The Common Room - Where the World Teaches

Send us Fan Mail The data already exists. It's sitting in your school right now. The hard part isn't collecting it — it's getting teachers to share it, and then using it to give them time back rather than take more. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Callum Watt — Assistant Head Teacher in Penang, where he leads assessment, data, reporting and the maths curric...

Send us Fan Mail "I'm not a naturally kind person." That's how Joanna Povall opens the first chapter of her book, and it's where the whole framework comes from — a place of hurt, and having watched unkind leadership up close. In this bonus episode marking twenty episodes of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Joanna Povall — Principal of Wales International School, a CO...

Send us Fan Mail Within the first hundred days of a child's life, over a million neural pathways connect every second. Sitting at a desk, something takes forty repetitions to stick. At play, it takes ten to twenty. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Lynsey Logan — early years specialist, author of The Rewilded Child , and Head of Primary at an international school in Ta...

Send us Fan Mail Twenty-four Year 11 boys named themselves the U Gang after their Christmas mocks came back. Ed Kirwan heard them chanting it up three flights of stairs to his lab, and his heart sank. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Ed — a former North London science teacher whose route out of the classroom ran through Uganda, Mexico and central India, and ended in a non-...

Send us Fan Mail We hold credentials in how to teach our subjects, and none at all in how to talk to each other. Everyone under eighteen, we were trained for. Everyone over eighteen — the colleague, the line manager, the person we supervise — we were not. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Jennifer Abrams: author of five books, a former high school English teacher who now wo...

Send us Fan Mail Two successful people in Bristol, both quietly unhappy. He in a career that wasn't working, she running companies she loved so much she couldn't get off the treadmill. The childcare was outsourced, the days were long, and neither of them recognised the life they were supposedly building. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Ruth Shipley-Palmer — busi...

Send us Fan Mail It didn't begin in a casino or at a racetrack. It began with fantasy baseball — statistics, sport, friendship, and the desire to belong. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Saul Malek, a former compulsive gambler who has turned his lived experience into work helping schools, parents and young people understand one of the fastest-growing and most overlook...

Send us Fan Mail An uncle's blunt question in Carmarthenshire — A levels or work? — sent John Gwyn Jones to a Midland Bank counter. Fifty years later he runs a federation of 110 schools. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with John Gwyn Jones MBE, a proud Welshman whose journey from that bank counter to CEO of FOBISIA has spanned five decades and reshaped British internation...

Send us Fan Mail Classrooms of sixty to seventy children, one teacher, under a tree. Lea chewed food to feed her infant daughter the way the local mothers did, and raised her children inside a compound behind razor wire. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Lea — a thirty-year international educator whose family has lived and taught across the Chatham Islands, Papua New Guinea...

Send us Fan Mail If you have a problem in your own country, going international probably isn't the solution. Jasmine read that on LinkedIn and nodded — because too many people are running from something that will simply follow them. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Jasmine, an educator entering her twelfth year in international education, with teaching and leadership...

Send us Fan Mail A random school inspection revealed that Gavin McCormack had been running a Montessori classroom without knowing it. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Gavin — Montessori Australia Ambassador, founder of nine schools and three teacher training centres in Nepal, and bestselling author of The Potential in Every Child — for the show's widest-reach conversa...

Send us Fan Mail Nine conversations in, none of the guests had heard of Culturally Mediated Leadership. All of them were doing it. In this solo episode of The Common Room, Joshua steps away from the interview format to reflect on the show's first nine conversations — what he's learned, what's changed since launch, and what comes next. He revisits the moments that stayed with him: Ma...

Send us Fan Mail Nine o'clock at night, alone in his office, and a mouse for company. That was the night Howard Stribbell first felt the full weight of what he now calls the loneliest seat. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Dr Howard Stribbell — a school leader with over twenty-eight years in international education, from classroom teacher to head of school to strategi...

Send us Fan Mail Matt Allio's first entry into Chinese education wasn't really about education at all. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Matt — an American educator who spent over two decades as a classroom teacher and head of school in California before becoming senior advisor to schools across China on leadership training, teacher coaching and Western pedagogica...

Send us Fan Mail "What do you think?" empowers a team in one culture and signals incompetence in another. Chris Hoare has led in both. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Chris — an international school leader with experience across the UK, the Middle East and Latin America. He is currently Head of Upper School at Colegio Peruano Británico, a Nord Anglia school in L...

Send us Fan Mail Culture shock rarely hits when you arrive. It waits until about six months in, when everyone assumes you've settled. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Dean Wall — an international educator with over a decade of experience living and teaching across Egypt, Ireland, Alaska and Vietnam. He has taught ESL, Global Perspectives and Sociology, and is currentl...

Send us Fan Mail Thirty nationalities in one classroom, multiple faiths, and families who have rebuilt their lives thousands of miles from home. Belonging looks very different from there. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Gavin Taylor — Assistant Head of High School Pastoral at Emirates International School Jumeirah in Dubai, where he leads student wellbeing, behaviour, stu...

Send us Fan Mail Every school has a commercial layer underneath it. Understanding it isn't a betrayal of the educational mission — it may be the most important thing a leader can do to protect it. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Greg Parry, founder and director of Global Services in Education, an international school development, management and advisory firm operatin...

Send us Fan Mail The notice period clause most candidates skim past. The visa costs that never make it into the offer letter. Izyan sees both sides of that paperwork. In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Izyan, Head of Human Resources at an international school in Singapore. With thirteen years in HR — the last four in international education — she brings a rare practitioner&a...

Send us Fan Mail A sports injury put Ian Hopkins into teaching by accident. Almost thirty years later, he has led schools on four continents. In the very first episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Ian — a school leader with over twenty years in senior leadership across the UK, Africa, the Middle East, China and Malaysia. He has served as Headteacher, Principal and Acting Principal in...

A brief introduction to The Common Room — Where the World Teaches. A podcast for international educators, hosted by Joshua Sussex.