Teaching in the Flow

On Emergence, Uncertainty & the Art of Thinking Together. A 4-Week Course for Reflective, Adaptive, and Slightly Rebellious Educators.

Format: 4-week live, online course (2 hrs/week) with optional asynchronous extension.

Dates: Wednesday 4th, 11th, 18th & 25th November 2026

Session times: 9:30 – 11:30am OR 16:00 – 18:00 (UK time)

Fee: £400 per person

WCTA/FLA Partner Schools/Students = 80% discount
State Schools = 50% discount

Facilitator: Anne de Leon

Audience: Teachers, learning designers, and educators seeking a more emergent, relational approach to teaching.

Overview: This course invites educators into a thoughtful rebellion against control-based pedagogy and rigid lesson plans. Instead of “covering content,” we’ll explore how to uncover insight through curiosity, dialogue, and shared inquiry. The course draws on the thinking of educators and philosophers like bell hooks, Paulo Freire, and Gert Biesta. Each week explores a central theme from the “beautiful risk” of uncertainty to the power of dialogue and student-generated questions. Participants will leave with a reimagined teaching philosophy, techniques for emergent lesson design, and a renewed sense of purpose in the classroom. You won’t get step-by-step answers. Teaching in the Flow is a space to wonder, experiment, and reconnect with what drew you to education in the first place.

Meet Anne de Léon: Anne designs inspiring and practical learning programmes that empower educators near and far to rethink their practice and reignite their passion. With experience from primary to higher education across different contexts, she focuses on effective, inclusive, and meaningful teaching and learning. Her approach is reflective and adaptable. She meets educators where they are and collaborates with them to supports real, sustainable change. She is known for creating space for dialogue, insights, and professional connection. Her warm, thoughtful approach sometimes shakes deeply-rooted biases. It also invites deep reflection and professional growth.

Registration and booking:

Teaching In the Flow’ was the most thought-provoking, meaningful, and transformative professional learning experience I have engaged in for a long time. This is a special offering (indeed, I would say it is unique) because Anne provokes deep thinking and holds space for big philosophical inquiry about the purpose of education, while at the same continually brings us back to the complex realities (and tensions) of our classrooms. This is what PD for praxis looks like. Anne clearly lives out her values and the spirit of “in the flow” in how she designs and facilitates the sessions; the sessions were adaptive and responsive to our questions and needs. While the learning was emergent and responsive, we were rooted in and directed by the provocations of critical thinkers like bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Gert Biesta, and Ann Margaret Sharp. I haven’t thought this deeply and critically about my own teaching for a long time and the growth I experienced was due to the supportive community of inquiry that Anne created in our sessions. Now that the course has ended, I find myself missing the depth and meaning of this community. Education desperately needs more PD like this – PD that helps teachers see beyond the status quo and understand what bell hooks meant when she wrote that “the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy”. And we need more of Anne de Leon’s critical, creative, and caring thought leadership! Jacob Huckle

Further detailed information about the course:

In most courses, you ask: What will we cover? In this one, we ask: What might we uncover together? This is not a course for delivering more tools into the already overflowing toolkits of overwhelmed educators. Nor is it a bootcamp for “best practices.” Instead, it is a carefully constructed invitation to step outside the instructional script and into the strange, exhilarating terrain of emergent learning. Welcome to Teaching in the Flow, where certainty takes a backseat to curiosity, and where “thinking critically” doesn’t mean just arguing well, but learning to live in questions.

What This Course Is (and isn’t)
It is:

A space for educators to think, wonder, and unlearn
A philosophical dip into dialogue as a teaching method
A gentle rebellion against content-coverage and control-based pedagogy
A selection of provocations, Socratic seminars, student-led & student-generated inquiry, and thinking routines that sound deceptively simple but destabilize everything

It isn’t:

A One-size-fits-all recipe for teaching
A how-to guide for classroom compliance
A conventional professional development opportunity

Course Structure

Four Weeks | Synchronous | 2 Hours per Week

Designed for Teachers, Learning Designers, and Education Enthusiasts

Each session is structured around a theme, a structure, and a lot of improvisation. There will be breakout rooms, journaling pauses, provocations that don’t resolve, and shared silences that speak louder than any lecture.

Weekly Flow (Not an agenda. More like a trail map; knowing we might stray.)

Week 1: The Beautiful Risk
“What role does uncertainty play in your classroom?”

Unpacking emergence: learning that isn’t a straight line
Meet our philosophical misfits: Freire, Dewey, hooks, and Biesta
Not knowing as a pedagogical stance

Week 2: The Literature of Disruption
“What kinds of questions do you encourage, and discourage?”

Big ideas from Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), Teaching to Transgress (hooks), and Thinking in Education (Lipman)
Dialogue as collective thinking (Wells, Mercer, Wegerif)
Designing provocations that leave space for ambiguity

Week 3: Tools for Thinking, Not Telling
“What happens when we stop being the answer key?”

Practical pedagogy: thinking routines, philosophical questions, QFT
Crafting emergent lessons (with templates that don’t try to control outcomes)
What is your subject really asking?

Week 4: Teaching at the Edge
“What messages do your lessons send about knowledge and power?”

Real case studies (students who broke the curriculum in the best way)
The teacher as co-inquirer, designer, listener
Building inquiry cultures in test-bound systems

Tangible Tools and References for post course learning and deepening

You’ll receive:

A Participant Workbook (with plenty of space for doodles, digressions, and “aha”s)
An emergent Lesson Planning Canvas (for when you want to plan without plotting)
A curated post-session resource pack with links to radical readings and downloadable tools

Optional add-ons

A 3-part email series called Thinking in the Flow, designed to nudge, nourish, and provoke well after the course ends
An invite to a Philosophical Inquiry Circle, aka a monthly “what even is knowledge?” jam

Learning Intentions (more specific goals will morph along the way – welcome in the flow)

Participants will more than likely leave with:

A reimagined philosophy of teaching
Techniques that don’t just punctually do critical thinking but make it a habit
The ability to craft lessons that feel more like invitations than instructions
A heightened comfort with chaos, co-creation, and unresolved questions

Who Should Come?

You, if:

You’ve ever thrown out your lesson plan because something more alive showed up
You believe students are not just receivers but co-creators of knowledge
You’re tired of pretending to know everything, and are keen to start unashamedly wondering out loud
You secretly love philosophy, even if your subject is math, art, or biology

How much does it cost?

£400 per person

WCTA/FLA Partner Schools/Students = 80% discount
State Schools = 50% discount

Optional Add-On: Post-Course Pack. What’s Included:

3-part email series: Thinking in the Flow
Invitation to the monthly Philosophical Inquiry Circle
1 x 60-minute personalised coaching session

Post-Course Pack Price £200

Final Words (and First Invitations)
This is a course for learning and teaching enthusiasts who don’t just want to do better; they want to be different. It is for those who are willing to pause, pivot, and risk being changed by what emerges in the learning space; those who are adventurous. If that’s you, come join us. Bring your questions. Bring your discomfort. Bring a notebook, and leave room in the margins. See you in the flow.

Registration and booking:

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