I have been working to help and support children with high learning potential (HLP) since the late 1960s when I joined Potential Plus UK (then the newly established National Association for Gifted Children). Having set up a committee to run a local branch I later served on NAGC’s national Council of Management for many years, organising and running a large programme of summer schools as well as editing newsletters for different age ranges of members’ children. Then in 1984, to ensure the financial survival of the summer schools, together with an NAGC colleague I set up The Potential Trust.

When my father was asked in the early 1940s what effect his tiny printing company could have when the world looked as though it was going to war, he replied: ‘Perhaps not a lot, but you hope that by throwing a stone in the pond you cause ripples that spread.’  I inherited from him a belief in the importance of sharing ideas, experiences, concerns, and possibilities, and over the years I have organised and facilitated many Potential Conferences for the Trust. The first one was simply an invitation to all the interesting people we knew to come and meet each other, and now we bring together other organisations working to help and support HLP children. These events are based on a strong gut feeling that something good will come of it – and it invariably does.

As well as being a Trustee of the Potential Trust and the Comino Foundation, I am an honorary life member of Potential Plus UK, and a Fellow of the RSA.

At the Fulmer Research Institute in the late 1960s my interest in the scientific education of young people resulted in local schools sending pupils to meet scientists and observe them at work.  This led to sessions in which 11-15 year olds showing natural curiosity could take part in experiments and learn the ways that scientists worked.

The Industry Education Department of the Department of industry looked at the viability of our work and in 1978 funded me to move into full-time educational research as a consultant to Berkshire Educational Authority on local and national educational projects.  The film ‘Engineering Is’ made by Rolls Royce Ltd, based on one of our 6th form technology classes working on an aircraft wing design, won a Bafta Award and copies were sent to all UK schools and also to other countries with a Rolls Royce connection.

My involvement in Industry Education projects brought invitations to contribute to courses and educational conferences throughout the country and I became part of a team advising the Government on rewriting both the Science and the Design and Technology Sections of the British Education System.  Having set up a company offering teacher training courses I wrote associated materials related to National Curriculum Science, Technology, Problem Solving and County Policy G&T Guidelines. I also wrote a series called ‘Let’s Make it work’ for BBC Schools, delivered Children’s Lectures at the Royal Institution on science topics, and led Mathematics Master Classes for the Royal Institution.

I have had both the privilege and the pleasure of working with Anna and the Potential Trust since the early 1980s.  Having been involved for many years in the education of Gifted and Talented young people, which is now known as HLP, our common interests led to a productive symbiotic relationship between my Government work and the summer school courses for HLP children that Anna organised.

Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the RI, and the RSA.

I have been interested in issues around high learning potential for many years, originally participating as an teenager in events run by Potential Plus UK (then NAGC) together with my siblings, one of whom was a DME child.  Now with grown-up children of my own I have many years of experience of the challenges faced by HLP children and their families.

I volunteered as a helper at early Quest Weeks, while I was reading mathematics at Warwick, graduating to a senior position in the pastoral care team in my early twenties.  I gradually became more involved with The Potential Trust, and became a Trustee in the 1980s.  While my professional life was mostly outside the education sector, I worked with a deaf-hearing charity, and I joined the board of two state schools in Enfield, and through participation in a Potential Conference I also spent many years on the Board of an anti-bullying charity with a keen interest in developing the potential of severely bullied children, some of whom were DME.

I have been involved in charities supporting high learning potential children since joining Potential Plus UK when my first child was 6½ years old in May 1998. I came to realise that something was seriously wrong with his education when, in a discussion on the way to school about using the dictionary there to find out what ‘narwhal’ meant, he was told that children weren’t allowed to use the grown-up dictionary. They could only use the Children’s dictionary.  Further investigation revealed that ‘our teacher likes us to read books but not books like that’, the book in question being Erik the Viking. My children are now grown up, having successfully navigated the shoals of the education system, but I have continued my involvement in the support of high learning potential children as a trustee of both Potential Plus UK and the Potential Trust. I am now retired and when not working for charities, I spend my time learning the saxophone and painting water colours.

I am a linguist who teaches German and Translation at the University of Bristol. Prior to that I was the founding partner of an international research and consultancy firm which analysed discourses and market trends for a number of global corporations. I am a fellow of AdvanceHE and the RSA and have written, edited and translated nearly thirty books, often focused on experiences of community.

When you enter a classroom, as a student or teacher, do you smile and look forward to what lies ahead of you? When you start researching an essay topic, do you approach it with a sense of adventure? What you mark a student essay, do you consider that your comments will be read by a human being?These are questions posed by Resonance Pedagogy, a type of teaching and learning prioritising relationships. I came into contact with Resonance Pedagogy through my work with Hartmut Rosa at Deutsche Schülerakademie, a summer school scheme for highly motivated teenagers which most of those involved think is one of the best things in their lives.

I want to know: why does it work, and can the same intellectual excitement be encouraged elsewhere?

Christophe Fricker

Trustee