Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.765)
Hello everyone and welcome to Make It Mindful, Insights for Global Learning, the podcast for globally minded educators seeking thoughtful conversations about how education can adapt to an ever-changing world. I'm Seth Fleishauer, former classroom teacher turned founder of an international learning company specializing in the teaching of global learning. Together, we explore the interconnectedness of people, cultures, and systems and how these relationships shape transformative ideas in education.

Each episode features educational changemakers whose insights lead to practical solutions and lasting impact. And today, my guest is Heather Rhodes. Heather, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here. So I am so happy that you're here. I have such great respect for what you're doing at High Growth Education. And I am really looking forward to diving in to what makes what you do work so well. The results that you're getting are very impressive.

Heather Rhodes (00:35.736)
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Seth Fleischauer (00:54.259)
And we're going to tackle some of the things that we talk about on this podcast through the lens of your experience. And one of these things is that like traditional education models, they can struggle to meet the needs of diverse learners or the diverse needs of learners. And international online schools face these unique challenges of fostering independent learning, cultural competency, and student engagement. We're to talk about how your online approach can help address all of those things.

And we're going to be addressing some of these pain points that some of our listeners might have of how do we support independent learning without leaving students behind? Can online schools build the same sense of belonging as traditional ones? And how do we balance academic rigor with flexibility in an online learning model? So you have been leading

the charge in international online education for over a decade. You're the founder of High Grove Education, the former leader of Harrow School Online. You developed successful models for online education that deliver better academic results than their in-person counterparts. And today we're going to talk about building learner autonomy, cultural competence, and true community in a global learning environment. But I want to know, how did you get here? Like, how did you find yourself being the head of this online school?

that is producing these results that are better than in-person learning.

Heather Rhodes (02:20.66)
I mean, gosh, I think the reason I came into online education in the first place was actually because I worked with international learners. so I long time ago was running a summer school for students who came to the UK, went home and when they were in the UK, they were learning English. When they went home, they forgot it all. came back the next year.

and I thought it would be great to get some interim provision for them online so that they didn't forget everything that they learnt when they came to stay at the summer school I was working on. none of the kids who were at the summer school signed up for the interim provision, but it was very popular with other students worldwide. this was over 10 years ago. I got some real hands-on experience of both teaching online

working with international students online. It was wonderful teaching one-to-one. You can see how much progress students make in an online classroom. And I had a direct comparison to face-to-face one-to-one tuition, which I was also both managing and providing at the time.

But what I was really excited about was international communities, the chance to bring groups of students together from different countries. And that's what led me into First Harrow School Online and now High Grove Education.

Seth Fleischauer (03:49.171)
I love that passion for bringing together international communities. That's definitely something that I personally am passionate about and that we work on at Banyan Global Learning. I'm wondering where the passion for that comes from for you. Why do you want to bring together international groups of students? is the benefit for those students? What are you trying to build? What's your greater vision there?

Heather Rhodes (04:13.89)
Yeah, well, I mean, the students that we're teaching at Highgrove Education are students who are very academically minded, brilliant kids who are likely to go on to great things in the future to take leadership roles and to be influential in their societies. And if the people who are taking

influencing societies in the future are students who have developed a love for working with other people from different countries, a really positive view of collaboration. I think that in some small way what we're doing now will make the world a better place in the future. I like the idea of students feeling

warm and welcoming to those who are different from themselves rather than feeling perhaps slightly intimidated or scared by differences. And I think that if you start with young people who have the chance to go on and make a large impact on their local communities, their impact can be much more positive if they're

already globally minded citizens by the time that they're moving into positions where they will have some influence over the direction of their societies.

Seth Fleischauer (05:43.687)
man, I love that. That's the that's the dream, right, to be able to help provide that. I don't want to call it a it is kind of a moral thing, right? This moral idea that that engaging with people who are different than you is is a positive thing and can bring positive change and to prepare future leaders with that mindset, I think is so critical. So let's talk about how right. So you've got you've got

Heather Rhodes (06:09.358)
Yeah, the tricky bit, right?

Seth Fleischauer (06:12.313)
Yeah, the tricky bit. You know, you've got these students coming in from different places, oftentimes different countries, collaborating together in the context of your community. We all know that you can't just throw together a bunch of people from different places and expect that magically they will all get along and think that it's a wonderful thing that they've all found themselves in what can be some

somewhat challenging situation of navigating some of these cultural differences, different ways of communicating, different ideas about how things should be. How do you build a sense of community within High Grove to be able to navigate some of those differences and come out the other end with everyone believing that this is a good idea? We should be bringing ourselves together and collaborating across cultures.

Heather Rhodes (07:10.562)
Yeah, I don't think you can ever underestimate the desire for people to reach out and make friends. And especially young people, they're to making friends online. I'd say even in face-to-face settings, online interaction carries as much weight as the face-to-face interactions that students have. And the...

where you have a group of students who are working together towards the same end. In our case, that's normally taking GCSE or A-level exams at the end of a course, but feeling like they're going through this process together and they've got the same challenges, the same struggles, and they form a support network. I think that there's a kind of natural

tendency for students to lean in and build those friendship groups. I'm not saying that it happens magically, I think you do need to think very carefully about how you can help to facilitate that. So for example, for us it's really important for our students to have cameras on all of the time.

Within our teaching we often use small breakout rooms so that students get the chance to work together in groups. We have a house system which is primarily there for the social element. It's the chance where students actually get to know each other on a more personal level. We have student-led clubs and societies which means that students are taking on positions of leadership and

working together as a team in order to run something. So I think of course you need to be mindful of providing those opportunities, but I do think it's a natural human tendency to lean into people that you're working with. And in fact, in some ways, an online environment is...

Heather Rhodes (09:25.294)
both a safer space and comes without the inherent prejudices that you might have in your own local area. You might instantly recognise accents or the way somebody dresses or the way they behave and stereotype them all.

come up with certain prejudices, whether those are even ones that you're aware of or not, it's much more difficult to do that in an international online community because you've got absolutely no idea of the norms and the conventions of all of your classmates. So in a way, there's a bit more of blank slate for people to look beyond some of the surface level.

Seth Fleischauer (10:05.671)
Hmm.

Heather Rhodes (10:16.878)
signals that we often judge people by when we meet them in a face-to-face setting in a local area.

Seth Fleischauer (10:24.339)
I love that idea. I don't think I'd consider that before this idea that

when you throw together a bunch of people who all have different customs and they understand that that's what they're doing, that the assumptions, the shared assumptions of the group are quite minimal because they're right. if everybody, if everybody assumes that then it's somewhat inevitable that a, that, that new customs of the group will be developed as a result.

Heather Rhodes (10:44.398)
Absolutely.

Seth Fleischauer (10:56.723)
I really, I really like that. And I also, what I'm hearing from you is this idea of shared goals within that context, right? So, so here they are coming in, they're kind of consciously relinquishing some of their ideas of control or, or assumptions of ways that they should be looking for new norms that are being developed within the context of working together towards a specific goal.

which really is about shared values, right? Like if you are working towards something, means you value it. And if you can nail that shared values piece, that's, I mean, that's the basis of community, right? I am curious though about how you manage like conflict within this space because, you know, inevitably everybody has freedoms and rights and those freedoms and rights can come up against each other.

right, especially when you're talking about people from different cultures, different customs, believing that things should be one way or another, as much as they're leaving that behind as they come into a diverse group, it is a part of who they are. And we work a lot with like, not conflict resolution, but conflict transformation, right? So it's like, how can we transform? It's not about like tying it up with a neat little bow. It's about

transforming it into a different experience, a different reality on the other side. In the context of what can sometimes be a limited space with online education in terms of you're not sharing a physical space, you don't have some of the unfettered access to each other that you might if you shared that physical space.

How do you deal with conflict? Does it even come up? I mean, you've done such a good job of building the culture that it doesn't even happen, but how do you deal with conflict in this atmosphere?

Heather Rhodes (12:53.538)
Yeah, mean, there's much less conflict than in a traditional school environment. And I think that's part of the nature of an online environment where you...

can't get cliques quite so easily where there's a group of people talking about other people or viewing other people from across the room and side eyeing. It's just, yeah, absolutely. There's a whole lot of behaviors that might happen in a physical school, which just don't happen in an online school. It's one of the reasons why for some of our students, they find it a very safe space. I'm not saying conflict never arises. And I think that sometimes

Seth Fleischauer (13:14.483)
Yeah, whispering and pointing.

Heather Rhodes (13:37.646)
sometimes it will arise because people are behaving in a way that you don't find appropriate in your setting and perhaps in their home environment it's something that's more socially acceptable. And in that context, it's a case of signalling what's okay in the environment of high-growth education.

in our school we don't do this or in our school we don't interrupt or in our school we're expected to come to lessons on time. Now you might be okay to be five minutes late to every lesson in schools in your country because that's a culturally accepted phenomenon for some countries that our students come to high-grade from but it's not okay in our schools so we'll...

speak to students individually, you know, it's normally a case of trying to educate rather than reprimand with the understanding that everybody comes with slightly different expectations of how to behave in a shared online environment and some of them may occasionally need adjusting to make sure that everyone gets on well.

Seth Fleischauer (14:42.131)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (14:57.907)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's and then you can always go back to that shared goals piece, right? Like these are students who are highly academically motivated. And so you can bring it back to that. OK, well, you why are you here in the first place? Let's let's make sure that we're doing all we can to build towards those goals. And I do want to dive into that for a bit here, because you are able to get these academic results that outpace brick and mortar schools.

in the online world, self-regulation can oftentimes be a great challenge for people. You don't have a classroom where everybody else is, as you look around, they're all doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing, or the teacher's coming around and tapping you on the shoulder if you're off task. These are students who need to be able to...

to motivate themselves to be, to do the things that need to be done in order to reach the goals that they have. I'm wondering how you address student agency. Is it just a matter that like your students are ones that are self-selecting as people who are highly motivated or do you directly address that in your approach?

Heather Rhodes (16:17.102)
There's a definite transformation of most of our students across the first half of autumn term, so the first six weeks of school, because most of our students join us from traditional bricks and mortar schools rather than from homeschooling or other online schools. We do get a mixture of kids and so from a variety of settings, but the bulk of students will come to us from traditional schools.

One of the shortcomings I feel of the traditional school system is that most of your work is undertaken in supervised conditions. So the majority of the time that you're working, there will be a teacher either instructing you or looking over your shoulder as you're working. And a small amount of time will be spent on homework.

every week. And we flip that round. So actually the majority of the time that students spend working is on independent work without a teacher or a parent standing and looking over your shoulder. And our students work through interactive self-study lessons before they go to their live class every week. And that's the bit that you need the motivation for. And that's the bit that changes across the first

first half term of the academic year for us because it can be hard to self-motivate. There's a natural tendency to procrastinate or to believe that you can work quicker than you actually can and maybe not to timetable your work very effectively. it doesn't just take, it takes a combination of practice.

and also explicit instruction to students to tell them how to learn independently. So we have skills lessons that run alongside our academic lessons and they cover some of the micro skills needed for independent study. So things like the prioritization and time management and avoiding procrastination.

Heather Rhodes (18:33.836)
timetabling, scheduling your work, effective study habits, all of the things that you need in order to get in place a healthy set of habits which will help you through the independent aspects of the work. There's much more accountability in an online school because we can see exactly when students are working on these lessons, how much time they're spending, what grades they're getting for

all of the sections of their study. And the teachers see that before they come to the live lessons. So there's a real visibility of the work. Our students will work with a one-to-one coach on a weekly basis who will support the students to build up those study skills. And that...

Seth Fleischauer (19:19.675)
Mmm.

Heather Rhodes (19:29.998)
that development of independent study is absolutely key for our academic success because we are incredibly successful academically. We get some of the best grades in the country at A level examinations, which is the pre-university examinations that students take at the end of their time at secondary school. We think it's because it's quite challenging to study independently and so

students because they're having to work hard will retain more of what they've learnt. It's far easier to sit in a room and have a teacher explain something to you and think yes, yes, yes, I understand. It's harder to work it out for yourself. But if you do work it out for yourself, you're more likely to retain what you've learned. And then in the live lessons, the

Seth Fleischauer (20:20.804)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Rhodes (20:25.326)
Again, there's probably more visibility than in a traditional classroom. We have quite small groups, so a fridge of probably six to eight students, a maximum of 10 for our older students. And you can see them working together, all trying to solve something individually at the same time, but the teacher can kind of zoom in on any different student and the work that.

they're producing or using polls or quizzes or discussion in the classroom. It's very quick to understand who's grasped the kind of key concepts from the self-study lessons and our teachers as well as having one-to-one as well as having the group lessons then have time for one-to-one support and it's

incredibly efficient way of learning, which means that each student gets as much teacher time as they need and can work mostly at a pace that suits them. Some of our students are much quicker than others through the self study element of the work. But like, if you add all of those things up together, it makes for both, you know, a really strong academic grounding, but also preparing students with these amazing

study skills that they take with them through their university studies or their careers as they go forward.

Seth Fleischauer (21:59.471)
Yeah, I what I'm hearing is a secret sauce. I'm not sure if they have that that saying in the UK. But the secret sauce sounds to to be a combination of a lot of really sound methods in education. You're talking about a flipped classroom, which is

ton of research supports the idea that having students work independently before class and then apply what they've learned in class and with that synchronous time is a lot more effective yet somehow still very uncommon. You've got executive functioning skills. on this podcast actually did a deep dive into executive functioning and episodes 49 and 50. Go ahead and check it out. That, you know, I come across these

things in education where it's like, that's the everything, right? Like that's the thing that like, if you do that, you can do all the other things. Got it. So and obviously in an online setting with a flipped classroom, those skills are especially important. And then if you nail them, then so many other things can come easily. You're talking about small groups, which is small class sizes, also very research backed. You're talking about a lot coaching, one on one support.

Heather Rhodes (22:50.922)
Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (23:18.001)
that is an amazing thing to provide. And then you're also talking about some online strategies that help to increase engagement in online settings. So you're doing all of those things at once. So no wonder you are seeing the results that you're seeing. I wonder if you could, because I'm struck by the fact that a lot of these things are things that

could be done in a brick and mortar classroom. If we just, right, if we just had the time, the resources, the approach. I'm particularly interested in an example of this, like, self-study lesson that happens prior to a conversation, and then what happens in the conversation. So basically, like, tell me a story about your flipped classroom model with an example that might be able to drive that home for our listeners.

Heather Rhodes (23:47.182)
totally.

Heather Rhodes (24:11.874)
Yeah, psychology A level, for example, you might in your self study lessons, read through a case study, answer a few questions about it, perhaps apply a little bit of what you've learned to answering an exam style question where you're kind of analyzing the data rather than just showing that you've read it.

And then when you go into your live lesson, your lesson might start off, the teacher will see exactly how much time you've spent on that self study and who's completed it, how much they've scored on the various questions. So they might fill in a few gaps at the start of the lesson if there were clearly places where not everyone's understood the concept or where people have...

missed out some of the key information. But then there's the chance for discussion of what you've taken away from that study and application of perhaps something that you've learned previously and how this study changes or qualifies that knowledge, that understanding. Quite often that discussion can be in small groups, in breakout groups.

And then the chance to apply what you've learned to an exam question, because ultimately for our students, this is the final point of their exam, of their courses, will be an examination where they have to showcase their knowledge and understanding of the syllabus that they've covered across the two years. in that, within a lesson, if you're

practicing exam questions with feedback from your teacher on why or why not you're hitting all of the marks and where you're perhaps falling a little bit short with your answers. In a traditional classroom that's normally done at homework for homework and then you submit it and perhaps see written feedback but by getting that feedback from your teacher in

Heather Rhodes (26:31.308)
in real time and by sharing, perhaps collaborating with others on working through these questions. It makes it more fun. The kids love their lessons. I think, you know, is that the highlight of the course because they're showing off what they've learned so far. But it makes it more memorable as well. And those tips from teachers on kind of how they've understood the material, how they're applying their knowledge.

kind of key for us to students learning.

Seth Fleischauer (27:06.611)
So you've painted a picture for us here and it's a picture of a culture that you're able to create that celebrates multiculturalism, that is a place for people to come in and build a new culture that is based around shared goals and shared values, an academically driven culture where

The students understand the goal is to be able to score well on these exams, which is going to open more doors for them and set them up to be leaders in their field in the world. And you've outlined all of these different ways that you get to those academic goals. I wonder if you could paint a picture for us. Who is the adult that this approach creates? Because I think that like

Heather Rhodes (28:03.01)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (28:04.593)
That is the ultimate product, right? Like that's the thing that we're selling is this idea that if you engage with this style of education, this particular culture, eventually you are going to become this kind of adult. Who is that adult at High Grow of Education?

Heather Rhodes (28:08.322)
Yeah.

Heather Rhodes (28:22.424)
Yeah, the funny thing I would say is that when people have met my students, particularly when I was running Harrow School online and we had a few events where some of the students would come and meet some of the Harrow School staff, the comments that I got from the Harrow School staff who worked the physical school were about the maturity level of our students, that they had

kind of a level of confidence and maturity that was beyond their years, that it was so impressive and refreshing to see young people who seemed to be very well-rounded and were confident at kind of presenting themselves and

speaking with adults on an equal basis rather than feeling awkward or embarrassed, which is the last thing I think people expect from an online school setting. What I think the expectation is that if you study online, you become some kind of social recluse and you're unable to interact successfully with others and perhaps you might want to stay in your bedroom for the rest of your life.

Seth Fleischauer (29:31.118)
Yeah

Heather Rhodes (29:48.878)
I would say that actually it's almost the opposite, that when our students have gone on to university and we've given them feedback questionnaires to find out how you're getting on in comparison to your peers, because most of their peers won't have studied at an online school, and we expected academically that they would probably be a little bit more comfortable and the...

The answer was that definitely they felt much more on top of their academic work than any of their peers. They were used to working to deadlines, they were used to working independently and they sometimes got a bit frustrated by their friends working through Friday night rather than being able to go and socialise because they had an essay deadline that they'd finished off in the middle of the week. So there's that idea of kind of...

Seth Fleischauer (30:34.451)
You

Seth Fleischauer (30:40.529)
Meh.

You

Heather Rhodes (30:45.536)
responsibility that they've already taken on. But they also said that socially they felt the average was just slightly more comfortable than they thought their peers were because they got so used to kind of actively reaching out to socialise. So to make being the person to make the first step. we we always say to our students, so, you know, friendships online don't

don't happen automatically, you need to send a message and say hi to anyone you've not yet spoken to within your class. Send them a DM, ask them how they're getting on with their homework or what they thought of the lesson. And so I think because you're coming from a setting where you have to be a little bit more proactive, when you translate that to university,

it means that actually you're normally fairly comfortable about making friends. So yeah, for us, the adults who are going on into the world post online schooling are both very mature, used to being responsible for themselves, fairly comfortable at reaching out socially and...

also very good at interacting with a very wide range of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different cultural and national backgrounds. the kind of children that I think you would want to, the kind of adults that I think you would want your child to become is my answer. think, yeah, I'm incredibly proud of our kids when they...

leave us as young adults.

Seth Fleischauer (32:39.547)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's the metaphor it's reminding me of is like high altitude training, right? When when people like train in Denver, Colorado here in these states and have that thin air and and just get used to it then they go down to sea level and they're like, my gosh, like my lungs are so full. Right. So it's this idea that like in an online setting, at least the one that you've set up the the agency, the the motivation, the self motivation, the executive functioning skills that are necessary

Heather Rhodes (32:53.599)
Mm.

Hahaha

Seth Fleischauer (33:10.325)
to be proactive about accomplishing your goals are ones that once you are set back down to sea level in IRL world it all just feels kind of easy because it's it's right there. I love that story thank you. Well thank you so much for being here thanks for sharing your work your expertise your story. My last question is is there anywhere that you'd like to send our listeners to learn more about your work on the internet?

Heather Rhodes (33:38.732)
Gosh, mean,

So I'll tell you what, there's two things. One is just take a look at our website because it reviews what we're doing and what we stand for as a school. But the most exciting thing on our website at the moment is a set of talks that we've put on for our students that we're inviting anyone to join. So you don't need to be enrolled in the school, but they're the kind of talks that you would expect a UK independent school to run. So expert speakers,

talking about careers in psychology or medicine or law. Really interesting talk coming up on using the techniques from sports psychology to prepare for exams by a PhD sports psychologist. come along to one of the talks and perhaps you'll get a feel for what it's like to have a really

kind of broad education in an online setting.

Seth Fleischauer (34:43.183)
I love that. Yeah, we'll put those links in the show notes. Heather, thank you so much for being here again. For our listeners, if you'd like to support the podcast, please do tell a friend, follow us, leave a rating, write a review. Thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar. And remember that if you want to bring positive change to education, we must first make it mindful. See you next time.