One of the key stakeholder groups in school-wide initiatives is the parents.

When hosting workshops this year, WAB was committed to helping parents grasp how their child's school day may be changing. It was a signature of our sessions to take part in activities to show what learning might look like in our classrooms. For a recent session, we introduced two of the International Baccalaureate Office's Approaches to Teaching and Learning that underpin FLoW21: collaboration and concept-based learning.

Creating The Future of Learning at WAB is a collaborative partnership including teachers, students, and parents. The learning partnership is essential and the parent voice critical. We need to ensure all of us are informed and ready to be part of the decision making; collaboration is a very important piece of this journey if we are to be successful.

"As a parent, I used to think, I can only cooperate with school passively." After today's session, "I can do better than just supporting the idea by knowing the big picture." – Parent

"How can we do it better? Having listened to the presentations today, I feel that WAB is genuinely asking itself this magic question" – Parent

All of our workshops are collaborative in nature, where each member of the team brings their own style and voice to create a rich and diverse experience for parents.

We also recognize that our parents, too, come from diverse backgrounds with multiple perspectives that can help expand our learning community. To this end, we offer bilingual workshops so that all parents can participate and contribute to shaping The Future of Learning at WAB. Several workshops have been specifically targeted toward our Chinese parent community, providing an inclusive experience for all parents to share and participate.

We will look forward to hosting more sessions for parents next school year, as our work on FLoW21 continues to progress.

This article was written collaboratively by Leanne Erickson, Madeleine Brookes and John D'Arcy.