for those who know that the way we gather needs to change.
Interbeing 2028: Schools As Living Ecosystems
Schools are Living Ecosystems.
And the people tending the ecosystem are usually the ones with the least time to step back and look at it.
You know the shape of it. The week that fills before it begins. The decisions that arrive faster than you can think them through. You are the still point a whole community turns around, and almost no one gives you the space to think clearly about the thing you’re actually responsible for.
Interbeing is a time to do exactly that. Always held in a place of beauty and calm, far enough from your inbox to think, but structured enough that you go home with something you can use.
Not a conference. Not a retreat. Two days of real work on the school you lead things in, in a place that makes that work possible.
What You’ll Leave With
You’ll leave with three things, written down.
This is the part to hold onto. Whatever else the two days give you -and they give a lot – you go home with these.
A pattern you can finally name. The inherited habit, the meeting that repeats, the decision only you can make and the authority you already hold to change it.
A real problem, moved. One live challenge from your own school, taken further by the questions of people who lead schools too. Not advice, just clearer thinking.
One change, with a first sentence. The smallest viable step, the person who’ll resist it, and the opening line you’ll actually say… rehearsed before you fly home.
How Your School Community Benefits
This is an investment in your school, not just your leaders.
A sharper strategic mind back in the building. Two days of structured thinking on real problems, not theory, means your staff returns with clearer thinking on the challenges that have been circling.
A culture that leads from the top. When senior leaders model what it looks like to tend to themselves, to think deeply, and to lead with presence rather than pressure – that ripples. Staff notice. The ecosystem shifts.
Retention, before it becomes a crisis. The leaders most likely to leave are the ones who never get space to remember why they stayed. (Our research on leadership transitions deeply supports this.) Two days is a small investment against the cost – financial, cultural, human – of losing the people who are at the centre of everything.
A Sample Interbeing Schedule
Day One: Turning Inward
Part One
Sat
9.45 - 11:00
Option 1: "Poet-tree”
Poet-tree uses the metaphor of a tree — roots, trunk, branches, canopy, fruit — to help school leaders tell their leadership stories through the senses and through writing. Set in the gardens of Poomjai, Bangkok, this is a slowing-down practice for leaders who want to find language for what they already know but haven't yet said.Your leadership has roots older than your job. Poet-tree helps you find them.
Option 2: "What Does the Canal Know?"
An embodied reflection session using the solar boat rides. Small groups of five or six, floating slowly along the khlong, with a single coaching question posed by a facilitator and then left open. The movement of the water, the passing temples and wooden houses, the absence of urgency — all of it does the work that a seminar room never could.
Part Two
Sat
11.10 -12.25
Option 1: "Craft as Thinking"
One of Poomjai's rotating workshops (natural tie-dye, traditional crafts). Make something with your hands while not talking about work - a different kind of thinking is given permission to surface. What do you notice about yourself when the outcome doesn't matter?
Option 2: "What Does the Canal Know?"
Lunch
Sat
12.30 - 13.30
Part Three: The Panel & The Provocation
Sat
13.45 - 15:00
"Place as Our Teacher"
Meet thinkers, makers and creators from this region who will inspire, challenge our thinking and ask - What does a thriving community look like, and who decides what is worth learning? The format is conversational, not a panel with questions from the floor.
Integration time/ tea break
Sat
15.00 - 15.30
Day One Close: Campfire-like Circle
Sat
15.30 - 16:45
"The Unsaid Things"
One invitation: Tell us something true about leading that you've never said out loud in a professional context. Taking the lead from our campfire setting from Dubai, this deepens it with a named purpose and a ritual that we will revisit on day two.
Day Two: Turning Forward
Part One
Sun
09.30- 10.45
Option 1: "What’s Your Throughtopia"
A morning session using the garden as backdrop for something structured but generative. Leaders work in pairs to understand the concept of “throughtopias” - write one thing you would change about your school if the reaction did not matter.
Option 2: "Interbeing in Practice"
The concept at the heart of our gathering. Not a lecture on Buddhist philosophy, but an experiential exploration: Where in your school does genuine interdependence exist? Where is it absent? In small groups, map your school communities as living ecosystems — who is connected to whom, who is isolated, what is sustained and what is depleted.
Thai Cooking / Natura Café Experience
Sun
10.45 - 12
A shared practice in nourishment and trust. We cook together using garden-grown ingredients, guided by local cooks. When did you last let someone else feed you — in any sense of that word?
Light Lunch/tea break together
Sun
12.00 - 12.45
Closing: Carrying It Forward
Sun
12.50 - 14:00
"A co-created song for these times & Closing Ritual"
We will create something of beauty together, and borrow something to take back to our schools. We close not with a summary, but with a single question left unanswered, deliberately.
Your ecosystem is asking for your attention.
We keep this gathering deliberately intimate. Not to create scarcity, but because depth requires it. The conversations that change you don’t happen in a huge crowd.
Roots. Resourcing. Relationship.
Tend to yourself, so your entire school’s ecosystem can thrive.
Your Interbeing Team
Dozens of combined years in education and leadership. An unshakeable belief in people.
Gill Dean
Director & Lead Coach
Brings warmth, rigour, and a gift for holding space that feels both safe and stretching.
Matt Hall
Director & Lead Coach
Asks the questions that stay with you long after the session has ended.
Naomi Ward
Head of Learning
Weaves together the poetic and the practical — helping leaders find a language for what they already know but haven't yet said.
Kathryn Hemming
Relationships Lead
Creates conditions for the kind of honest conversation most of us rarely make time for.
Kyra Kellawan
Head of Engagement
Holds the container for a nourishing culture of community-making.
Julie Rees
Leadership Coach
A rare gift for noticing - creating the conditions in which honest, unhurried conversation can finally happen.
Together, they will not tell you what to think. They will create the space in which you hear yourself again.
Interbeing is a place where artisans and guides from the neighbourhood are invited to share their skills, from traditional crafts to home-style recipes, keeping local wisdom alive.
Our programme will interweave with traditional workshops, sharing moments of deep nourishment together: traditional food, crafts, and music.
All in beautiful natural settings that allow for thinking time, embodied learning and an exhale.
No podiums.
No PowerPoints.
Open air and open questions. Movement and music. Story and stillness. Creative provocations from local voices who see the world differently.
MSB’s team of coaches and facilitators — deepened by years of learning how to hold regenerative space — will be your hosts. They will not give you answers. They will create the conditions in which you find your own.
In a world driven by achievement and outcomes, this is an invitation to pause — and return to wonder.
Who this is for
Interbeing is for educators and school leaders who:
- You crave space to slow down and reconnect to what matters
- You want to lead with presence, not pressure
- You believe education can be joyful, relational, and regenerative
- You’re proud of what you’ve built — and quietly asking, what next?
- You are ready to be changed by place, people, and presence
Maybe you’re proud. Maybe you’re running on fumes. Maybe you’ve built something powerful, and now find yourself asking, “What next?”
This is space to answer that.
Who this is not for
- You’re chasing CPD points or inbox zero
- You prefer polished slides to honest conversation
- You want someone to tell you what to do
- You’re not ready to show up, let go, and lean into what’s real