Encourage Staff in Change

Talking about innovation in curriculum and executing it are two very different things. Here are some quick reflections on how to support staff make their way to innovation or any sort of change.

• Help staff identify problems from their own experience that are meaningful to them.This often takes much time and effort because so many staff don’t understand their likes, abilities, and interests.
• Create a safe environment to try and fail.Give staff enough time and chances to pursue a given idea and team, then shift or abandon those choices—sometimes several times—for another. A few staff will latch onto something quickly and jump in, but most need several chances because the experience is so new.
• Provide regular reinforcement.Teachers encourage staff and provide feedback. We also invite a variety of successful business and community leaders to sit with individual student teams during class or sometimes at the business location. The business leaders ask staff good questions and help the teams identify useful resources. This kind of interaction proves to be a tremendous confidence-building and learning experience for staff.
• Provide tools to frame, without specifying direction, the work that is needed.Most staff have never tackled a complex problem that will take months of planning and effort to solve.
• Constantly nudge staff to be innovative, because the challenges and ambiguity will keep driving them to accept a proven answer.
• Make sure you have a supportive team of leaders who meet periodically to evaluate how best to maintain progress, particularly when staff face challenges or setbacks.

The setting for the learning is as important as the task itself. Have you some suggestions?

The Coaching Team

When I started teaching, the principal was the sole holder of power within the school. They were it. The principal had the first and final say on all matters relating to the school. The role of the principal has evolved, and the demands of the job now require more than a dictator making unilateral decisions. I liken it to the All Black coaching team. There is a scrum coach (Digital Curriculum expert), Defence coach (Pastoral expert) and Kicking coach (Careers Expert). The most successful leaders are collaborative and use a system that makes stakeholders and leaders out of everyone.  Creating other leaders makes the work more manageable and is one of many great benefits of being more democratic with authority. Here are some things I have observed that great leaders in schools have done:

The leadership panel

Empowering a teacher leadership panel composed of faculty- at my school these are the Deans and Leaders of Learning. This group determines goals and policies for the year and reviews the successes and opportunities for growth at the end of that time. You can then empower them to make necessary adjustments. It is at this level change occurs

Empowering community 

Community are incredibly important stakeholders in the school community, and school leaders should empower them as well. Create a discussion board parents can moderate that you regularly check in on. When parents feel like they have a voice in the school, they can become one of a principal’s greatest assets.

Student Voice

Students, who often feel isolated, can act as representatives during leadership meetings to give their input on school issues. They can meet with administration to discuss and negotiate pressing issues that impact them. These students can also receive input from other students, giving all a sense of being a part of the process. Whether it’s a meeting about doing away with lockers or a change in dress code policy, you’re giving students a voice. Having student voice on assessment and pedagogy is invaluable.

Communication

The most vital ingredient necessary to developing a successful school leadership strategy is strong communication. This could mean a weekly email to staff, students, and parents about the things you are working on in the front office. Social Media and APP Alerts are brilliant. Whatever you choose to do, having an open line of communication is essential to inviting your community into leadership.

What are your tips?

Leaders of Learning: Part Two

I enjoyed last time so much here is the second part. Please indulge me.

• The more senior you get, the more people you serve – an old Sea Captain once said this!  They care for their team and look after them.  They make sure they are able to use their time wisely and question if their team are being asked to do things that don’t fit the core purpose of the team.
• Steer the ship with confidence– they make decisions with confidence and conviction – as a result, the team has confidence in them.
• Hands up– they have the confidence to admit when they get something wrong – and learn from it.
• Sense the mood– they know their team and know when to push them and when to ease off a bit, when things are getting tough.
• Collective responsibility– they make their team feel that everyone is working together and that they will be supported e.g. at the end of the day they will initiate a discussion about any problem students anyone has had, and how they can support them, with supporting those students.
• Hard yards– they are not afraid of getting their hands dirty e.g. they will come with you at the end of the day to pick up that tricky customer and make sure they come to detention!
• Clarity of role and responsibility– they ensure that everyone is working towards the same objective i.e. to be world class in that subject, and that everyone knows their role in it – including other leaders within the team.
• Think ahead– they think ahead and plan ahead – and help the team to do the same, and so make them feel secure.  This involves looking ahead to where the crunch times are and supporting the team through this.
• Celebrate the mini-victories– they ensure that the successes, even the small ones, are not overlooked – they are celebrated.
• Everything beats the deadline– they ensure that the team understands that missing a deadline adds pressure to somebody else in the organisation.  So this is a non-negotiable.
• Outward looking– they act as a filter to the outside, keeping the team briefed on relevant new national developments and best practice elsewhere – that could be incorporated into what then team already does.
• Talent spotting– they make sure that they find opportunities to recruit the best people to the team e.g. engage with ITT and support/ develop potential future leaders.
• Caring– they encourage a caring and compassionate culture – when people in the team are struggling (and we all do from time to time) they look after them.
• Thank you– they use this phrase a great deal.
• Happiness– they understand that a happy team, is more likely to work hard and be successful.

Not Leading …

Leadership is hard but it’s also important. Vitally important. And it begins with how leaders treat people. Unfortunately, if you’re a leader and you’re reading this, I’m probably preaching to the choir. Ineffective leaders are those who have all of the attributes from the above list. Have you worked for one? What would you do differently?

I have found how I lead in the school environment depends on the situation. I need to remember they have to work with people who may not be on board with those big dreams, and they lose those best intentions. I sometimes enter into the situation ready to move forward, but because of mandates, rules and the politics of distraction (Hattie. 2015) I become insecure and not sure what to do first. As leaders, when we have so many choices of where to start we sometimes choose not to choose at all. I often use the GROW MODEL. Understanding the current reality is important, but what should be on our radar is not always so glaringly obvious.

In Stephen Covey’s seminal work, The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People he shows us this.  Covey showed me leadership isn’t about getting what we want and feeding our egos. Leadership is about raising the self-efficacy of others and collectively working to improve our school community together. That happens in creative communities more than it happens in compliant communities, and we know which 7 habits belong to each one.

Just like there are habits of highly successful leaders, there are habits that can bring leaders to a place of ineffectiveness.

These are things which I have been reflecting on this week as we reach the crunch time of the term.

Be reactive – Leaders who always seem to not see things coming and lack the ability to work with their school community on a collective goal.

There’s no end in mind – Everyone in the school is working on their individual goals…if they have one…and the leader doesn’t think about the future as much as they keep getting stuck in issues in the present.

Ego first – In Jim Knight’s work we talk a lot about status. Leaders have it because of their position. However, great leaders have status but they lower theirs and raise the status of those around them, which is often referred to self-efficacy. Unfortunately there are leaders who let their ego rule and that’s what they lead with every time.

My way or the highway – Instead of focusing on being collaborative and working with these leaders are more concerned with controlling everything and getting their own way. They walk into a faculty meeting with one idea and walk out with the same one.

Seek to be understood – Ego first. My way or the highway. Get on the waka or get out.

Discord – These leaders always seem to disagree with someone and they try their best to build consensus by getting others to agree with them at the same time they vilify those who disagree with them.

Efficacy Killers – These leaders are consistently going after new initiatives, so their staff feel tired, lost and insecure. They micromanage and look for compliance on all issues.

I sometimes see myself here but not often. The Leadership Framework is now a key document for all teachers. We are all leaders in some way. How is this reflected in your appraisal documentation?

 

Courageous Leadership

As leader it is really important to be courageous. I have been reading lately the work of Dr. Brené Brown, as detailed in her book Dare to Lead .

As Brené Brown says, “You can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability.” This means having the courage to show up fully when you can’t control the outcome. It’s about being vulnerable in your relationships with others in every meeting, email, phone call and face-to-face conversation inside and outside the workplace.

Brown say to focus on clarity, as when you do you increase trust and decrease unproductive behavior. Being clear creates more connection and empathy. Clarity also creates a boundary that allows the other person to decide what to do with the feedback.

Know your triggers. When you’re triggered, do you try to control the situation, protect yourself or start people pleasing? Knowing this can help you move into a place of choice to step into vulnerability.

Courageous leaders who live their values instead of just talking about them are never silent about hard things. For example, courageous leaders do not partake in willful blindness. As a leader, you must be aware of what is going on around you. You must realize when to act and know that sometimes you need to act in difficult situations. It takes courage to recognize these opportunities for leadership and to set an example for your team. Making decisions that honor your values will be tough because doing the right thing is rarely easy.

I really liked this clip which emphasized what I am reflecting about.

https://hbr.org/video/5335748697001/what-great-managers-do

Our Curriculum Leaders

Curriculum is fundamental to schools. It is complex. Necessarily directional and dependent on recognizable channels, it must be vibrant and changing for such is the character of knowledge and our relationship to it. For too long though it has remained unchanged.

The term ‘curriculum leadership’ is associated with middle leaders – the ‘geography coordinator’, the ‘head of science’. It is, quite rightly, linked to subjects.  Our task this year has been to change the conversation though coaching and tasks. These middle leaders are now recognised as “Leaders of Learning.”

Where SLT have tried to reach into pedagogy with generic strategies that fail to attend to subject distinctiveness, all manner of distortions has occurred. In tackling the ‘how’ (teaching and learning) and in attempting to judge its efficacy (progress, assessment, data, outcomes), if we ignore ‘what?

What can curriculum leadership mean? And why on earth does this matter so much? Haven’t we gotten along perfectly well without such senior staff changing things?

Leaders of Learning see small data more clearly. Things SLT might not see in their role. Pasi Sahlberg of Finland spoke at ULEARN 18 about small versus bigdata. “If you don’t lead with small data, you’ll be led by big data. Small data is processed by humans, and reveals causation, collective wisdom and understanding the present. As opposed to big data which looks at big trends, processed by computers, reveals correlations and predicts the future. Big data spews out impersonal trends, where small data gives a more personal view. You can strengthen small data by using professional wisdom as evidence.”

The absence of an adequate model of curriculum leadership seems to me to deepen fundamental and longstanding problems in schools with which we have all wrestled, from weak assessment systems to problems with generation and interpretation of data, from problematical judgements about teaching and learning, to attraction and retention of fine teachers, from teacher development to blaming everything on “management.”

My concern is not just about what a person in SLT called ‘curriculum deputy’ needs to know, but what everyone in a senior leadership team needs to know about curriculum to lead on everything else. Curriculum leadership is everybody’s mahi.

Whakawhanaunga

 

Last week a note I wrote about expectations. As we raise the bar on our expectations that all learners can be successful, we must also raise the bar on rigor for all learners.

When trying to meet the demands of supporting all learners, it is impossible to increase rigor without also attending to whakawhanaunga (relationships). My daughter recently met Helen Clark ONZ. Nobody could fined a better role model as wahine toa.

Personally I have an interest in the tuakana–teina relationship, an integral part of traditional Māori society, provides a model for buddy systems. An older or more expert tuakana (brother, sister or cousin) helps and guides a younger or less expert teina (originally a younger sibling or cousin of the same gender). In a learning environment that recognises the value of ako, the tuakana–teina roles may be reversed at any time. For example, the student who yesterday was the expert on te wā and explained the lunar calendar may need to learn from her classmate today about how manaakitanga is practised by the local hapū.Relationships matter greatly. The concept of the tuakana–teina relationship, is one that interests me. An older or more expert tuakana (brother, sister or cousin) helps and guides a younger or less expert teina (originally a younger sibling or cousin of the same gender). In a learning environment that recognises the value of ako, the tuakana–teina roles may be reversed at any time. For example, the student who yesterday was the expert on te wā and explained the lunar calendar may need to learn from her classmate today about how manaakitanga is practised by the local people.’

Marzano (2011) notes: “Positive relationships between teachers and students are among the most commonly cited variables associated with effective instruction” (p.82). Simply having positive relationships with tamariki and colleagues will not increase achievement. Quality teacher to student relationships impact student achievement in 4 significant ways:

When teachers build trust and rapport with tamariki, tamariki are more likely to take the necessary risks required to learn at deep levels. As mistake making is an inherent part of the learning journey, tamariki need to feel safe along the way.

When tamariki feel safe, they are more likely to offer teachers the necessary insights and feedback that can support the teacher’s ability to respond appropriately.

When teachers strive to understand each learner’s desires, needs, and assets, they have the necessary ability to connect the learning in targeted and specific way that ensures the learner can be successful.

When teachers know their tamariki well, they can better interpret the meaning behind a student’s unconscious nonverbal responses to the learning at hand. Raised eye-brows, tapped pencils, and deep sighs represent different emotional responses based on the learner exhibiting the behavior.

Unless a teacher knows the tamariki well, it is challenging to make learning relevant or rigorous.

Be the best you can be

I want to be the very best school leader I can be. Why, because for me being a principal (or a teacher for that matter) is more than a job, it’s a vocation. I don’t go to work to produce something, to sell something, or to manage something. I go to work to make a difference. And that difference is measured in people’s lives.

What I do, the decisions I make, the school culture I create, the way I lead will make a difference in countless people’s lives. It can make a difference to the earning capacity of a young person; it can make a difference to a person’s sense of self-worth, to their well-being, the lives of their families. The sense of responsibility is huge.

I often compare myself with other leaders, listen to what they do, learn from their wisdom and experience. However, one thing I really need as a leader is feedback. Without feedback I cannot truly understand the real impact I am having and how I can improve.

To promote growth feedback is vital. But to be of real value a recipient really needs to want it, be willing to listen to it and ultimately, have the desire to be the very best they can be for the responsibly they carry as an educator is enormous.

The same can be said about teaching. I don’t understand why all teachers aren’t driven by the enormous responsibility they have to very best they can be. Our children, and their children deserve outstanding teaching and outstanding schools.

Do you value and welcome feedback? What motivates you as an educator? Is teaching and school leadership more than just a job? If you are a leader, where do you get your feedback from?

Mentoring: Leaders and Managers

This week I asked one of my leaders of learning what being a leader is all about and I shared this Covey (1989) analogy:

Imagine a group of people cutting a path through the jungle with machetes. They’re the producers, the problem solvers. They’re cutting through the undergrowth, clearing it out. The managers are behind them, sharpening the machetes, writing policy and procedure manuals, holding muscle development programs, bringing in improved technologies and setting up work schedules. The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, ‘this way’.

Don’t be confused, management is not leadership. The key difference is vision. A true leader has a vision, and that vision is compelling enough to entice people to follow

Vision is important as a school leader but vision is not enough. No one is a leader without someone to follow; and no one will follow a leader, particularly into the unknown, if they don’t trust him/her. Trust is the critical ingredient that goes hand in glove with vision. Without it leaders cannot expect people to work together to achieve the vision: and ultimately, without trust, the leader will lose credibility and fail (Sergiovanni, 2005; Reina & Reina, 2006).

When a leader turns their attention to trust they begin to reflect on their own behaviour and how it impacts their relationship with the people who choose to follow them. When you examine the practices all the qualities of good leadership espoused in the plethora of literature, models and styles, is encompassed by the notion of trust. For example, humility, transparency, honesty, confidence, respect, courage, empathy, and above all, a genuine focus and commitment to the people who have chosen to go for the vision, rather than the selfish ambition of a bad leader. Good leadership boils down to just two things: vision and trust.

Covey, S. (1989). Seven habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Reina, D., & Reina, M. (2006). Trust and betrayal in the workplace  (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Sergiovanni, T. (2005). Strengthening the Heartbeat. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 

Curriculum Leaders not Managers

Curriculum leadership is complicated because leading curriculum development meetings involves working with fallible, imperfect human beings.  A second reason curriculum leadership is difficult is due to the school schedule and a lack of extended time for teachers to discuss and revise existing curriculum documents.

Five Reasons Why Schools Need Curriculum Leaders:

1.  Curriculum Leadership provides clarity. What should every student know and be able to do?

2.  Curriculum Leadership provides opportunities to develop and empower future leaders. Curriculum leadership is not a solo act.

3.  Curriculum Leadership provides the opportunity for continuous improvement. Schools should be learning organizations.

4.  Curriculum Leadership provides the opportunity to establish goals. Goals provide teachers and students with something to aim for.

5.  Curriculum Leadership provides the opportunity for improved alignment.

Glatthorn (1987) wrote, “One of the tasks of curriculum leadership is to use the right methods to bring the written, the taught, the supported, and the tested curriculums into closer alignment, so that the learned curriculum is maximized” (p. 4).

What comes to mind when you hear the term curriculum leader?  Do you have a vision of  staff standing at the back of your classroom observing teaching and learning?  Do you see the instructional leader as the building principal conducting three-minute walk-through observations?  How many curriculum leaders can one school hold?

Curriculum leadership should not be determined by a person’s title or years of experience.  Wiles (2009) wrote, “Curriculum development is the essential function of school leadership.  Whether this role is carried out by a principal, an assistant principal for curriculum, a team leader, a department head, or by leading classroom teachers, the curriculum defines all other roles in a school.”

Glatthorn, A.A. (1987). Curriculum renewal. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Glatthorn, A.A., & Jailall, J.M. (2009). The principal as curriculum leader: Shaping what is taught and tested (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Wiles, J. (2009). Leading curriculum development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.