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We are Capacity-Builders
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
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
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
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 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
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”.

See our principles

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.

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THE CGC BLOG

IN/AN
IN/AN

In an earlier post I mentioned an initial degree in philosophy. I then went on to a one-year post-graduate certificate in education (not counting the hippie years, overland to India, that kind of early 70s stuff). In my PGCE year, I learned two things:

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IF/THEN
IF/THEN

IF all learners learn differently THEN we should provide the systems for them all to be successful SO we should develop schools as inclusive cultures.

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DIVERGENT EVOLUTION
DIVERGENT EVOLUTION

'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'.

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COUNTERNATURE
COUNTERNATURE

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. 

 

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