Riverside International: two years, 420 students

The starting point

Riverside International came to us after a difficult year — a spike in behavioral incidents in Grade 3, staff turnover in Grade 1, and a parent body asking harder questions than the school’s existing PSHE program could answer. The Head of Lower School wanted something more robust, not a rebrand of what they already had.

Year one

We started with a three-day teacher intensive in August, then weekly coaching cycles. The first shift happened in the staff room: teachers started using a shared vocabulary about their own classrooms. That vocabulary then found its way into the morning meeting blocks, then into the lesson plans.

Year two

By the second year, homeroom teachers were leading all weekly lessons themselves. We moved to a quarterly coaching rhythm and added a three-evening parent workshop series. Regulation incidents dropped 38% from the year-one baseline. More importantly, the teachers told us they felt confident, not just trained.

What we’d do differently

We’d introduce the parent workshops in term one, not term three. The gap between the language at school and the language at home was the biggest friction point in year one.