I can approach

It is becoming increasingly clear that the needs of the twenty-first century ‘learner’ demands new approaches to ‘learning’. The lack of student agency and values in their learning has meant that schools around the world still take a largely standardised, one-size-fits-all approach, valuing compliance over creativity, content over character. This narrow approach doesn’t set children up well to thrive in the twenty-first century.

Today, student success requires skills for collaboration, creativity, compassion, and problem solving. There is an urgent need to prepare our young people to both navigate an unknown and complex future and in-still in them the belief that they can shape a more desirable, sustainable future. To meet this need, it is even more imperative that teachers and school leaders tap into their own creativity and build this same belief in their own capacity to develop and drive change within education.

The Riverside I CAN Approach addresses this need. Built on the principles of design, it focuses on increasing student agency and empowerment through a ‘both and’ approach, instead of an ‘either or’ approach; Graduating students with content and character, passion and compassion, doing well and doing good.

The Riverside School’s 25 year journey is proof that our unique set of processes, frameworks and pedagogical practices, codified under our six pillars, graduates students with the I CAN mindset; Children who are aware of the world around them, enabled with skills and knowledge and empowered to design a more just and equitable future.

Our schools must be places where children grow, thrive and graduate as empowered citizens. Doing so, creates a better world for all of us.