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A random school inspection revealed that Gavin McCormack had been running a Montessori classroom without knowing it.

In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Gavin — Montessori Australia Ambassador, founder of nine schools and three teacher training centres in Nepal, and bestselling author of The Potential in Every Child — for the show's widest-reach conversation yet.

Together, they trace the moment that changed his career: teaching refugee children in Sydney who had fled Libya, Afghanistan and Syria, and what that classroom taught him before anyone gave it a name.

In this conversation, we cover:

• What parents actually want from a school — safety, intelligence, happiness, in that exact order — and why schools chasing rankings get the order backwards
• The contagion principle, and why children can sense an unprepared teacher before a word is said
• The neuroscience of why your brain deletes almost everything you learn in a day, unless it involved emotion, risk, choice, or something you physically touched
• Building nine schools and three teacher training centres in Nepal, and what that took
• Authenticity, trust and resilience — and why the first two can't be trained into a teacher who doesn't have them
• What Gavin would throw out first if he built a school from scratch tomorrow

A huge thank you to Gavin for his time, and for a conversation that makes an uncomfortably good case that most of what we do in a school day doesn't survive the night.

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The Common Room is hosted by Joshua Darryl Sussex — it is an independent project, produced in a personal capacity and outside of any professional or institutional role. Views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent any employer, university, or organisation. No guest, organisation, or product featured has paid for or provided any consideration for their appearance.

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