LWF11 - Stephen Heppell

Stephen Heppell

Stephen Heppell talked about when he first started teaching. He told a class that he knew about economics but didn't know about teaching. He said that he'd get them through the exam but wanted them to tell him how to teach - to watch other teachers and tell him what they did. They said about one of the techers: "We don't know what she's got. It's like a force field. When you get near her you have to behave. We don't know what she's doing yet but we'll work it out!"

Planet Read - Subtitling Bollywood Movies in the language of the film and people learn to read. Superclasses - classes of 60 plus. It is counter intuitive but superclasses work. We need to try everything! Even the things that we don't think will work.

People plus technology breaks cartels - the music industry knows this, the film industry knows this... education cartels will be broken by technology. But people plus technology pushes the margins - and sometimes things break. We cannot prepare children for everything - we need to prepare them to be able to cope with surprises.

The world is broken but we can mend it with education.