TSSA Roadshows

Pre-2020, the Roadshow was an annual event held in February/March each year. The Roadshow would travel to Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, and an international presenter would hold a day’s workshop at a host school in each of these cities. Previous presenters have, amongst others, been James Anderson from Mindful by Design (Aus), Dr Peter Ellerton from Australia (critical thinking), James Nottingham from Challenging Learning (UK) and Craig Blewett from South Africa (Activated Classroom Teaching).

Spring Roadshow 2024

Building Curiosity through Productive Puzzling

After the hugely successful Spring Roadshow of 2023, Susannah will join us once again to workshop how to challenge young minds to think deeply, critically, and creatively. In today's world, students need to be more than just knowledgeable - they need to be thinkers!

Spring Roadshow 2023

Flexible Mindsets for Self-Directed Learning

Susannah Cole is managing director of reFLEXions, Bermuda, and co-author of "Flexible Mindsets in Schools: Channeling Brain Power for Critical Thinking, Complex Problem Solving, and Creativity". She is an early childhood educator, integrated middle school teacher, specialised autism therapist, learning support teacher and college professor.

Take-aways from this Roadshow were:

the definition of a flexible mindset - “the dynamic and on-going interaction between self-awareness, adaptive strategy use and perseverance that empowers students to evolve and become self-directed”;
notice - to make time to notice thoughts, feelings, and actions so you can figure out what’s working and what’s not (metacognition);
strategies - to give students the time to practice developing their own strategies to reach a goal, this needs to be explicit;
curiosity - curiosity is a tool to help students become active, engaged learners; teachers must resist handing out answers;
executive function strategies - teach strategies and use tools to learn HOW to learn.

Summer Roadshow 2023

Paul Main, founder of Structural Learning, spent ten days in South Africa to share the Universal Framework that he has developed to help students process information and construct knowledge. The strategy promotes creative thinking by emphasising the important connections that exist in every subject and it promotes conceptual understanding that strengthens memory.

Spring Roadshow 2022

We decided to go back to a face-to-face Roadshow in the Spring of 2022, starting off with Leslee Udwin and the incredible work that Think Equal does in the early childhood space. The Think Equal programme has been developed by global thought leaders and it has been implemented in over 25 countries. Partners include UNICEF, UNESCO, the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and Pope Francis’ Global Compact for Education.

Leslee Udwin, founder of Think Equal and delegates

Bena Kallick and Alison Zmuda

The 2022 Roadshow was digital, which meant that there could be more presenters sharing their knowledge and wisdom than before. The 2022 Roadshow has an amazing line-up of speakers, including Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda (US), Judy Lederman (US) and Leslee Udwin (UK). Thinking schools from across the country were also given an opportunity to share their experiences.

Judy Lederman