October 18th marks the publication date for The Learning Rainforest Fieldbook.  It’s so exciting to reach the date when something you’ve been working on for a long time  finally comes to fruition – I just can’t wait for people to read it.

Fieldbook comes out almost exactly two years after The Learning Rainforest was published in 2017.  Now, after 16,000 sales, Rainforest is still going strong – never a best-seller in any list but selling well week after week, much to my surprise and joy! I get told by new people all the time,  how much they’ve been able to take from it, sometimes focusing on the rainforest theme itself, sometimes curriculum, or assessment or the 60 practical strategies in Part Two.

The Fieldbook concept started as a way of me capturing my experience and insights gained from visiting schools as a consultant.  It’s so wonderful being shown around a school by a Headteacher and I wanted to record that in some way.  Then it turned into a way of schools telling their own stories – not my voice, but theirs; a much better idea!  I invited 30 schools that I’d visited or worked with in one way or another to take part and over the last 10 months, they have been producing their case studies.  I could not be happier with the outcomes.  We’ve covered a range of schools types, sectors, age-ranges and geographical areas.

Here’s the contents page – showing the range of fabulous schools involved and the titles of their case study entries:

And here are the maps showing where the schools are around the UK and the World

Each case study includes an intro from me, an overview of the school, some student profiles and detailed case studies exploring one or more aspects of the school’s recent journey: curriculum, assessment, teaching and learning, CPD – and more.

There are also some chapters by me as a follow-up to The Learning Rainforest.

I hope that’s enough of a teaser to tempt you!

The book owes a great deal to all the contributors.

• To Oliver Caviglioli for the cover, the layout template, the many illustrations and the title “Fieldbook”.
• To Sara Stafford for all her coordination work, liaising with all the schools.
• To Rebecca Bafico at John Catt for her superb page by page design work.
• To Alex and his team at John Catt Ltd for their  constant support and encouragement.  They’re really a joy to work with.

Finally, I’d like to highlight the link we’ve made via St Stithian’s Boys’ Prep in Johannesburg to their fabulous Thandulwazi Academy.  The image below illustrates the great work they are involved in.  As a way of giving back, 15% of the revenue from book sales (half of my royalties plus a contribution from John Catt) will be donated to support them in all that they do.

Thanks again to everyone involved in making this happen. I’m so proud of it and all it represents in terms of the work going on in all the schools.  I hope Fieldbook helps to shine a light on the great things going on in schools and colleges everywhere.

Enjoy the book.  Let me know what you think.