Product reviews for How do they do it?

What Mark and Zoe have done with this book is to collate hours and hours of listening, seeing and hearing practice from around the country. It is a powerful opportunity to explore the learning that results from two brilliant minds distilling all that lived and learnt experience.

Through every aspect of school life and structure they have unpicked the thinking and reflections of hundreds of different school leaders and teachers. They have been able to triangulate this thinking with what they have seen and synthesised the emerging patterns. This is a powerful body of wisdom to have the luxury to explore.

In every aspect they stress the value of considering our purpose and being deliberate about how we make a path towards it, planning both the potential pitfalls and opportunities that would work best for our students and our staff in our context: where do we want to be? Where are we now? What are the best bets to take us on the path?

It’s not a how-to approach that dictates a set preferred model but an invitation and a scaffold to reflect on this body of learning for the greatest possible outcomes for those that matter most. The most compelling reality exposed is that it is exactly that journey that is the most impactful, the deliberate thought and deliberate action that in the end creates the magic, making something greater than the sum of its parts.