Stepping into Trevor MacKenzie’s classroom …
I’m just wrapping up a 10-week trip to Canada, sipping on my final Canadian IPA, reflecting on what an epic trip this has been. The vision has been this:
Wouldn’t it be cool if I could create opportunities to learn from and with other incredible educators, in person, and then share some of those insights with others so that those ideas can spread?
What if I could take one snapshot of practice and share that one idea? Something that any educator, anywhere could engage with?
What if, as we build a bank of practice, we could make links between those powerful pieces of practice? What if, over time, this began to build a vision of what education could look like at its most impactful?
Could this, over time, support educators to make impactful tweaks? Changes in their practice that would empower them to feel more connected to their “why” as educators and stay true to their visions for education and the young people with whom they work?
“Yeah but …” and “what if …”
You’ll have noticed a few of my favourite bits of Learnish here: “What if …” and, a new favourite we use in our Learning Pioneers meet ups all the time, “Wouldn’t it be cool if …” (wonderful for visioning forwards!)
The alternative to “what if …” is “yeah but …” – something we can all fall privy to in education, if we’re not careful:
- Yeah, but that won’t work in my context
- Yeah, but that’s not relevant for me
- Yeah, but I don’t have the resources for that
- Yeah, but my school wouldn’t allow me to do that
- Yeah, but the curriculum doesn’t make space for that
“Yeah but” stifles creativity and positive change. It keeps us stuck in the status quo and “we’ve always done it this way …”
I humbly believe it’s our responsibility as educators to catch that voice and notice when we’re letting “rocks” get in the way of innovative practice. I want us to be the antidote to “yeah buts”!
As Ron Ritchhart says:
“Creating a new story requires that the author or authors of that new story cast aside the destructive ‘Yah But’ mentality, and ask ‘What If?’”
And, we do want to create a new story for education, don’t we?!

Stop one: Trevor MacKenzie’s classroom

Where better place to start with this global educational journey of discovery than Trevor MacKenzie’s classroom?!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Trevor’s work, Trevor teaches and supports schools across the world to develop an inquiry approach. His books “Inquiry Mindset” and “Inquiry Mindset: Assessment Addition” have inspired and challenged our practice in Learning Pioneers and PressPlay, enabling us to not only dream and wonder about how to embed a rigorous approach to inquiry in our schools and classrooms but provide us with practical steps and examples on how to go about this. Trevor is living and breathing the grapples of embedding an inquiry approach and developing the LPA with his secondary students every single day.

To give a bit of context to when/where I was stepping into learning in Trevor’s classroom – His students were in the middle of planning their own free inquiries. Students had used the sketchnote above to plan their proposals for their inquiries. During the lesson I was lucky enough to be part of, students were planning their next steps for gathering research and evidence for their inquiries. One common aspect of free inquiry is to plan an interview with a research or “expert” who might be able add insight and an authentic voice to your inquiry. Many of the students were planning towards this interview.
The key word that stood out to me from having the privilege to spend time in Trevor’s classroom was “trust”. So, I wanted to take this opportunity to explore trust with you all. Here are some questions I’d like us to ponder:
- Why might trust be an important ingredient for an LPA (or any!) classroom?
- How can we cultivate more of it?
- What was Trevor putting in place that we can apply to our own practice and classrooms?
- What impact might that make on engagement, happiness and learning?
Why trust and why is it important?
Trust is the basis of strong relationships. Without trust in a classroom, students don’t know where they stand, who stands FOR them, where to turn. When trust is in place, students feel safe and can use that safety and security as a launch pad to take risks in learning. Trust is also reciprocal. When we trust students, they trust us back – And they will more often than not step up to that trust. We all know what trust in a relationship feels like. We also know what it feels like when there’s a lack of trust.
Trust is a cornerstone of creating psychological safety, something we have explore in depth in our Learning Pioneers Leadership Mastermind. Because, as leaders, we definitely want to be creating the conditions for psychological safety in our schools so that teachers feel safe to take risks in developing their practice. When we unpicked psychological safety, we understood that we created psychologically safe classrooms and schools through several elements in our approaches and practice. As you will see, “trust” is in there.

But how do we create trust? Have we ever taken time to pay conscious attention to how we are creating that trust?
How do we build trust?
A-ha, the magic question! I invite you to take a moment to reflect on that one – How do you create trust in your classroom?
You might come up with a list that looks a little something like this:
- I try to stay true to my word
- I apologise when I’ve made a mistake
- I make students feel welcome and get to know them
- I ask my students questions to find out more about them
- I try to be consistent
- I build relationships over time
These are all great on paper. But what do they really look like in practice? How can we go the extra mile to create an ever-deeper trusting relationship with students? So that we DO make a difference to them and their lives. So that they feel seen, heard and valued. So that they leave our class braver, more self-aware, more self-loving than they started. And so that they know they can make mistakes, fail forwards, take risks in our classrooms.
4 practical ways to create trust
There were so many aspects of Trevor’s practice and our conversations I could have focused on (supporting English Language Learners, the use of the classroom environment in inquiry, tailoring learning for more equity in education …), but the concept of “trust” jumped out from the second I was in the classroom. Here are a few cool ways Trevor created a feeling of trust – And these actions were done so subtly, they could have gone unnoticed or seemed simple – But they were purposeful actions from Trevor which, over time, created the atmosphere of togetherness and trust. No mean feat in a secondary classroom where Trevor sees the students a couple of times a week.
1. What message do you send when students arrive in your classroom?

This was the first aspect that stood out to me. Before class, Trevor opened up his classroom (the whole side of his classroom opens which is pretty cool!). Just this small gesture, sent a message:
“You’re welcome. Come in.”
Not only that, he let students come into the classroom in their own time (before class was due to start) and strike up conversation with their friends. When the moment “felt right”, he started class.
No students were late.
This reminded me of what might happen in an Early Years or lower primary classroom – In many contexts in which I’ve worked, we would let the children come in and engage in play, therefore warming up to learning, transitioning into school and giving children the opportunity to connect with their friends. Doing this meant that children immediately felt in “Learning Mode”. They weren’t being judged, or measured as they stepped into the classroom.
A few questions for you to think about:
- Do you think the start to a lesson or school day matter? Does it make a difference how students enter into a classroom and into learning?
- How do students arrive into your class? How are you intentional with this?
- Have you purposefully set up the beginning of your classes to create a feeling of belonging and trust? If not, is this something you think might make a difference? Is there anything holding you back? If so, what are you putting in place that creates that feeling?
2. How do you communicate deadlines and expectations?
This was one of my favourite parts of observing Trevor’s practice. He had some many neat bits of “Learnish” that enabled his students to know what was coming and to feel safe – No sudden deadlines or “surprise Performance Mode” moments here! Trevor built up to challenges with skilful language. Here were a few snippets of supportive Learnish I picked up from Trevor.
In Powering Up Children, when Guy and I share Learnish, we share the Learnish with the impact – This way, we not only gain an understanding of the type of language that encourages powerful learning in the classroom, we, very importantly, understand the potential impact of that language on attitudes to learning. I will do the same here with the Learnish I heard in Trevor’s classroom
“I encourage you to …”
As James Nottingham would say, this “warmly encourages students into their wobble zone”. This phrase was followed up with a stretch. It also helped clarify how to be successful in this learning .
“I’m very much looking forward to seeing that.”
Don’t we just want to feel encouraged sometimes?! What Learnish do you have in place that encourages students; makes them WANT to learn?!
“Who’s already done their interview to inform their research? You can share your learning first.”
This compelled me to write down the phrase “pre-emptive support”. Trevor shared these guidelines towards the end of the lesson, in preparation for the next lesson. Now, those students who had done their interviews knew to prepare to share them. This also set them up to be teachers and coaches – The idea was that they share insights from those interviews, which would then, in turn,
a) Distill their thinking and
b) Set their friends up to succeed. Again, James Nottingham talks about this concept when sharing the idea of “preview” (snippet taken from our Learning Pioneers “challenge” course with James Nottingham):
Trevor also has a “deadline calendar” on his classroom wall, which he describes in more detail in “Inquiry Mindset: Assessment Addition”, where students can add stickers to indicate when their deadlines in other classes are coming up. This enables Trevor to plan for and around “tight spots” and to build empathy and trust with his students. This says: “I care enough to listen to you, take your other challenges in school into account and find a way forward together based on what you have shared.” I.e. this creates trust – I’m FOR you.

I also loved that Trevor’s lesson started with a think-pair-share on where the students were in their inquiry process and where they needed to go next. One student shared back, “Well, I wasn’t here last class but I heard …” Wow! This student actually asked about the class she couldn’t attend, caught up and was able to report back?!
There was another student taking a quick screenshot of the overview of the expectations from his friend. So, the ethos of supportiveness had gone beyond the teacher into the DNA of how students showed up in the classroom: “We’re in this together; we’re here to support and challenge one another. We are motivated to do this independently”
I haven’t seen that level of trust or “WITHness” in a secondary classroom often (see this video of Mark Finnis, relationships coach, talking about WITHness). It had been created over time with tweaks in language and a consistent message of “being in this together.” The examples I have shared are just a few snippets of what Trevor will have consciously put in place over time to create connection and trust with his students.
3. Where do you place yourself in a classroom?
This one will be short and sweet! But it’s just a key question and sends such a clear message. Trevor was everywhere in his classroom – he moved around, sat with students, both at their tables and a little away so they could have a discussion yet know he was there – with them, for them. This shifted throughout the lesson.
Do you tend to stay in one place in your classroom?
Or do you move around?
If you asked your students which area of the classroom they were most likely to see you, I wonder what they might say …?
Do you allow students space for independence and agency in their learning?


One of the key aspects of the free inquiry Trevor’s students were embarking on was that they were expected to choose and develop a learning disposition during their inquiry. As I spoke with students individually, they were very clear on which learning disposition they had chosen and why. Quite a few had opted for “Self control”. They had different reasoning for this:
“We’re doing a free inquiry so I knew it might be a challenge to stay on task and not get distracted.”
“We’re teenagers so sometimes self regulation can be hard!”
What insight!
Having the freedom to choose which disposition to strengthen builds trust. Trevor was trusting his students to have the insight and self-knowledge to know which disposition would be best to strengthen in this inquiry.
Not only that, developing themselves as learners whilst diving into inquiry adds another layer into the students’ learning – I’m not “just” learning about something that interests and motivates me, I’m learning to become a better learner in the process.
- Do you ask students to build an understanding of learning dispositions? What they are? What they look like? How to improve them over time?
- What have you noticed about having reflective learning conversations and the development of trust in the classroom? Can you see a link between the two?
A strength and a stretch
One thing I love about Trevor’s workshops is that he always talks about a “strength” and a “stretch”. I wonder, looking at the examples of building trust above, what would you say is a strength for you? And what would your stretch be? How will you go about developing that?
What an honour to learn from and with Trevor and his students! Trevor is based in Canada but travels internationally too. If you have the opportunity to hear him speak about his work in real life, I highly recommend going! Trevor will be in Australia (in Canberra, Brisbane and Perth) in July and in Bangkok next April. Go if you can!
If you’re interested in super-charging your learning and finding out more about the Learning Pioneers community, guided by myself, fueled by learning power minds across the globe, consider checking out this FREE webinar on “What really matters in education.” (clue: creating trust matters!). We’d love to see you there!