About

The Rhodes Effective Intelligence Trust

The Trust recognises that parents are the most important educators of children. It promotes activities that are real and physical, as it can be hard for parents to achieve a good balance of activities for their children, who don’t ever get their precious childhood back again.

The Trust was founded by Jerry Rhodes to allow families to benefit from his research and teaching in ‘thinking about thinking’, which educational professionals refer to as Metacognition. The principles of Metacognition can be applied everywhere, whatever you are doing.

Metacognition brings an awareness of what is going on during your thought processes, allowing you to aim and steer your thinking more effectively. Drawing on Rhodes’ experience as the author of three books for the serious reader, the Trust focuses on creating a variety of learning materials to engage children and their parents in Thunkies activities at home.

The first major project is a series of picture books, ‘Thunkies Love Dogs’ for younger children. Book one, Home Alone Harry, is endorsed by Jan Fennell, founder of the Dog Listener training. It tells the story of the Thunkies saving Harry who was about to be unfairly thrown out of the family.

Jerry Rhodes

Founder of the Centre for Effective Intelligence

Jerry has been researching and teaching for over forty years on how to make thinking work better, with businesses, universities and schools. This first arose because, as Head of Training in Rank Xerox he was looking into ‘creativity’ and discovered he was a prolific generator of ideas.

It made such a difference to his understanding that he founded his own consultancy. This led to the collaboration with Philips Eindhoven, and their joint investigations into creativity and metacognition.

Jerry published his first book in the 1980s to introduce metacognition for people at work. It proved such a success and so useful that its methodology, Effective Intelligence, is still being adopted by organisations on each continent and in seven languages, including Chinese.

Many people, who found Jerry’s teaching so helpful in their business life, have asked for it to be made available beyond the workplace.: “Why not at home?”. In order to do this, Jerry has established the educational Trust. Creativeness and how to foster it has been a leading force in what he has brought to organisations and he sees it as an essential skill for learning, at whatever age.

After Oxford and from his early career as schoolmaster, Jerry has always been keen on helping people make the most of their talents, especially children, who are growing the very foundations of their life. He has four children, grandchildren and many nephews and nieces.

Sue Thame

Sue has worked alongside Jerry Rhodes for many years, assisting with the writing and design of his training materials and websites. She started out from university as a journalist; this experience equipping her with the editing and proofreading skills to ensure that documents (nearly always) read well. Her training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique took her into the study and practices of changing habits of thinking and behaviour. As she started working with Jerry, she learned about the deep causes of thinking habits through his unique research.

Sam Carlton

Sam began working with Jerry soon after completing her degree in Graphic Design. Over the years she has assisted him in moving from print to an online format, and along the way she has developed formidable technical skills, enabling Jerry’s ideas to be presented to a wider audience via the web. After over 20 years she is still working with Jerry, which speaks a thousand words…