What is the most important aspect of school leadership?

This post is in an attempt to reflect on personalisation and collaboration. I find that by writing here, I'm forced to clarify my thoughts!

I'll start with a story that illustrates the danger of assumptions. While having a conversation in a staff room about 4-5 years ago, talk turned to who was to blame for poor education:

Colleague: I blame single mothers.
Me: Interesting, I was raised by a single mother and she did a great job and here I am teaching.
Colleague: Well then, it's teenage mums.
Me: Interesting, my sister gave birth at 15 and still went on to gain GCSE's, A'Level's and a degree while raising a lovely daughter.

This illustrates both the danger of assumptions and the need for personalised approaches.

So why is it that so often, the answer for personalisation comes in the form of an off-the-peg solution - tried and tested in other places? This especially goes for the delivery of CPD.

Such an approach leads to this:

Above, I had fallen face first into the snow in front of a group of colleagues that I was trying to impress. I went about my demonstration in the usual way, but hadn't factored in different conditions - I hadn't check the depth of the snow!

This brings in the most important part of school leadership: acknowledging and developing the professionalism of teachers. It's teachers who subtly adapt each lesson, activity, phrase or resource to meet the needs of the learners in front of them. There is no solution, just a lot of tools in the box!

When I use this to reflect upon my own practice I always need to remember that something that works for me, won't necessarily work for other people. Similarly, when advocating changes, I need to remember that something I have seen work well elsewhere, won't necessarily work for me.

That doesn't mean that it's not worth changing though :-)

Comments

High Impact, Low effort

This month is the start of the #29daysofwriting challenge. I enjoyed this last year and will be using my Staffrm account to post. I'll also be reporting here, both to give a little more detail and to keep a log of what I have written. The challenge developed a great sense of community last year, which is why I'm choosing to write on Staffrm. What I would say to those who are new to writing or don't want to run out of ideas is: Write for yourself. Clarify an idea, write something out loud. The process of distilling thoughts into writing is immensely beneficial to your practice. If other read, comment and respond, that's a bonus. Ignore the muppets who know nothing of your context, style or students. Mix it up - I like to read about real stuff from real classrooms and schools and also about other stuff. If we always write about school, how does that work for workload? If you've nothing nice to say, don't say it. So, the following has been

What makes a learning experience profound? Personal reflections and possible implications for classroom practice.

I have recently begun a Leadership Pathways journey. As part of the first core day, we were asked to reflect on a profound learning experience. This got me thinking about how many profound learning experiences I have both been involved in, and how many I have been able to give to others. Our group came up with a huge long list, but these are my five. Emotional Connected Demanding Reflective Collaborative As always, these are personal thoughts and quite mixed up. I put them here so that I can look back on them (plus they’d get lost inside my world-cup-free brain) 1. Emotional I can’t think of a time where deep learning hasn’t engaged my emotions. From being awe inspired to that tingle feeling when a student gets a light bulb moment. From this-is-the-happiest-day-ever, to I-think-I’m-about-to die. How often do we engage the emotions of those we teach? Here, I would argue that having a safe learning environment is not always conducive to profound

Banned Word Board

Today I want to share some simple ideas that I have found to be very effective in the classroom. I can't say that they are my own original ideas, although I have played around with them. The first is the Banned word Board. This is a simple display in the classroom that lists a number of words that are not allowed to be used by pupils in their written or oral answers. The effect has been an increase in the quality of written work, and I have almost made comments such as 'Sir it's simple, the stuff just affects the thing and causes people problems'. Pupils are now more able to use specific language, something that is vital especially at GCSE. I have had to make a few modifications, such as the introduction of 'Heavenly Words' This is an additional display placed on the ceiling. I found this necessary as pupils needed some stimulus in finding replacement words. After advice received after posting the idea on the SLN forum , I have also introduced semi-banned words

David Rogers

Search This Blog