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Richard Cummins
Richard began his teaching career at Thomas Bennett School in Crawley, before moving to Wootton Bassett School in Wiltshire. In both schools he took a keen interest in how pupils learn and in the mid-eighties developed an imaginative programme linking the school with the business community in Swindon. Working with companies such as Motorola, Nationwide, Allied Dunbar, and WH Smith he introduced mentoring programmes and jointly developed curriculum projects with a business focus. Allied Dunbar were using Accelerated Learning and other companies were involved in cognitive education programmes.
Moving to Wiltshire LEA Richard worked with both primary and secondary schools to develop innovative approaches to learning, often involving the business community. The development of Thinking Skills resources for schools in the early 90's led to schools and LEAs across the country asking for support.
In 2001 Richard and Rikki Hunt, Managing Director of Burmah Petroleum and Chief Executive of Petrol Express and Fuel Force launched Kestrel Consulting. Since then the company has trained over 30,000 teachers and works with Local Authorities and schools across the country.
In recent years Kestrel has developed a whole-school approach to the teaching of thinking and has established a partnership with Professor Bob Burden of the Centre for Cognitive Education at Exeter University and Imaginative Minds, publishers of Teaching Thinking and Creativity.
Nick Symes
Nick is an education consultant and project manager with a varied portfolio.
He has a keen interest in thinking skills and cognitive education and has worked closely with teachers and young people delivering training in this area. He is an accredited trainer of trainers for Hyerle's Thinking Maps and has recently been facilitating workshops across England.
He has been associated with Kestrel Consulting for a number of years and this has included working with the inspirational international expert on thinking skills, Gill Hubble.
His other project work has included coordinating a DfES Pathfinder project, working with a group of further education providers to develop a collaborative approach towards local provision, delivering training to a group of headteachers to establish a behaviour management strategy within their schools and setting up and coordinating a project to re-engage at risk 16 year olds. In addition he has worked with two organisations developing programmes of workshops and conferences that have been marketed nationally.
He is currently involved in setting up a vocational skills centre for 14-16 year olds.
Prior to his consultancy work, Nick had 27 years in teaching with 10 years as a Deputy Headteacher in a successful comprehensive school.
A musician by training, he sings regularly with a small chamber choir based in Winchester.
Fiona Knapp
During her teaching career Fiona has had extensive primary experience in large and small schools, in rural and urban areas and overseas. She was a Head Teacher for thirteen years, leading three very diverse schools in South Derbyshire, Derby City and latterly in South Suffolk. She is passionate about children's thinking and learning and firmly believes that the development of higher order thinking skills lies at the heart of successful lifelong learning. She decided to move away from headship in order to pursue her passion for learning and teaching and to work more directly with children, and in the field of professional development of those involved in enhancing the quality of thinking and learning in our schools. She maintains regular contact with the primary classroom, teaching in her local primary schools where she has introduced a range of thinking tools including Mind Mapping, Edward de Bono's Six Hat Thinking, Philosophy for Children and David Hyerle's Thinking Maps. She is also working with Professor Bob Burden of Exeter University to develop a system of accreditation for a 'Thinking School' in consultation with the university.
Fiona is an accredited trainer both for David Hyerle's Thinking Maps and for the 'Write from the Beginning' programme, which uses the Thinking Maps specifically for developing children's writing in the primary years. She also offers training in Philosophy for Children (Community of Enquiry), Edward de Bono's 6 Hat Thinking and CoRT tools, and Arthur Costa's Habits of Mind. She has been involved in training whole clusters or pyramids of schools, whole school staff at both Primary and Secondary level and Advisory staff, working across the UK from Liverpool to Whitstable, Banbury, Brent, Essex and Suffolk. She is also available to work alongside schools who wish to develop as Thinking Schools on a longer term basis.
Nanette Paine
Nanette has worked in most sectors of education - primary, middle, secondary and further education - and was headteacher of a highly successful primary school in Hemel Hempstead. She currently works as an Educational Consultant, Trainer and Coach drawing on her extensive experience and tailoring training and consultancy to the needs of the school.
Nanette is passionate about the importance of providing every child with a quality education. Among the strategies she used to raise self-esteem and attainment in her role as headteacher, Nanette introduced working partners, peer coaching, thinking skills - including De Bono's Six Thinking Hats and Hyerle's Thinking Maps - multiple intelligences, accelerated learning and NLP (she is an NLP Practitioner!) all of which she now offers to schools as professional development.
Nanette has worked with many schools to develop approaches to teaching and learning, managing teams, supporting staff in challenging schools, time management and coaching. She has worked on NCSL's leadership programmes and delivers the London Leadership Centre's Mentoring-Coaching courses. Nanette has been coaching for some years and enjoys the challenge of working alongside colleagues in a range of educational environments. She believes in the power of thinking skills and coaching as the fundamental means of raising standards within a caring environment.
Teresa Williams
Teresa is a former secondary Headteacher who maintained a career-long interest in both the creation of a relevant and enriching secondary curriculum and the development, for students, of transportable, personal skills.
Teresa remains particularly involved with the transition from school to employment, training and further education and the development of skills that are crucial to life and work.
In 2002 Teresa joined HTI as a trainer in leadership behaviour and the development of high performing teams. In this capacity she works with school leaders of all levels developing bespoke training programmes to connect systems leadership with school development and emotional intelligence with entrepreneurship and creativity.
The development of the personalised learning and Every Child Matters agendas provided the impetus to explore further the connections between emotional intelligence and thinking and learning theory in which field Teresa has delivered training to numerous groups of middle tier educationalists and practitioners.
Teresa is a Hay Group Emotional Competency Inventory Coach and a registered MBTI practitioner.
Trained in the application of David Hyerle's Thinking Maps, Teresa has expertise in a broad range of thinking skills methodologies.
Teresa became an independent consultant in 2006, maintaining work for both HTI and Kestrel Consulting. She is a member of the Institute of Directors and has presented papers and led workshops at conferences in the UK, USA and Europe.
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