When One Person Showed Up
As our valued member we want you to be the first know what PeerSphere is planning for the 2026-27 school year. The following is Michael Iannini's reflection on how PeerSphere’s roots, and your needs, are guiding what PeerSphere is planning for next school year.
Founded in Purpose
In 2012, I was contracted by the Association for China and Mongolia International Schools (ACAMIS) to coordinate professional development.
The scope of my work wasn’t clear, but ACAMIS’s Executive Director, Jim Koerschen, made one thing clear, “we need to get our smaller members more involved and find ways to support a greater variety of staff.”
From that directive, three principles emerged that shaped the next decade of work:
Create opportunities for smaller schools to access PD more easily,
Differentiate and diversify PD opportunities for a variety of roles, and
Equalise professional development by offering local language facilitation.
For eight years, the focus was on creating opportunities for those who did not have them. Middle Leaders. Teaching assistants. Support staff. Specialist teachers. Workshops facilitated in Chinese. Educators in smaller or remote schools.
One lesson became clear early: meaningful differentiation comes at a cost.
Making access possible meant shifting weight carefully. Middle leader workshops with stronger budgets were hosted in smaller cities because travel was viable, while teaching assistant and support staff training ran in larger cities where scale allowed lower costs. The goal was simple: ensure opportunity did not depend on role or geography.
The work was never optimised for return. It was optimised for access.
PeerSphere was born from that tension.
From Events to Communities
In 2020, the pandemic and the emergence of Zoom as a learning medium created an opportunity to scale this work. I began hosting the first peer learning network meetings. They evolved into peer learning communities, and eventually into PeerSphere. In 2023, I established PeerSphere with Ewen Bailey, alongside a wider team of hosts and partners.
The intention was simple: if educators valued connection the most, why not create a structure where connecting could be the focus? Remove the content and facilitator from the equation and put the participants and their experience at the center of the learning.
At its peak, PeerSphere connected 2,800 members from 125 schools across 68 communities.
We were not only connecting teachers. We were connecting Heads of School, lab technicians, secretaries, subject leaders, and teaching assistants. Roles that rarely have a professional network suddenly had one.
We won the China School Awards Lifelong Learner Award. We collected hundreds of testimonials from educators who felt less isolated and more capable because of the community they had joined.
PeerSphere became the embodiment of the work that began in 2012: bringing professional development closer to people who otherwise would not access it.
The Night One Person Came
One evening, I hosted a community meeting.
I had prepared carefully. The questions were ready. The structure was tight.
One person showed up.
Not because the topic was wrong. Not because the community lacked value. But because despite the best intentions, it wasn’t a priority for the dozens that joined my community as their first choice.
In that moment, the tension between mission and sustainability was impossible to ignore.
And I understood something clearly: we had created authentic communities, but the demand for community from those that would sustain its costs wasn’t sufficient.
Attendance and retention were the metrics that mattered. To survive financially, we needed high retention and steady growth. Low attendance quickly eroded both.
Schools valued the service. They rarely questioned the price. But most did not integrate it into their professional growth and evaluation systems. Participation was encouraged, not embedded. Professional growth systems were often too underdeveloped to anchor community learning.
Differentiated professional development is expensive. Even during our most efficient operating period the costs weren’t sustainable for our scale. Fewer communities drove those costs higher. We cross subsidised as long as we could, but in the end, I had to write off a significant loss.
Emotionally, it was difficult for hosts who prepared generously and sometimes met with one or two members.
The mission was right. The model was fragile.
But, it is because of what so many people had invested of themselves that this work must continue.
What Has Not Changed
The purpose that began in 2012 remains unchanged.
PeerSphere exists to create opportunities for schools that are too remote, too small, or too constrained by budget to access high quality professional development. It exists to create opportunities for staff that have none. It exists to ensure connection and participant experience is at the center of everything we coordinate.
The method is evolving.
PeerSphere, in partnership with schools and service providers, will continue to make professional development accessible to everyone at a school, parents and students included. At the same time, we will continue to build networks beyond local boundaries so that no one is limited to the perspectives within their own school.
The ambition remains what it was in 2012: equalise access, differentiate intelligently, and ensure learning does not depend on geography, language, or role.
What to expect in 2026 and beyond
In April, all of our communities, including the Peer Mentoring Program, will come to a close. We are currently in the process of planning our events and communities for the 2026-27 school year.
PeerSphere, peer learning specifically, is something that we have made very tangible and visible. It is now essential that the spirit of PeerSphere is visible in everything we do going forward.
Next year, communities will continue, though at a more sustainable scale. These communities will be subsidized by our association partnerships, sponsors and in-person events.
There will be a greater emphasis on in-person events next year. Over the next few months we are running a series of in-person events, alongside a growing offering of online activities, with a very clear mandate: put peer learning at the heart of the experience.
Below I have listed several events we are running in March, April and May. These are just a small sample of what we are planning for next year.
Appreciatively Yours,
Michael
Managing Director
