replacing my road signs with flowers

I started the day in an unusual way (for me) with a train journey to central London. Needless to say no seats available but I managed to read most of the article about the 'no excuses' approach to behaviour in the TES from 14th Nov 2011 by William Stewart (this was despite the fact it was so crowded on the train that I had to hold the paper right up to my face which caused difficulties because most things need to be read at arm's length nowadays ....).


I then went to day one of a two day conference/CPD on leadership challenges in schools (based largely on state maintained UK schools) facilitated by Prof John West-Burnham (JWB) (day 2 in January 2012).

Interesting stuff and I filled a small notebook with ideas from colleagues there from a range of other schools, and with ideas from the Prof himself. I hope that I do not misrepresent anyone (least of all the speaker) so I put in my usual disclaimer that this is just my 'take' on what was said.

One thing I learned was that there is a road in London where they took away all the road signs and reduced traffic jams and other incidents. I wonder how that contrasts (or otherwise) with the 'no excuses' approach? Well, in some ways it's the same thing because it's about what JWB referred to as 'consensual authoritarianism'. In my school we have the Golden Rule of respect for all - when we can be sure that this rule is the modus operandum of all members of the community all the time, and not just in the classroom - then I will know that our flowers are in bloom (SMSC).

I am sort of working backwards through my thoughts during the day. Oh, and also throwing some thoughts I have been having recently (probably mentioned elsewhere on this blog!) about management and leadership. I think I've written recently something I discussed with a colleague when she asked me what is the difference between management and leadership: for me the difference is that leaders are able (albeit with some difficulty at times) to 'let go': to delegate responsibility and not just tasks. The diagram below is just me thinking out loud - is it right, what do you think?

Referring back to a recent post, I was thinking again about parallel leadership as opposed to sequential leadership and School Improvement Processes as opposed to a School Improvement Plan (who can write plans when things around us change so rapidly? - any thoughts?).

Something that exercises a lot of thought amongst school leaders is how we will demonstrate and evidence leadership capacity for Ofsted? How can we ensure that every member of the school community (teachers, other staff, students, parents, governors) contributes to the leadership of learning, and to the school improvement process? Is everyone on the bus? Do we all know the destination? The route? Is it a bus or a tram - i.e. on rails.

Prof West-Burnham said (hope I've got this right), "Government hands over to professionals and then professionals hand over to the community." Is this actually part of social evolution? ("One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it can change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world." Barack Obama)

What are the collective moral leadership responsibilities that we face as educators and education leaders? Please comment :-)

Building capability

I recently went to a workshop on sustainable leadership run by Prof Brent Davies. I hope he will not mind my brief bit of thinking out loud which came out of my personal reflection following that day. I begin with a couple of points made by Prof Davies on the day, the following numbered points are my 'version'. Please remember that I have used his ideas here but have not necessarily repeated verbatim.

“A strategically focused school is one that is educationally effective in the short-term but has a clear framework and processes to translate core moral purpose and vision into excellent educational provision that is challenging and sustainable in the medium- to long-term.”


Rationale: enduring success; 85% of strategic plans fail because things change before you get there; we need to move away from sequential leadership towards parallel leadership. We need to get all members of the school community thinking strategically (note: thinking not necessarily writing-it-down).

Some key ideas for moving from Good to Outstanding …….

1. Identify where intervention is needed then outline clearly why, what, where, with whom and why --- consistency across classrooms, consistency in middle leaders’ approaches. How do we discourage compartmentalised thinking and encourage whole school perspectives?

2. Building capacity … letting go: delegating responsibility not tasks. Sustainability is “the ability of individuals and schools to continue to improve to meet new challenges and complexity in a way that does not damage individuals or the wider community but builds capacity and capability for the benefit of all.”

3. Reflecting on the organisation: should we set reading activities for leaders between meetings  and should all teams be having one meeting per term which is purely reflective/strategic? Consider structure of meetings … model what we want

4. Develop a culture of engagement in strategic discussion/debate. We should be using invitational language when we speak to staff, students, parents, governors, community – ‘join us on the learning journey’
5. School Improvement Process (not necessarily Plan) – this needs to be strongly tied to Performance Management and CPD (Davies' example: ask each team to produce 1 side of A4 ‘where are we now’ and 1 side ‘where should we be in 3 to 5 years time’ – this is a process not an action plan, to get people thinking strategically). If you asked any member of staff, “what are you doing this week and/or next week to contribute to the SIP?” would you get consistent answers?

6. Think carefully about recruitment and development of leaders at all levels. What demonstrates the potential for leadership? Some ideas from Davies included: ability to reflect on yourself, passion, courage – see it = do something about it, confidence and credibility, see the big picture, mastering the basics of their role quickly and look for more, don’t look the other way or walk past incidents, initiative and self-motivation, intellectual curiosity, resilience and empathy.

Thinking out loud

As usual, something sparks my day dreaming about education and here we go again.....

This time it was Steve Joyce on Undercover Boss USA  ----

Well I work in an organisation of only about 1000 or so people and everyone knows me so I could not go 'undercover' but I wonder how I would fare as any one of the following (even for an hour let alone a day):

- receptionist
- student services
- exams analysis officer
- PA
- site staff
- finance
- school business manager
- catering
- or even ..... a classroom teacher with a full teaching load!

Makes you think doesn't it? I have got to my job through a teaching route and nowadays I dabble with all of the above through liaising, line management etc. BUT could I do the job?

Of course there are some things here that I just don't have the knowledge or skills for and because there is only one person doing some of them I would slow them down and hinder them so much that even shadowing for a day is not practical.

So how could I pay forward some of the great contributions that they make? Do they know they are valued?

Food for thought again .....

(PS thanks to the colleague who gave me a great card today that reminded me yet again that we are never alone when we work as a real team.)

Performance management and all that

I have done a lot of thinking about perfomance reviews in schools over the years. In my last post, I considered some ideas about leadership, tasks and responsibility. Constantly reflecting on conversations with friends and colleagues (and, yes there is an overlap in those groups), I have had three discussions in the last few days:

• do leaders become anxious when their view of the world is disturbed?
• does this apply to leaders at all levels?
• does performance review only take account of objectives related to tasks and outcomes rather than processes, values and aims?

As usual, there are more questions than answers!

I saw this on Twitter today from Prof. Wiliam @dylanwiliam Good teachers benefit students years after they stopped teaching them, so value added can't identify good teachers: bit.ly/nM3G3v

If everything we do in schools is geared to students, I would suggest that we need to ensure that teacher 'performance' is measured not by output/outcomes (or, at least, not solely - we do still operate in a certain culture of course); there must be 'soft' measures - such as how a teacher affects the emotional maturity of the students in her/his care. And how do you measure that? Here is another spot from Twitter today:

from @combi31 Facilitative Leadership - The"Easy Way" is.gd/yltHfv #learning #coaching #Leadership

So, if all teachers are leaders of learning then we need to move towards being facilitative leaders of learning, able to cope with perturbations in our perceptions of the world and to proactively use them to move forward with our students.

A brilliant example at my school's weekly staff briefing this week when a colleague reminded us all about the lollipop idea to avoid hands up in class - that was at morning break, by the end of the day there was a buzz of conversation about it! That reminded me that we mustn't ever rest on 'what we always did' .... because then we might 'get what we always got'.

Comments welcome as always please.

so what is leadership?

I had a great chat with a colleague today about what we mean by the term leadership. Well, lots of erudite writing exists about transactional, transformational, buffered, distributed leadership ..... and much much more. She asked me what I see is the key aspects of leadership and I trotted out some of the usual trite stuff about shared vision and so on. I also remembered something a colleague once said to me about delegating responsibility rather than just delegating tasks. Does that make you a leader ... or the person to whom you are delegating? Does helping to build leadership in others make you a leader?


I started to wonder if we need a new word. So much has been written about the differences between management and leadership. Are we entering a phase where we need to acknowledge that there are overlaps and ermm outerlaps?

Later in the day, she asked me if I had planned my career and I had to admit that I had not. I talked her through my life story (well she did ask) and was struck by her response: "so you've never said no to an opportunity?" I admitted there was one major opportunity I had turned down but broadly agreed with her assessment.

I believe that I've been lucky, blessed even.

Is leadership 'letting go' of management? I think it is certainly letting go of micro-management. Leadership from within a team is an interesting concept that is currently exercising my sociological imagination.

My colleague came up with the idea of chats recorded on video and saved on our VLE. Perhaps we should start some panel chats .... has anyone done this? I'd love to hear about it ...

this also appears on reflog

PD evolution - it's a matrix!

In house Professional Development for teachers and other professionals working in schools.

This year, small project groups are forming at my school, they will focus on:

• effective classrooms (including links with attendance)
• effective leadership and teams
• innovative use of technology
• career development - personal professional development

Each week, as we have done for some years, there will be a one hour session presented by or facilitated by a Leading Practitioner (teaching and non-teaching). This year these will be in a sort of carousel so that participants can choose to follow one strand, or select across strands. there will be Between Session Activities such as reading, blogging, trialling ideas. Each 'strand' will include a mid-term and final review and will also link to the choice of activities provided at whole staff meetings and whole staff PD.

If they choose to apply, both participants and Leading Practitioners may gain qualifications from the College of Teachers.

What else should we consider? Comments please :-)

Public Critique

I really liked this short video clip from John Seely Brown (courtesy Steve Wheeler via Twitter @timbuckteeth John Seely-Brown: Tinkering as a mode of knowledge production http://bit.ly/oJl8er )

It obviously has applications for all kinds of education but it started me (yet again, sorry) thinking about teachers' professional development. Next year, at my school, we will be employing four strands for the in-house programme (effective leadership, effective classrooms, innovation and technology, career development) but they will be arranged so that anyone who wants to mainly follow one strand but dip into others will still be able to. Each strand will be led by two or three leading practitioners and everyone involved will be eligible for accreditation. We will be using our VLE to record group developments.

So how does this link with John Seely Brown's talk? I was really struck by the notion of public critique. In my last post I mentioned how lucky I am to be able to observe many teachers in many areas of the curriculum and to share these ideas. Surely, we can take this a step further by sharing our critiques on the VLE so that, having developed trust within a small group, we can begin to share these ideas together.

I would hope that the trust will build to be whole school and then phew! who knows?

Lucky

Just a short reflection today.


I have just been thinking about how lucky I am. In my role as a deputy head (vice principal) I get to see so many different lessons, interact with such a wide range of staff and students, and also to have some idea about governance. This means that I see different curriculum ideas, learning styles, approaches to teaching and I can pass these on and share with others. Then, with my work with the Open University I can interact with professionals from a wide range of educational organisations. Then there is Twitter! and all the blogs from educators! Oh and friends, and collegaues at the Open University too.

The outcome that I am hoping for, and which I sometimes achieve, is to be able to link others with people and ideas that might enable them to extend their ideas even further. Then they share back again and .... round we go.

I have mentioned this before: when I was younger I wanted to be an engineer and build bridges. I still love bridges, and sometimes I get to build them!
 
How do you share ideas?

Team building

It's that time of year when I am thinking almost all the time about what the school's in house CPD programme should look like for the next academic year. And what do those letters stand for?

C - continuing, collaborative, career
P - professional, pedagogical
D - development .... 0r should it be L for Learning as @wjputt said recently on Twitter

I was having a chat with a Hayley Allan (who does a lot of work on reflective practice with a range of professionals http://educatingtrainers.blogspot.com/) and we got on to the topic of team building projects and whether these can ever really work. Now this sparked an interest for me because I was planning to have a face to face and an online module on that very theme next year. But Hayley made me think when she said "what we need is to train individuals to be capable of being part of any team". That's not verbatim so I hope I've got it about right, Hayley.

So I'd be grateful for any comments or thoughts about this, please. Should we work with a team to help them develop and understand comeplemntary skills and aptitudes or with the team 'leader' to help her/him do that? or both? or should we work with everyone to explain and develop how important it is to work as part of a team (often times) and how to do that?

lesson starters etc for non-specialists, cover or supply

Lesson starters and fillers for non-specialist, cover and supply lessons


Rationale

You have been left with a class and the work for them to do is lost or has not arrived yet. It is not your subject area or perhaps you are a cover supervisor. You know that these first few minutes are when the behaviour might deteriorate into something that is hard to put right. Now what?

If you can have a few ideas up your sleeve to give you breathing space it really does help so you need some things that will work in any subject area. The ideas that follow are aimed at the 11 to 16 age range but might easily be adapted. Some things will work better with older or younger students and may depend on how well you know the students. The ideas have been gleaned from many sources, some lost in the mists of time so please forgive any unintentional plagiarism.

Resources to have in your bag of tricks

• A set of thirty mini-whiteboards with dry markers and dusters

• Spare pens and pencil – it is worth expressing disappointment about lack of equipment but probably not worth holding up the whole lesson

• A few colouring pens and pencils

• Glue, sticky tape, scissors (get a few left hand ones too), some rulers, erasers and so on

• Some prepared worksheets/jigsaws,/card loops that will work in many situations (see step four below)

• Some simple puzzles – ones from Christmas crackers are great and can double up as little prizes for good work

• Plain, lined, squared and coloured paper and card, also scrap paper

• A set of large sugar paper shapes such as speech bubbles, think bubbles, hand prints, foot prints

• Blu tack

• Your name and your basic expectations clearly written on a piece of sugar paper

• Playing card – not whole sets

• Ping pong balls



First steps

Some of these will depend on what you have been told or already know about the school rules, mores and ethos:

• Have your name clearly written on a piece of sugar paper that you blu tack up in a clearly visible place – a few simple rules of your classroom are a good idea as well

• If possible, put some puzzles or quiz sheets out on the desks before students arrive

• Always try to greet them at the door and ask them to stand and get equipment out until you ask them to sit

• Once sitting, ask them to start the puzzle whilst you do the register

• Now write homework in their planners if appropriate – check this again at the end of the lesson

Step two

You have given yourself that breathing space and established some ground rules without actually saying too much at all. If you need to, you can pause the lesson at any time and point to your rules saying something like remember. Better still, you can quietly go over to a student and quietly ask them to look at the rules, checking that they understand.

Whilst the students are engaged with the starter activity, read the work set or (if there is none) ascertain what they did last time and what they usually write on and if they know where texts or other resources are kept. Only ask one or two students quietly. Get them to give things out if appropriate. If necessary send a student with a note to the appropriate person to get work. Never leave the class.

Step Three

This may be based on what you know they did last time or on the work set. It is important that you ‘own’ the lesson and the classroom and do not make it seem as though you are just passing on a message or child minding.

Ask the students to draw a mind map or do just three to five bullet points about the topic they are on. This gives you an opportunity to gauge the level and so on. Set a very short time scale – say three minutes, or five at the most, working in silence. Now ask them to share this with the person next to them in a voice so quiet that no one else can hear. Next ask each pair to share with another pair. Now ask for just three or four people to feedback to the class. Add any knowledge that you may happen to have of the subject matter in at this stage. This will also enable you to make up a lesson objective and title that they should copy down, and any key words that they should copy and try to explain in their own word – think bubbles are good for this.

Step Four

Help! You still do not have any work set! Here are a few ideas that will each last ten or fifteen minutes (you could mix them up within the lesson and set up a carousel of activities):

• Drawing a storyboard is good for almost every subject from Maths to Science to History to English and more .... ask students to draw no less than six and no more than ten pictures in a cartoon strip – stick men are fine – to sum up what they know about a topic and that would explain it to someone else

• Give out speech bubbles or think bubbles and ask them to work in pairs to tackle a problem solution or to summarise just one key word or aspect of the topic; try to give each pair a different one and remind them only the person they are working with should be able to hear what they are saying. Stick them up on the board and get everyone to walk around and look at each other’s.

• Have some prepared ‘jigsaws’ in envelopes on a variety of subjects, for example Maths number patterns or shape patterns, poems, spelling or vocabulary lists in English or another language, key words in different subjects, lists of Kings and Queens or Capital Cities. Students have to put the jigsaws together and then copy out and add their own annotations.

• Have some A5 word searches with clues rather than just words to find – e.g. ‘what is the Capital of France?’, ‘who was Henry VIIIth’s first wife?’, ‘what is a square number between 40 and 50?’

• Have some general knowledge quiz sheets and scrap paper for answers

• Have some card lops in envelopes – a set of say en cards that have to be put in order to form a complete loop, e.g. ‘Henry married Catherine, Catherine was divorced, Henry married Anne...’ or ‘1/2 = 0.5, 0.5 x ½ = ¼, ¼ = 0.25 ...’ They can then copy them out and annotate.

It’s a double lesson and they need a breather

It can be a good idea to break for five minutes but only if you are sure you can get them re-focused. Don’t let anyone leave the room or play with their phone or just have a chat though. This has to be directed time off! Here are a few of ideas:

• Give out about a dozen playing cards each and see who can build the tallest tower

• Not for the faint hearted – give out a ping pong ball between who and see who can get longest rally patting with hands

• Who can balance the most ping pong balls on the back of one hand? Does team work help?

• Give out prepared jigsaws or card loops (see step four above)

Finishing off

Remember to leave plenty of time for checking homework has been written down correctly and always try to relate the end of the lesson back to the learning objective. Here are a few ideas for that:

• Play hang man on the board or in pairs with the key words

• Play twenty questions re the key words – you write a word up that the main player cannot see and then s/he can ask the class yes/no questions (also works for things like prime numbers, multiples and so on)

• Get everyone to go back to their mind map or first few bullet points and try to improve it- ask just a few to feed back to class

• Give out think bubbles and ask pairs to come up with a summary of the lesson – leave it for the usual class teacher

• Play ‘make me say’ – you have a word or number in your head and they have to try to make you say it b giving you prompts

• You, or a volunteer, sits in the ‘hot seat’ and answers questions about the lesson

vision activity for CPD

I have been thinking a lot about communicating a shared vision - and also ensuring that ths is not a one way process. I'd be grateful for comments on this CPD idea: first few minutes, work alone and circle the ten things most important in the wordcloud (see below). Then in small groups, dicuss your reasons and come up with a collaborative version on a new copy. Finally feedback to whole group ..

and what words have I left out that should be in it?

Thanks for any help.

more CPD ideas

At our Heads of Department meeting today I asked how we could improve the in house CPD prgramme - the following came up either at or just after the meeting ... please comment
The main point on the school overall SEF that is on my own performance management (hey, I can use this as evidence for that as well) is developing effective classrooms through CPD. Was very grateful for ideas during and after the meeting today - will also get some feedback from the pastoral meeting that was taking place at the same time.

I am wondering if the draft revised CPD timetable could be revised yet again with something like the following:-

1. A subject based conference - probably would have to be just one hour but that might work if we go straight into groups. This would most probably have to be on one of the Thursday sessions (i.e. not a twilight CPD, see below for ideas about that). We could open up to all our partner schools. I don't think there would be much funding for this one - maybe everyone could bring a plate of food! I would suggest that for this we just host it in each department and see who turns up and play it by ear? Any other ideas?
2. Use the twilight CPD session to run workshops which staff sign up for before the event.

Suggestions: Philosphy for Children, Behaviour, Interactive whiteboard for beginners and advanced, Community Cohesion , Using Fronter, Restorative Justice , Teaching Outside Your Subject Area, Using publisher and excel, I would provide simple refreshents for this one from the CPD budget.

3. Leadership Conference for middle and senior leaders, including aspiring leaders and open to partner schools as for number 1 above
Suggestions:

Workshops – delegates select from:  working with partners in Higher Education;  maximising student potential; the importance of CPD; other?


Please, please comment .........

Threshold concepts and CPD

I am still thinking about what encourages engagement in CPD and wanted to thank @JaneDavis13 for a mention of threshold concepts on Twitter. I'd be grateful for any comments on the following.

If, as Meyer and Land (2003) suggest, there are particular ‘threshold concepts’ that enable students to make a leap in their understanding, then I posit that there may be similar moments within a teacher’s professional development. Such moments are likely to be transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded and troublesome (ibid: 4,5). Extending these ideas to engagement with CPD:


• Transformative – passing across this threshold may involve a ‘significant shift in perception’ and this may ‘involve a performative element’(op cit). In terms of CPD, perhaps we need to try something out, or at least hear first hand recommendations, before we believe it might be likely to help.

• Irreversible – is this what makes it difficult for those teachers who do constantly reflect upon their practice and its development to understand why others do not appreciate this?

• Integrative – in my view, the aspect of making connections between different contexts is one of the key components in successfully assimilating CPD experiences.

• Bounded – I think that in secondary schools and higher education, this may be more of an issue than in the primary phase. We may hear teachers say things like, ‘that would not work in my curriculum area’.

• Troublesome – again, the idea that new knowledge may come from a context which has hitherto not been experienced may go some way to explaining reluctance to engage.

more on CPD essentials

Thanks to coments on last post. I am still trying to put something together. More comments very welcome!

Rationale


• There should be personalisation for teachers as well as for students.

• There should be a seamless progression from Beginning Teacher (PGCE/GTP) to Head teacher.

• All teachers should be exemplar learners.

• Accreditation should be awarded which is transferable to other institutions.

• CPD should be linked to performance management and drive school improvement.

• Interest in research evidence and participation should be encouraged.

• Collaboration between colleagues and networking/partnership between schools and institutions should be encouraged.

Methods

1. Weekly generic sessions are run (many by members of school staff) from which teachers and other staff may select which to attend, referenced to performance management and the school improvement plan.

2. Meetings should also contribute to professional development through sharing good practice and dissemination of ideas.

3. External CPD is bid for and must be related to performance management and improvement plans.

4. Personal one to one coaching is developed through group training sessions and diaries/blogs.

5. Whole staff days and half days are run, many with bought in speakers.

6. Online interaction is encouraged (originally via a wiki, now through the school’s learning platform).

7. Partnerships with other schools enables conferences and cross pollination of ideas and practice.

8. The school provides small bursaries for MA, sports coaching or NVQ qualifications.

Accreditation

1. Chartered London Status.

2. Courses accredited by the College of Teachers (affiliated to the Institute of Education): Reflective Practice in Education and Personalised Learning Exchange. (Certificate of Educational Studies or Diploma of Educational Studies). Qualifications are open to all staff and governors, not just teaching staff. Cost borne by the school.

ICT and eLearning

• This is an area for development although the school demonstrates leading practice in the use of the learning platform compared to other secondary schools within the Local Authority.

• A discussion forum for staff has been started on the school’s learning platform.

The key to CPD in schools

I am trying to put together a very brief "this is what professional development for teachers in schools should look like" document.

This is my starter, please comment:

• There should be personalisation for teachers as well as for students.


• There should be a seamless progression from Beginning Teacher (PGCE/GTP) to Head teacher.

• All teachers should be exemplar learners.

• Accreditation should be awarded which is transferable to other institutions.

• CPD should be linked to performance management and drives school improvement.

• Interest in research evidence and participation should be encouraged.