Before you begin,
meet your tools.
You will explore the situation below through De Bono's six thinking hats. Each hat asks you to think in a different way. Together they will take you somewhere you could not reach alone. Here is what each hat does.
You will receive a full set of these cards to keep when you finish. They are yours to use in any classroom, staffroom, or conversation.
can look like.
One way Lu gets honest reflection from her learners is through visual harvesting. This is a process of sketching words and pictures to share your thoughts. This is one of Lu's personal reflections to show you the role of life-long learning.
prior knowledge.
You already know Head, Heart, and Hands. You have used it as a lens for understanding how we learn. Now watch what happens when you bring it into contact with something unfamiliar, the six thinking hats.
We will use six questions to move through Head, Heart, and Hands. We will focus on feeling the situation first, thinking it through honestly, then deciding what to do with what we know. This sequence is not accidental. It is the same process we want learners to experience every time they meet something new, whether in a classroom, at home, or in the world beyond.
This is what transfer looks like. A framework you trust, applied somewhere it has never been before.
How will you capture your thinking?
When we model learning, we allow our learners to demonstrate agency while still scaffolding the process, so those who are not quite ready have the support they need to be independent. If this sounds like you, here are some ways others have captured their thinking. They are not the only tools, but they get your thinking started. If you already have a tool or process in mind, have fun with it. I cannot wait to see what you post on the Padlet.
No need to commit. This is your process.
Read this.
Let it land.
This is a real situation. You may have lived inside it. You may be living inside it now.
A young person has been given the floor.
They prepared. They have something to say. They begin.
Someone in the room finishes their sentence. Someone else adds context they did not ask for. The conversation moves on before they have reached their own conclusion.
Nobody meant any harm. Everyone was trying to help.
The young person has stopped speaking.
The floor was given. Then quietly taken back.
You have the tools.
Now try them.
You have done the thinking. Now it is time to try it on your own.
This is exactly what we do with our learners. We set up the conditions. We show them the tools. Then we step back and let them find their own way through.
You do not have to answer all six questions, because they are a choice menu. Put together the Head, Heart, and Hands combination that makes sense to you right now. Under each big question, there are smaller questions to choose from. Pick one or two that you want to answer. We scaffold choice so learners have multiple ways to approach the same task.
Try. Adjust. Try again. This is not failure. This is the process of mistake-making for understanding. It is exactly what we want our learners to do.
When you finish, you will have something entirely your own. A differentiated product that speaks to who you are, ready to share with the community.
Head
Thinking it through
This hat helps us focus on what is actually true, not what we assume or hope.
At what point did the young person stop speaking, and what happened just before?
Not what you assume. Not what you hope. What is observable? At what point did the young person stop speaking? Who was in the room? What was said just before they went quiet? What does the evidence tell you about the conditions that existed in that moment?
This hat helps us make honest decisions and see what could genuinely go wrong.
What does a young person learn about their own authority when it is quietly taken back?
If this pattern continues, what does this young person internalise about their own voice? What are the risks of intervening to change the dynamic? What are the far greater risks of leaving it unchanged? Be honest about both sides.
Heart
Feeling it honestly
This hat helps us notice the relationships between people and between ideas.
What does it feel like to be helped in a way that takes your authority away?
When you imagine a young person preparing to speak and having their sentence finished before they reach their own conclusion, what happens in you? Notice the gap between the intention of the people who helped and the experience of the person who was helped. They are not the same thing.
This hat helps us see what is already working and worth building from.
What does it say about this community that the young person was given the floor at all?
Something was already working. The floor was given. There was intent to include. Where do you see that intent still alive, even in the moment it went wrong? What does this community already have that could become the foundation of genuine shared authority?
Hands
Making something from it
This hat helps us reach for creative thinking and ideas that do not exist yet.
What would genuine shared authority look like in this room?
If you could redesign the conditions of this space so that authority was genuinely shared, what would change? Not the seating. Not the agenda. The conditions underneath both. Who would be in the room in a different way? What would the room need to believe about young people for this to be possible?
This hat helps us step back, organise our thinking, and name what we have learned.
Who gets to hold authority, who grants it, and what does it cost when it is taken back?
Now step back. What is the real problem this situation represents? Not this one young person. The pattern. Who holds authority in your school, and how did they come to hold it? What is the one shift in thinking that would change how authority is shared?
that is yours.
Your product holds your thinking and it is yours to keep. Before you post, sit with these questions.
Which lens helped you see something new?
What do you now want your learners to experience?
What changes need to happen in your school now?
paper tools?
Enter your name and email to unlock three tools you can print and use tomorrow. These are designed to live on walls, in journals, and in conversations, not just on screens.
You worked through a real situation. You looked at it through six lenses. Now take a moment to mark what that means before moving on.
I am ready to move forward →