Michaela: The Power of Culture: The Michaela Way

A nice contrast from the usual books on classroom teaching - just what you'd expect from Birbalsingh et al. If you agree with the Michaela approach you will love this book. If you don't, you might feel a little bit more sympathetic to it after reading this.

"A painting of a fire generates no heat"With so many using Michaela's strategies to transform their own schools, this book helps to seek the true heart of educational change. Packed with wisdom of what it means to create a culture that can be internalised and will instill conviction, this manifesto when impelmented is what lasting change in schools will look like. We are truly blessed to have such schools and school leaders in our educational system at such a critical time as this.

This account, written by the staff at Michaela Community School and their Head Mistress Katharine Birbalsingh, refocuses the dialogue on education, and will make you think again about the purpose of education. If you are a teacher, it will remind you about why you became a teacher in the first place. Its content runs counter-cultural to what is happening in most Western schools today, however that is what makes it so refreshing, powerful, and needed. Inspirational and bold. Highly recommend for anyone working in education.

I'll cut to the chase and expose my bias in favour of Michaela Community School. This however doesn't mean that I believe this book is perfect or perfectly done at least for someone with the same knowledge, experience and appreciation that I have of Michaela.To clarify: I've researched and followed Michaela with shock and delight from their inception, I attended the book launch of their first book, I read their first book, which I absolutely loved, I have applied to teach there and I have visted the school.So for me, from this perspective, the messages of the book became a tad too repetitive and overnarrated. I can see the positives of this for Michaela newbies and sceptics especially as the 1st book probably created a few misconceptions that Michaela is eager to rectify with this book.For me, however it made the reading tedious particularly in the 1st half and left me feeling that the editing was lacking or rushed especially given how recent some chapters were written (like just before UK lockdown was announced - recent). This is a testament I guess to how relevant some of the themes in this book are relevant to the big events of 2020 and of recent years and how it relates to the book's core theme of the power of culture in education (and in society to a small extant).Overall it's a good book but if you're a Michaela fanatic like me then some of the messages in it are as overnarrated as they probably are to the pupils of Michaela.

This is a good book to read if you want to counter low expectation "progressives" in your school.