Reflections from Spring School: Thank-You TIm!

Spring School: Tim Taylor with a group of educators in New Zealand

Te Kura Kōanga | Spring School 2026 brought together a group of teachers and Dramatic Inquiry practitioners in Kirikiriroa for a few days of exploring, playing, thinking and, of course, doing a lot of drama.

A huge thank you to Tim Taylor for making the journey from the UK to spend those days with us. It was a real privilege to have the opportunity to learn from you, to hear your thinking, to explore new ideas and to be reminded of just how much possibility there is within Dramatic Inquiry.

I also want to acknowledge all of the teachers who joined us. Some travelled from around the country, while others were local, but everyone arrived ready to get involved. People really immersed themselves in the experience, stepping into the stories, taking on different roles and being willing to have a go. The questions, kōrero, ideas and unexpected additions that people brought with them became an important part of the stories we created together. It felt less like people were simply attending a workshop and more like we were all contributing to and shaping the learning as we went.

Across the two days we explored Mantle of the Expert, the different voices we can use as teachers, co-creating stories with children, building and maintaining a story world, engagement, teacher language, children's perspectives and the ways drama can become much more than a stand-alone curriculum area.

There was a lot of doing. We stepped into imagined worlds, experimented with different ways of entering and sustaining drama, worked collaboratively, explored historical contexts and experienced what it feels like to be a learner within a Mantle. It is always interesting to experience these things as a participant rather than only thinking about them as a teacher. You notice different things when you are the one being asked to make the decisions, take on the responsibility and work things out with the people around you.

I came home with pages of notes, new questions, ideas I want to try, and plenty of things that have continued to sit in the back of my mind over the last few days. Rather than trying to fit everything I took away from Spring School into one enormous blog post, I'm going to spend some time unpacking a few of these ideas over the coming weeks and months. I'll be sharing some of my reflections from the event, along with the questions I'm still thinking about and the ways these ideas are connecting with my own Dramatic Inquiry practice.

There are some ideas I want to explore more deeply, some practical things I want to try in my own classroom, and some moments from the event that I keep thinking about. Hopefully, sharing them here will give others who weren't able to join us a little glimpse into some of the conversations and learning that happened.

And for those who were there, perhaps it will give us a chance to keep the kōrero going.

Thank you, Tim, and thank you to everyone who travelled, participated, shared, questioned and helped make Te Kura Kōanga 2026 such a special few days.