The Connection Commitment

This book is both a permission slip and a challenge. Permission to refuse the disconnection that has become normalised in schools, and a challenge to actually do something about it.

Drawing on four classic works — The Outsiders, The Metamorphosis, The Odyssey and The Tempest — Matt Pitman explores how schools can reconnect with their students, their staff, their families and their wider communities. The third book in his acclaimed connection series argues that the crisis facing schools today is not simply a workload or wellbeing problem. It is a disconnection problem, and it requires a different kind of response. Teachers are leaving in record numbers, student attendance has fallen well below pre-pandemic levels, and the gap between people and the institutions meant to serve them keeps widening.

The Connection Commitment is not about adding another program or initiative to an already exhausted system. It is about rethinking the conditions under which learning, professionalism and human connection become possible, and committing to building them deliberately. For anyone who works in a school, whatever their role, this book is an invitation to help write a better story.