We’ve always believed that the role of an educator is to empower every child, to celebrate them for their gifts and uniqueness, to help them discover their talents and to offer them the most enabling environments to learn to their full potential.
However, we grew up in Eastern Europe where discipline, labels and outdated teaching approaches were our reality and this left it’s mark on our lives and self-image. Our natural talents were considered a “burden” and we grew up believing we were doomed to fail. This is the very reason we promised ourselves to make a real change in the way early years education is offered to all children around the world.
When we started our teaching career we knew we were able to work completely differently to 98% of other teachers – because we could see the world through the eyes of the child.
We had already been working along the principles of Personalised and Experiential Learning, but we constantly met people telling us that it was not possible to achieve any results without structured teaching, without rigid frameworks, discipline, testing and the same uniform goals for all children. We knew it wasn’t true!
They would tell us we were dreamers!
One September night we made a bold decision that changed our lives forever. We left our country and decided to learn from the best. Cut the story short, we owned and managed one of the most challenging business – our own multilingual early childhood education provision.
And we did this in one of the most effective and at the same time the most demanding countries in the world – the United Kingdom – where a mistake can cost you losing your business, and where an unexpected inspection may appear at your setting at any time.
Our skills and insights were recognised and we were invited to work with prestigious educational institutions to deliver training to other early years education providers, and to inspect their provision to make sure they met the requirements of the British National Standards – the EYFS.
We were even featured in the Guardian as the ones who can potentially introduce major changes in education in the UK.
- We worked as assessors and evaluators in a few governmental projects such as the Early Years Professional Status (EYPS), National Vocational Qualifications in Child Care Learning and Development (CCLD), and National Vocational Qualifications in School Playwork.
- We collaborated with the biggest and the most respected Higher Education institutions in the country such as the Tribal Group, Kingston University, the JGA Group, and Canterbury Christ Church University.
- During the past 20 years we have inspected and assessed over 100 Early Childhood provisions – many of them represented the highest standards in education, whereas many were still far from it.
- We have travelled across and lived in 30 different countries where we’ve made friends with locals, lived their lifestyle, participated in their local customs, events and gatherings. We’ve visited local playgrounds, museums, children-dedicated places, nurseries and schools. We’ve talked to teachers, parents, children, and visionaries. We’ve experienced, tested, observed, compared, contrasted, evaluated, and enjoyed local infrastructure, parks, public spaces for families and children. We’ve seen the best and not so great. After all these years of living in the world education holds no secrets for us.
- We’ve been world schooling our son for 17 years non-stop. He’s never been to school but he’s been learning from the world all his life with great success. We have a deep understanding of Formal Education, Home Schooling, and Personalised Learning. We’ve experienced how children can flourish on both paths and what it takes to “get it right” for them.
- Our professional insights combined with life experience give us a unique Global Perspective. We know what all children have in common, no matter the location. We also understand the local perspective of educators and what they need in order to be able to offer the same highest quality of Early Childhood Education and Care.
The Secret Ingredient
After all these years we can confidently say that we know the secret of the world class Early Years provision – the one that can successfully nurture children’s natural leadership mindset and offer full potential learning.
The most successful settings are doing certain things the same way. They follow exactly the same procedures, they have the same systems in place, they share the same values.
We’ve put our experience and knowledge together, we’ve boiled it down, and we’ve created a series of powerful teacher and parent training programs that incorporate all key ingredients that guarantee the learning processes are highly personalised for every child, and that each child is celebrated for their uniqueness and that teachers work according to the most effective approaches that ever existed. This in turn serves as a very strong foundation for nurturing children’s natural Leadership Mindset.
To help you learn how to apply Active Experiential Learning in your setting, Natural Born Leaders has launched a new teacher support programme ACTIVE LEARNING BOOSTER.
It’s a self-paced hands-on online training programme for Early Years and Primary Teachers who are ready to offer Future-Oriented Education based on Active Experiential Holistic Learning and Development.
You can access the first training module for FREE
Read more about Natural Born Leaders: WHO WE ARE
Share this: