As a passionate educator who recognises that my job in the classroom is far greater than extending students' knowledge in an academic discipline, it has long been a desire of mine to think about how we teachers can shape the character of young people that they might grow up to be adults who seek to heal a divided world. I started Teaching Tolerance because I wanted to facilitate discussions between classroom practitioners about where we see intolerant behaviours in the classroom, how we tackle them, and how we use the classroom as a springboard for shaping young people to become adults who make our world a better place.

My approach to this topic grew from a combination of my teaching experience and my research into the history of tolerance in the Western World. I believe in a "lessons from History" approach, considering the story of how we arrived at where we are, in order to think about what lessons we might learn from our forebears to help us reshape our world today. My firm conviction is that by getting teachers together, talking about our experiences and engaging in shared reflections on the past, we can develop strategies that will help us to facilitate young people building for the future. 

“Before Vela, approvals felt vague. Now there’s a clear moment when everything is agreed on, and I can move forward with confidence.”