The real expert is rarely in the building

Hi,

When I was still part of the management team of the Niekée and Agora Schools in Roermond, three Agora students came to see me. Their coach had sent them my way. They were working on a project about the Great Barrier Reef, and they had a very practical question.

“Can you bring us into contact with the biology teacher at Niekée?”

My answer, in short, was no.

Of course, I didn’t say it that bluntly. And I didn’t refuse to help them. But I also didn’t want to give them the easiest next step too quickly, because sometimes helping learners is not about opening the nearest door. Sometimes it is about pausing long enough to ask whether it is the right door.

Their request sounded perfectly reasonable. They were doing a project about the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef has something to do with biology. And in the building next door, there was a biology teacher. So far, so good.

But I asked them why they wanted to speak to that specific teacher.

They looked at me as if the answer was obvious. “Because at Agora we don’t have a biology teacher.”

And of course, they were right. Agora didn’t work with separate subject teachers in the traditional way. We worked with coaches, and we connected learners to the knowledge, people, and resources they needed along the way. Still, I didn’t give them the contact details.

I said something like this: “I sometimes have lunch with that biology teacher. She is a lovely colleague. But I have never heard her talk about the sea. Or coral reefs. I don’t even know if she has ever been near the ocean, let alone whether she knows much about the Great Barrier Reef.”

They looked a little confused.

So I continued. “If you invite her for a conversation tomorrow, what do you think she will do tonight?”

There was a short silence. Then one of the girls said, “She will probably look up information about the Great Barrier Reef.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And why do you think she can do that better than you?”

Another silence. This time, a longer one. They didn’t really know.

So I asked a different question. “Where do you think someone lives or works who really knows a lot about the Great Barrier Reef?”

That one was easier. “Australia,” they said. “Maybe a professor or something.”

“Okay,” I said. “Do you think you can find someone like that online?”

They thought they could. And a few seconds later they walked away, full of energy.

A few days later, I saw them again. So I asked, “How is your Great Barrier Reef project going?”

They looked at me and said, “We stopped that project.”

For a moment, I felt terrible. Had I made it too difficult? Had I raised the bar too high? Had I turned their motivation into frustration? I had challenged them, but I hadn’t checked in afterwards to see whether they had been able to turn that challenge into action.

Luckily, that feeling didn’t last long.

One of the twelve-year-olds continued, “We started a new project first. We are now learning how to write an email in English to a marine biologist who works near the Great Barrier Reef, and how to convince him to have an online meeting with us.”

That was the moment I knew something important had happened.

They hadn’t stopped learning about the Great Barrier Reef. They had discovered what they needed to learn in order to learn about the Great Barrier Reef properly. That is a completely different level of ownership.

They were no longer just collecting information for a school project. They were trying to enter the world of the people who actually work with the subject. And to do that, they suddenly needed things they might not have chosen voluntarily if we had offered them as separate school assignments. They needed English. They needed writing skills. They needed to understand how to address an expert respectfully. They needed to formulate a clear request. They needed to explain who they were, what they wanted to know, and why this person should take them seriously. They needed to prepare themselves well enough to make the conversation worthwhile.

And the most beautiful part? We hadn’t told them to do this. We hadn’t written it down as an assignment. We hadn’t turned it into a task. They raised the bar themselves, because suddenly quality mattered to them. Not to please us, not to get a grade, but because they wanted to be taken seriously by someone who truly knew what they were talking about.

And they were motivated to do all of it. Not because there was a test. Not because I told them it was important. Not because it was on page 48 of the book. But because it stood between them and something they genuinely wanted to achieve.

As educators, we often feel we need to be the expert in the room. And in many ways, we are. We know our learners. We know how to ask better questions. We know how to structure a process, give feedback, create safety, and raise the bar at the right moment.

But we are not always the expert they need for the question they are trying to answer.

That kind of expert is rarely in the building.

And that is not a problem. It is a relief.

Because our role is not to know everything about coral reefs, marine biology, engineering, art, entrepreneurship, history, architecture, or climate science. Our role is to know just enough to help learners find direction. Just enough to ask a sharper question. Just enough to prevent them from settling too quickly for the easiest available answer. Just enough to ask the right question.

Sometimes that means not opening the nearest door. Sometimes it means helping learners realise there is a much bigger world behind it.

So maybe this is enough to reflect on for now:

Who is the kind of expert your learners need?

And are you helping them reach that person, or are you still trying to become that person yourself?

I’ll be back in two weeks,

Rob