Thank you for joining this workshop. A school’s support handbook does far more than list policies: it sets the cultural tone for inclusion. In international schools, staff turnover means support knowledge leaves every June. This session explored how a handbook written collaboratively, by the people who do the work, can outlast the people who wrote it.

The idea in brief

A support handbook lasts when the people who do the work write it together, with time protected and a review cycle built in.

The approach draws on two lenses. From sustainability: resilient systems keep working through disruption, and in international schools turnover is the disruption we can predict every year. From anthropology: written rules never fully capture how work is really done, and the knowledge that keeps a school running lives in the people doing it.

Five principles

1. The people affected write the rules.
2. Grassroots work needs a sponsor.
3. Write for the newest person in the building.
4. Separate what families need from what staff need.
5. Build review into the calendar.

Further reading

• James C. Scott (1998). Seeing Like a State. Yale University Press.
• Julian E. Orr (1996). Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Cornell University Press.
• Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press.
• Elinor Ostrom (1990). Governing the Commons. Cambridge University Press.

Work with me

I welcome conversations with schools and organisations that want to review their support handbooks or build more inclusive systems of support. I can facilitate the full process with your team, including the revision activity used in this workshop.