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We are Capacity-Builders
Schools are filled with limitless capacity for great learning, teaching and leading. We strip away complexity and turn silos into systems. We clear a path that leads ‘from good to great’, and we stay around for the journey. This is how we meet our mission: Everybody Learns.
We are Culture-Builders
Schools are learning cultures so we intentionally co-construct all the features of a great learning culture: a shared learning language, shared beliefs, values and norms, shared transfer goals, shared artifacts, shared celebrations of learning.
We are Curriculum-Builders
Learners need learning pathways so we co-create a seamless learning continuum for our times: clear Learning Goals embedded in compelling Learning Modules, connected in one coherent Learning Matrix.
We are Community-Builders
It’s only a culture if everyone owns it…so we work actively with the school’s leadership to reach all learning stakeholders: students, parents, teachers, Boards, to build ownership of your learning culture.
We are Context-Builders
We always co-create in context. We can also help to co-create the context: all the supporting systems that make a school. We are particularly experienced, for example, in supporting schools with their accreditation process, and creating strategic plans that synthesise the school's priorities with accreditation recommendations and CGC initiatives so that the school only has one plan, not multiple versions. We do love simplicity!
We are Principle-Driven
The Common Ground Collaborative is bonded together by a set of values that create a shared picture of the future of learning that is distinctly different from anything else “out there”.
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
See what's new at the CGC.
![Summer Programs]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1674650321/commongroundcollaborativeorg/xujjyn5paqmgr9dwktfd/Summer2023.png","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1674650321/commongroundcollaborativeorg/xujjyn5paqmgr9dwktfd/Summer2023.png","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_3/v1674650321/commongroundcollaborativeorg/xujjyn5paqmgr9dwktfd/Summer2023.png","width":800},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1674650321/commongroundcollaborativeorg/xujjyn5paqmgr9dwktfd/Summer2023.png","width":1000}])
Join us this summer in Panama City, Panama
Our Leadership Summit and Two New Certificated CGC Summer Courses.
Leadership Summit
July 14-15
Why Lead? Workshop
July 17-22
Why Teach? Workshop
July 22-27
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THE CGC BLOG
![THE AHA MOMENT AND THE HAHA MOMENT]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1688333892/commongroundcollaborativeorg/tzkbrwby3agcmhodpeog/TheAHAMomentandtheHAHAMoment.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1688333892/commongroundcollaborativeorg/tzkbrwby3agcmhodpeog/TheAHAMomentandtheHAHAMoment.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1688333892/commongroundcollaborativeorg/tzkbrwby3agcmhodpeog/TheAHAMomentandtheHAHAMoment.jpg","width":800}])
Edward de Bono suggested that humour is the highest form of intelligence. I laughed a lot when I read that.
One thing that's funny, although maybe 'funny peculiar', is that 'aha' and 'haha' are separated by one letter only.
![DIVERGENT EVOLUTION]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1688333757/commongroundcollaborativeorg/c74imywvawttkxbgygzk/DivergentEvolution.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1688333757/commongroundcollaborativeorg/c74imywvawttkxbgygzk/DivergentEvolution.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1688333757/commongroundcollaborativeorg/c74imywvawttkxbgygzk/DivergentEvolution.jpg","width":800}])
'When populations are geographically separated, they will diverge from one another, both in the way they look and genetically. These changes may occur by natural selection or by random chance (i.e., genetic drift), and in both cases result in reproductive isolation'.
![COUNTERNATURE]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1687421202/commongroundcollaborativeorg/iqbk6ot2unzmfwrczf7f/Counternature.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1687421202/commongroundcollaborativeorg/iqbk6ot2unzmfwrczf7f/Counternature.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1687421202/commongroundcollaborativeorg/iqbk6ot2unzmfwrczf7f/Counternature.jpg","width":800}])
We're Homo Sapiens. Distinguished by our large brains. Programmed to learn. It's in our nature, but, strangely, not in the nature of our schooling systems. Just a few examples: The nature of DIVERSITY, CONNECTIONS, CURIOSITY, and CONVERSATION.
![TRANSFORMATION THROUGH IMAGINATION]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1684331203/commongroundcollaborativeorg/esxetyr0f23rgnt8qfeg/Dreamstorm.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1684331203/commongroundcollaborativeorg/esxetyr0f23rgnt8qfeg/Dreamstorm.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1684331203/commongroundcollaborativeorg/esxetyr0f23rgnt8qfeg/Dreamstorm.jpg","width":800}])
A few years ago, I was hired to lead a fine, well-established school, with a brief to co-create something 'extraordinary'. Since the core purpose of schools is learning, I imagined that the road to extraordinary would lie in learning transformation, which I equated, at the time, with ' a new curriculum'.
![SCHOOLS AS CONVERSATIONS]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1683123563/commongroundcollaborativeorg/rbccynocshhm3zgv90aw/SchoolsasConversations.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1683123563/commongroundcollaborativeorg/rbccynocshhm3zgv90aw/SchoolsasConversations.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1683123563/commongroundcollaborativeorg/rbccynocshhm3zgv90aw/SchoolsasConversations.jpg","width":800}])
David Perkins' great book, 'King Arthur's Round Table' states that 'organizations ARE conversations'. Michael Fullan observes,' We are all sense-makers, and our best sense-making tool is conversation'. That statement highlights a long-standing if hidden, division in education...between those who see education as information-passing and those who see it as meaning-making.
![WHAT WOULD YOU FIGHT TO LEARN?]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1685450364/commongroundcollaborativeorg/s8aczqjeyyesuu18wf8c/Whatwouldyoufighttolearn.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1685450364/commongroundcollaborativeorg/s8aczqjeyyesuu18wf8c/Whatwouldyoufighttolearn.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_3/v1685450364/commongroundcollaborativeorg/s8aczqjeyyesuu18wf8c/Whatwouldyoufighttolearn.jpg","width":800},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1685450364/commongroundcollaborativeorg/s8aczqjeyyesuu18wf8c/Whatwouldyoufighttolearn.jpg","width":960}])
There are various forms of inquiry, including full-on 'open inquiry', where learners generate all their own questions. This post is not to push any single form. Dogma is unhelpful. In CGC, we provide 'Unpacking Inquiry', a handy guide to different forms of inquiry, graduated via degrees of learner independence.