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The Common Ground Collaborative (CGC) is a non- profit organization headquartered in the USA, with Regional Offices in Europe and Latin America. The CGC has grown in impact and influence since our founding in 2014. Our members include international and national schools, both independent and public.
We work with everyone from new schools in Quito to well-established independent schools in Toronto. We work in public school districts in the USA and in public ‘experimental schools’ in China. We work with partners, both nonprofit and for-profit, to reach thousands of learners currently mired in learning poverty.
Our primary process is conversation. When schools join the CGC, they do not adopt a fixed programme, they join a conversation. Together we puzzle out what is best for the school, or other organization, co-creating customized models in context, using the CGC’s acquired experience and practical models.
Our theories are built backwards from decades of experience in leading, teaching and learning in multiple contexts and cultures and yet are rooted in decades of research and acquired wisdom drawn from the rich well of progressive, constructivist education.
We hope that you will find our work interesting, and perhaps intriguing enough for you to contact us with a view to joining our global conversation.
NEWS & UPDATES
Join us this summer in Panama City, Panama
Our Leadership Summit and Two New Certificated CGC Summer Courses.
Leadership Summit
June 14-15
Why Lead? Workshop
July 17-22
Why Teach? Workshop
July 22-27
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Upcoming Events
July 14-15, 2022
July 17-22, 2022
July 22-27, 2022
THE CGC BLOG
When we take on leadership positions, especially early in our careers, we may think that we're supposed to have 'all the answers'. We can't. It's really that simple...and the reassuring thing is that always having the answers is not that important.
I recently participated in a constructive conversation about the benefits of putting some 'breathing space' between consecutive meetings for adults, to allow a little processing and prepping time. Seemed like a perfectly sensible idea, and still does.
How the intentional process of naming helps us overcome barriers to inclusion…
“S/he was filled with a sense of nameless dread….”. There’s a reason for that horror story cliche. The amorphous, unformed anxiety has more power to paralyze us than the known and explicit.
The CGC has developed a genuine learning continuum, from toddler through grade twelve. It is framed by the seamless connecting elements of a shared definition of the learning process that drives a shared teaching process.
The CGC is drawing a line under broken models of schooling. We’re replacing rhetoric with reality via radical simplicity. Here are our Guiding Principles...
I just had the pleasure and privilege of working with the faculty and staff of a fine school in Central America, Academia Interamericana de Panama (AIP). We were together for a full day, as the first introduction of the CGC Learning Ecosystem to the school. When I say ‘we’, I mean a fully inclusive ‘we’. Not ‘just’ the teachers and assistant/co-teachers, but all employees: HR, maintenance, catering, the tech team…everybody. (Parents and learners join the process later).