, quite often gets us to think as individuals, whereas other parts of the world it is about success being as a community and you participating in that community. So I’m just curious, when you’re talking about project based learning, to what extent do those projects connect with the community that either exists in the cohort or connects with the community that exists wherever they’re located, when they’re engaging in that.

Joanne Mcpike [00:16:55]:
Project, both we make it a point that they connect with the community that they’re in. In some of the projects that they do. Also within the cohorts, within the groups themselves, they work together on things, right. The level of mastery. When you want to get to that level of mastery, you have to be able to teach what you’ve learned to someone else, right? So there’s a lot of intertwining in what they do. It’s funny when you spoke about how in America or even in probably the UK and Australia and New Zealand, there is a big push to individuality and personalized learning. And I have no problem with individuality and personalized learning because I think that we all learn very, very different and we all learn our own way. But that doesn’t mean that it’s all about me and I.

Joanne Mcpike [00:18:02]:
The importance of learning about who I am fits hand in hand with the importance of learning with how I fit within a community. And you need both of those. We need people who know who they are at a really deep level with such humility that they can function within their communities as valid and respected and important members, which in reality, at the bottom of everything, is all we ever want, right? Deep down, all we ever want is to belong, belong to somewhere and know that we matter and that people care about us and that we care about others.

Cyndi Burnett [00:18:51]:
Joanne, I have a high schooler myself. He’s a freshman in high school. And I think about him going off and I think it would just be such an amazing experience to be able to sort of find himself as well, sort of in this, quote, boarding school environment with other students from different cultures. And I think you’re right. It’s such a time. This high school time is such an amazing time to actually try to uncover who you are and who you want to be before you go off to college. I mean, I think for most people, I’ll speak on behalf of myself. I probably didn’t find that until my 30s.

Cyndi Burnett [00:19:26]:
But to give students this opportunity to really expose yourself to so many different things and to say this really rings true for me and this is something that is important to me and this is who I want to be is just so, so lovely. And it just gives me goosebumps when I think about the opportunities that these students have and being able to experience different cultures. I’m really curious now that it’s been 13 years, what are those graduates who have been through this program? What are they doing now? What do they think? How has this program impacted them?

Joanne Mcpike [00:19:59]:
Oh, they’re doing all sorts of things. Our first couple of classes have already graduated from university. If they went or whatever higher learning they decided to go to, they’re definitely out there in the world. And they definitely remark back the impact that being at think global school has had on them, the friendships that they’ve made that are going to last a lifetime, a shared experience that they’ve had. We didn’t start off with a PBL curriculum. We were an IB school to begin with. And I think in about our fourth year, the students sat me down, I still remember this in India, and sat me down in the middle of a circle and they said, joe, this isn’t working. TGS is not an IB school that travels and it shouldn’t be like this.

Joanne Mcpike [00:20:52]:
And I said, I know. And so I went to the board and I said, okay, we either find someone who can help change the school to be a PBL, to do project based learning, or I’m closing the school because this isn’t what it’s know. And I’ve got nothing really against the IB program. It’s a great program, but it doesn’t fuel creativity, which is exactly what your podcast is. Know how. When you have to sit and do rote learning and pass exams and have the stress of all of this, how have you got space for being creative, right? How are you going to learn about how to be in the world? Okay? To me, everybody is creative. Everybody is born that way. You go to primary school, it’s still there.

Joanne Mcpike [00:21:54]:
And then you’re told that you have to memorize certain facts and it all becomes about memorization. And creativity isn’t an intellectual process for me. Right. Creativity is feeling first, and we have to teach children how to trust those feelings. There are a lot of things that we do need to learn, regular curriculum stuff. It’s the building blocks for helping us sort of help our ideas and our creativity evolve. School in the past has been a place where, in my opinion, a lot of creativity goes to die, right? To be buried under the weight of comparisons, under standardization, under averages, right? It’s all rules and rigor, and it’s where you begin to feel like you’re not good enough. For me, the basic curriculum should be the building blocks to support your curiosity and your creativity.

Joanne Mcpike [00:23:00]:
It’s the scaffold, right? I think that every student should learn basic entrepreneurial skills, right? Because we’re all entrepreneurs of our own lives. I think that a lot of people feel that as a creative, I don’t need to learn math, but we all need to be financially literate to be able to run our lives.

Matthew Worwood [00:23:24]:
How does the experience that you offer develop those skills or values differently than an advocate of the traditional education system might say at think global school?

Joanne Mcpike [00:23:35]:
We believe in our students and we trust them. We trust that they want to learn and we trust in their curiosity, right. Educators should believe in their students. They should trust them. Right. We ask them, what is it that you want to learn? How often do kids get asked what they want to learn? A lot of people say, well, how can we do what you do in the classroom when we’re place based? And I say, well, first of all, take them out of the classroom as often as you can. And secondly, ask them what they’re curious about. Take an hour a day or a day a week and let their curiosity guide their learning.

Joanne Mcpike [00:24:27]:
Right. Ask them to answer their own questions, ask them to answer how they think they could find the answers or even deeper questions. And of course that’s going to look different for different age groups. But how often do kids ever get asked, what do you care about? What do you want to learn about? Right? And that’s what we do. And we trust them to connect what.

Matthew Worwood [00:24:54]:
You’Ve said there to other things that you’ve said in the interview. There is an opportunity to ignite new curiosities because of the new experiences that you’re offering. And we have to be open and say that what you’re offering is going to be difficult, I think, to model universally for every student. But I think you started to say some things that an everyday classroom teacher could do. Get them out the classroom. We’re starting to see a decrease in field trips. Maybe it’s important that we see an increase in field trips. I heard what you was talking about, connections.

Matthew Worwood [00:25:31]:
We spoke about the idea of creativity and shifting perspectives, but we also know creativity is about making connections in making connections with other people. I used to love having a pen pal, but I kind of feel that the whole concept around pen pals has kind of disappeared. And what’s so weird is the fact that there’s probably more opportunities and more programs for teachers to actually pursue pen pals, or at least that model than there ever has before. The study abroad programs for students in higher education and then just making sure you as a parent, where there’s an opportunity to interact with people from different cultures, different kind of festive celebrations that might be happening in your community to take advantage of that. So making connections between how you see the world, how you live your value system, and looking at opportunities to expose your children to other views and perspectives that may actually exist in your community, or if you’re a teacher, may actually exist through programs that you can bring into your classroom environment are ways that I think we can begin to start moving in the direction of what your school offers.

Joanne Mcpike [00:26:43]:
Yeah. And when Covid happened, we thought, oh, gosh, now we have to send all the children home. We can’t travel. How are we going to do this? It was nothing. Our kids immediately switched to online learning. We already had online set up anyway for students who. One of the biggest challenges we face is getting students visas into certain countries. You’re like, they’re a kid, they’re 16, come on.

Joanne Mcpike [00:27:10]:
So we have an online part of tgs set up already. And the kids switched to online learning really fast, but the connections were still made even over Zoom. It wasn’t our preferred way of doing it. But by the time they did get to meet up, they all knew one another. They already had a history and stories and everything. You can bring up a lot of excuses of why you can’t do a lot of things. A lot of the problem is that we’re really quite stuck in fear at the moment. You said class trips or field trips, as you called them, have gone down, right? Parents probably don’t want their children going out into certain places where they think they’re in danger or they’re afraid.

Joanne Mcpike [00:28:03]:
There is a severe lack of tolerance. There is a lack of, and it’s not just in America, it’s all over the place, right? The fear of immigrants, this pulling apart of the world instead of this coming together and finding the things that we have in common rather than how we’re different. And school should be the absolute center of a community where every single religion, every single culture, everything is celebrated and learned from. But in fact, it feels like it’s just getting more and more and more divisive and pulled apart. And that makes me really sad to see.

Cyndi Burnett [00:28:59]:
So, Joanne, we wrap up every show with three tips you would provide to educators to bring creativity into the classroom. So based on your experiences in the think global school, we’d love to hear what your three tips are.

Joanne Mcpike [00:29:13]:
Asking them, what they’re curious about will spark the creativity. I think that mindset is really important. I think that understanding that creativity lies in each one of us and that our job as adults, our job as educators, is to support that in children and to let children know that we really, truly, honestly believe in them because their creativity is their power. It’s where their energy lies.

Cyndi Burnett [00:29:56]:
Well, Joanne, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your experiences with us. If people are interested in the school, we will post a link to the website in our show notes below. Joanne, if there’s an educator, I’ve already had an educator. I was talking to you about this yesterday. If an educator is listening, how can they get involved in teaching at this school?

Joanne Mcpike [00:30:17]:
We have an application process for teachers, just as we do for students. So there will be the link on the website where they can apply and we love it.

Cyndi Burnett [00:30:29]:
Fantastic. So we’ll put those links in the show notes below. So this concludes this episode of the feeling Creativity and Education podcast. As a reminder, new to season six are episodes where Matt and I discuss open questions on the topic of creativity and education. And we look to you, our listeners, to identify important topics that you would like to hear discussed on the show. So if you have a question related to creativity and education, or perhaps a question related to this episode or past or future episodes, then remember to email us at questions@feelingcreativitypodcast.com my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:31:04]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Warwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:31:06]:
This episode was produced by Creativity and education in partnership with warwoodclassroom.com. Our editor is Sina Eustace Day.