World Peace Game Masterclass · London · January 2027
Learn to hand your pupils a whole world, and trust them to save it.
A Masterclass for Year 5 and 6 and Key Stage 3 teachers. You watch children play a live World Peace Game every morning, train with Daniel Sheinwald every afternoon, and go home certified for life to run the game at your own school.
Five days. Thomas Tallis School, London. 11 to 15 January 2027.
It sounds like you've sat through your share of training days that looked good on the agenda and had faded by the following Monday. Someone at the front explained what great teaching looks like, you nodded along, and then you went back to thirty children and a scheme of work with no room to try any of it.
It seems like you're carrying something heavier too. Your pupils are growing up with war, climate and division on every screen they own, and most of their week still asks them for the right answer in the right box. You came into teaching to do more for them than that.
And it may feel like the children in front of you could take on far more than school usually asks of them, if an adult would only step back long enough to let them show it.
Teachers who have spent a week beside the World Peace Game talk about what happened to their teaching afterwards, and five days in January is a fair price to find out whether it happens for you.
What happens when you give children the world and keep the answers to yourself
In 1978 a teacher called John Hunter built a board out of plywood for his class in Richmond, Virginia, and filled it with real crises. Over 48 years it grew into a four-level structure, from the undersea floor through land and sea and the air to outer space, holding fifty interlocking problems where fixing one can break another.
Children take on the roles: prime ministers and their cabinets, the United Nations, the World Bank, arms dealers, and a secret saboteur working against everyone. The facilitator never gives an answer. The only test of a decision is the Three Criteria: does it make sense, can you pay for it, and can you deal with the consequences, and the consequences of those consequences. In one of Daniel's games, a boy playing a country much like a hostile, nuclear-armed regime was close to taking refugees hostage as the other powers moved to invade. Given open questions and nothing else, he chose to drop his weapons into the ocean and ask the world to work with him, and he spent the rest of the week building universities and factories with loans from the World Bank.
John told the story of his classroom in a 2011 TED talk, and in the documentary World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements. Since then the World Peace Game Foundation has trained over 1,000 teachers to facilitate the game, every one of them taught to hold back the answer.
"The game is not about the game."
Five days that change the way you teach
Thomas Tallis School, London · 11 to 15 January 2027 · In person · 16 teachers
Each morning you sit just outside a circle of Thomas Tallis pupils as they run the world, close enough to hear every negotiation and far enough back that every decision stays theirs. Each afternoon you work with Daniel on what you have just watched: why the facilitator stayed quiet when a child was struggling, which question moved the game on, and how you will do the same with your own class.
Mornings
Arrive around 8:00 to 8:30. A live game runs for about three and a half hours with a short break, and you move freely around the outside of the circle.
Afternoons
After lunch, a debrief of the morning, then the Masterclass itself, usually finishing by 3:30 to 4:00.
Friday
The children vote for their own awards and reflect on the week, you get time with them at last, and you leave certified.
By Friday afternoon you will
- Run the World Peace Game with pupils at your own school, on a certification that belongs to you for life with no renewal.
- Hold a child through a hard moment without handing them the answer, using the Empty Space approach John Hunter built his classroom on.
- Ask the questions that keep thirty children thinking, starting with the Three Criteria: does it make sense, can you pay for it, can you deal with the consequences.
- Design units that still matter to a pupil in thirty years' time, with the Big O curriculum tool.
- Bring MITs, deliberately impossible creative challenges, into an ordinary lesson the week you get back.
- Hand assessment back to your pupils through self-evaluation, so they describe their own learning in their own words, with no grades and no scores.
- See a problem from several sides at once with the perspective wheel, and teach your pupils to do the same.
- Join a community of facilitators who keep the game alive, with the manual, resource library and forum behind you.
What's included
Is this Masterclass for you?
This is for you if…
- You teach Year 5 or Year 6 and want something your oldest primary pupils will remember for years.
- You teach Key Stage 3 and want your pupils doing the thinking, not watching you do it.
- You lead curriculum or CPD and need a programme your school can run itself, year after year.
- You teach in an international school and want a week in London with teachers from other countries.
- You feel squeezed by an exam-driven timetable and want room to teach the way you came into the job to teach.
- You believe school should produce global citizens as well as qualifications.
This is not for you if…
- You're looking for a passive CPD day to sit through.
- You can't commit to all five days, since certification needs every morning and afternoon session.
- You're not a certified teacher currently employed by a school.
- You believe children need protecting from complexity, and you'd find it hard not to step in with the answer.
What teachers and pupils say after the week
"I reconnected with my original motivation for being a teacher and re-centered my approach on student empowerment. It has influenced every aspect of my teaching."
"Providing less 'sage on stage' pedagogy and having more faith in students' ability to learn collaboratively, and serve more as a 'guide on the side,' has been a career-long challenge for me. This experience showed me how profound student-centered lessons can be for us all."
"It is not often that professional development is actually impactful. This so was!"
The New Jersey Education Association ran this Masterclass for three summers on a $125,000 contract, and teachers like Nalani Scotti came back every year.
Hear it from the pupils
"I always thought that prime ministers were sort of evil in my head, but then when I actually was one in the game, I realised that it was just really hard."
"It's interesting to see how the world's problems interlock almost like puzzle pieces... to solve one, you kind of have to solve the other."
Your facilitator, Daniel Sheinwald
Daniel has run World Peace Games and Masterclasses in Thailand, Australia, the USA, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Dubai, Germany and across the UK, including the games at Thomas Tallis School, where the World Peace Game has now run for eight years. He is a Forest School leader, a certified Gaia Education trainer of trainers in Education for Sustainable Development, and he trains teachers on a UK government-funded programme bringing nature-based experiential learning into the curriculum.
"Daniel has emerged as an exceptional Master Class Facilitator... Daniel is a pioneer of new WPG frontiers, while preserving and embodying all elements that are essential to the Game's authenticity. I've been lucky enough to work with him several times, also in partnership with John, and can't recommend him highly enough."
You will remember the first morning you run it. The board you built stands in the middle of your classroom, four levels high, and your own pupils are crowded round it arguing about water rights, refugee camps and the price of a trade deal. Your finance minister is doing sums in pencil, your prime minister has gone very quiet, and every instinct you have says step in, so you ask one of the questions you practised all week in London and you wait. By Friday your class will have solved something nobody in the room thought they could, and they'll know it was theirs. You'll know how you got there too, because it started with a decision you made in January.
Questions teachers ask
Who can attend?
Certified teachers currently employed by a school. It suits Year 5 and 6 teachers and secondary teachers, especially Key Stage 3, from the UK. For teachers from Europe and the rest of the world, we recommend this game for children aged 9 to 18.
What does the certification let me do?
Run the World Peace Game with pupils at your own school whom you already know. It's yours for life with no renewal. Running it with children you haven't met needs further certification, and the advancement process is explained during the week.
Can my school pay?
Yes. After Daniel confirms your place, your school is invoiced $1,375 / £1,032 / €1,234.
Do I play the game myself?
No. You watch the children play each morning from just outside the circle, and you don't step in. In the afternoons you train with Daniel on what you watched.
Do I have to attend all five days?
Yes. Certification needs every morning and afternoon session, so plan to arrive on Monday morning and stay to the close on Friday.
How is this different from Model UN?
Model UN trains students in diplomatic procedure. The World Peace Game is about what happens inside the child: holding their nerve, trusting their own judgement and working with people they don't fully trust, with no script, no scores and no adult giving answers.
Can we buy the game and run it without training?
No. The World Peace Game Foundation has never sold a boxed version. The game depends on a facilitator who knows when to hold back, and that's what the Masterclass trains.
What age of pupils is the game for?
Groups of 25 to 35 pupils of a similar age, reading at grade level. In UK schools that's Year 5 and 6 and Key Stage 3.
Are travel and accommodation included?
No, you arrange your own. For a full week, a small flat is often cheaper than a hotel.
What support do I get afterwards?
Within about a week of the Masterclass you get the World Peace Game manual, the resource library and the facilitator forum.
Why there are only 16 places
The room at Thomas Tallis School holds the children playing the game and 16 visiting teachers around them, and no more. Places are confirmed in the order applications arrive. Applications close on 22 December 2026 or when the 16 places are filled, whichever comes first.
If you've read this far, January may well be the week you've been waiting for, and the application form is where it starts.
Apply for a place on the January Masterclass
Your place is confirmed when you receive a personal email from Daniel.
Before you apply
Applicants must be certified teachers currently employed by a school. The form asks for the following, so it helps to have it ready:
- Your phone number, with country code
- Your school's name and address
- Your current position
- Any allergies or health issues we should know about
- A few lines on why you want to attend, and how you heard about the World Peace Game
- The email address of the person at your school who handles invoices
- Your agreement to the photography, media and medical waiver, and confirmation that you've read the Intellectual Property and Facilitator Participation Agreement
Daniel reads every application himself and replies by email to confirm your place. Your school then receives an invoice for $1,375 / £1,032 / €1,234. Plan to arrive on Monday morning and stay to the close on Friday, because certification needs every session of the week, and you'll arrange your own travel and accommodation.
Questions before you apply? Email daniel@dynamiceducationuk.com.
Your details are used only to process your application and confirm your place, and are not shared with third parties beyond the World Peace Game Foundation.