The Series on Building Classroom and School Culture
Recently, I have finished a series on Building Classroom and School Culture and I wanted to ensure you could find them all in one place.
discover all three posts
What does it take to build a school where every student is willing to participate, take risks, and learn from mistakes?
In this three-part series, I challenge two cultures that quietly undermine learning—perfectionism and opting out—and I make the case for cultivating cultures of error, participation and curiosity instead.
From building shared expectations and consistent teaching practices across a school to harnessing the collective intellectual energy of students learning together, the series explores how small, deliberate acts of participation can transform classroom culture and move students from listening → understanding → thinking.
The central message is both provocative and practical: school culture isn't something we simply inherit. It's something we cultivate together, one interaction, one response and one small step at a time.
Start reading below!
1 - Competing cultures…
2 - Cultivating cultures…
3 - Moving mountains…
For your staff…
To help you and your colleagues engage with my current blog post series on engagement, school culture, and effervescence please find a two pager designed to be read in staff meetings to synthesise the themes from the three blog posts in one clean document! Enjoy !!
Want to go deeper?
Unlocking Literacy: Unlocking the Power of Words for Reading and Spelling
This is a new Luminary Specialist Course with Dr Nathaniel Swain.
Across four 90-minute live webinars, we'll take a deeper dive into the knowledge and instructional techniques that help students become increasingly capable readers and spellers.
Live webinars: 5, 12, 19 & 26 October 2026 at 6:30 pm AEDT
Recordings: Available for three weeks following the final webinar
Places are limited.
Literacy Across the Curriculum — Melbourne, Sydney & Sunshine Coast
I'll also be running Literacy Across the Curriculum full-day professional learning workshops in Melbourne, Sydney and the Sunshine Coast.
Designed for primary and secondary teachers and leaders, these practical workshops explore how we can embed powerful reading, writing and oracy instruction across the curriculum—helping students access complex texts and concepts, develop disciplinary literacy and communicate increasingly sophisticated ideas.
Melbourne & Sydney — November 2026
New dates have been added.
Sunshine Coast — 22 January 2027
Pacific Paradise State School | 8:30 am–3:00 pm
These workshops bring the same principle to life: strong literacy foundations don't narrow the curriculum—they give students greater access to it.
Places are limited.
Keep learning with Luminary
Bite-sized professional learning. Practical ideas. Available anytime.
Luminary gives teachers and school leaders access to practical, evidence-informed professional learning designed to support classroom practice and whole-school improvement.
Explore short, focused learning on explicit teaching, literacy, cognitive science, curriculum, assessment and more — and turn the research into approaches you can actually use.
Learn at your own pace. Revisit ideas when you need them. Put them into practice straight away.
Whether you're looking for a quick boost for tomorrow's lesson or supporting longer-term improvement across your school, Luminary makes high-quality professional learning available when it matters.
Learn. Apply. Improve.
Find out more!
