Leadership

Letters to Staff

Ever since I became a headteacher, back in September 2000, I have written to staff at some key points in their time at St. Mary’s.  I always worry that the letters are beginning to be a bit mechanistic in nature as what I write hasn’t changed.  However, this is because what I want to say hasn’t changed over the years either:

• Welcome, this is where we are heading and what is important to us.
• Well done, first years are challenging but you’ve come through.
• Thank you for the contribution you have made.

I started letter writing to staff when I worked as Head of Science at De La Salle in St. Helen’s.  There were still a few De La Salle brothers working at the school when I arrived and they dedicated themselves and their lives to young people.  Brother Nick wrote to me before I started including a picture and pen portrait of my new form plus an article or two on the importance of relationships.  I’ve never forgotten the letter nor the importance of relationships in schools.

Welcome

 Whilst at De la Salle I first came across the letter from a Boston headteacher who has been the victim of a concentration camp.  It was a reflection during a staff liturgy and I found it so powerful I ended up having a bit of an emotional moment.

The main body of my letter reads:

Working with young people requires a true sense of vocation.  At St. Mary’s we aim to challenge all young people to use their talents to the fullest within a caring Catholic community.  The letter from the Boston Headteacher, who had experienced the horrors of a concentration camp, touched me deeply when I first read them. 

Dear Teacher

I am the victim of a concentration camp. 

My eyes saw what no-one should witness:

Gas chambers built by learned engineers;

Children poisoned by educated physicians;

Infants killed by trained nurses;

Women and children shot and burned by high school and college graduates. 

So, I am suspicious of education.

My request is:

Help your students become more human. 

Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns.  Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human”.

Helping young people grow up and develop fully as a human being must always be our central goal.  This demands that we channel our efforts into the personal development of the young people we walk with, nurturing their faith and transforming them through the learning opportunities we provide. I will always judge our actions as a college against these demands.

The challenge to help young people grow in wisdom, the ability to make good and enriching decisions in their life for themselves and others, is a central core of Christian education.  When leading one of the SSAT leadership courses I often refer to this letter from the Boston headteacher and emphasise the need to know core values and in which direction you are leading other.  Education without developing a young person’s moral compass can be a dangerous vision.

Well Done

This graphic is wonderful and shows the bumpy ride a Newly Qualified Teacher can have.  Whilst being referenced to an NQT it also speaks of the dynamic that more experienced staff may have when they move to a new school.

The end of any first year in a job is a good time to reflect, learning curves tend to be at their steepest when things are new.  It’s important that we congratulate and celebrate with teachers and other staff a job well done.  The reflection below often reconnects a teacher to why s/he came into teaching and strengthens the sense of vocation and anticipation for challenges ahead.

I wanted to write to you, at the end of your first year at St. Mary’s, to thank you for all the hard work you have done on behalf of our young people.  The reflection “A Teacher” reminds us why we took up our vocation.  There often seems to be a sense of tiredness at the end of a year or frustration at things that have not quite been done.  Leave these thoughts behind you and think of the young people at St. Mary’s whose lives are richer for you being here. 

 A Teacher

 I am a Teacher

I was born the first moment that a question leaped from the mouth of a child.

I am the most fortunate of all who labour.

A doctor is allowed to usher life into the world in one magic moment. 

I am allowed to see that life is reborn each day with new questions, ideas and friendships.

An architect knows that if he builds with care, his structure may stand for centuries. 

A teacher knows that if he builds with love and truth, what he builds will last forever.

I am a warrior, daily doing battle against peer pressure, negativity, fear, conformity, prejudice, ignorance and apathy.

But I have great allies: Intelligence, Curiosity, Parental Support, Individuality, Creativity, Faith, Love and Laughter all rush to my support.

And who do I have to thank for this wonderful life I am so fortunate to experience,

But the parents for entrusting me with their greatest contribution to eternity, their children.

And so I have a past that is rich in memories.

I have a present that is challenging, adventurous and fun because I am allowed to spend my days with the future.

 “I am a teacher ….. and I thank God for it every day”

 John W Schlatte

Have a great summer and a refreshing break.

Thank You

At the end of a career or when moving to a new job in another school teachers often look back at the things they haven’t done or are not perfect with a slight sense of regret or disappointment.  We are funny people us teachers, accentuating the positive in the young people we serve is balanced by accentuating the deficiencies in ourselves.  Someone once said to me, “Stephen, leave perfection to God, you are just called to do your best.”

I want the staff who are moving on and given good service to our students to know that their best efforts are massively appreciated and were good enough.  Bringing everything to completeness and fulfilment was always beyond us and we must recognise and accept this.

I am writing on behalf of the Governors to thank you for your work at St. Mary’s Catholic College.  The attached reflection “Planning in the Kingdom” reminds us of the small part we play in the in implementing the master’s plan.

 PLANNING IN THE KINGDOM (A Prayer by Oscar Romero)

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. 

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. 

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith. 

No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. 

No program accomplishes the church’s mission. 

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted. Knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realising that.

This enables us to do something and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

I hope the letters are well received, a number of staff thank me each year for writing to them.  For some it is the first time they have received a note from their headteacher.  I hope you’ve also enjoyed the reflections and pass them on to others.

Vision 2040: Learners at the Centre I

Vision 2040 is fundamentally an idea about “Power Shift” in the first half of the 21^st Century:

• From the politicians, in a tug of war with the professionals, to a consensus implemented by highly trusted professionals.  This is possibly the easy bit for us to accept and endorse.
• From teachers to students, where the learner takes centre stage in decision making about her/his learning both its direction and process.  This is more difficult and challenging as it’s never easy to let go particularly when there are high stake accountability measures circling above you like vultures.

To see this power shift as part of an extended journey I want to build on some ideas shared by the wonderful and engaging Professor David Hargreaves, a number of years ago, who always challenges the orthodoxy of the time and seems to have a “crystal ball capacity” for seeing the future direction of travel.

“Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants so long as it is black.”

Henry Ford in many ways epitomises the education journey of the 20^th Century in England which has seen high quality education provided for all students.  I think it’s fair for people to question whether it is yet consistently good enough in all schools and for all students but compared to one hundred years ago we are in a totally different place.  This is the factory model of schooling.  Power for decisions sits at a national, local and school level, often in that order, and students’ experiences are very similar.

Dell is an example of mass customisation.  There is a glittering and dazzling array of options for colour of the machine, processor, hard drives and additional elements which allow us an element of control over the final product.  The key to understanding this is realising the ultimate power over what type of customised machine we can build sits with Dell, they are the ones who give us the options from which we can choose.  I’ve termed this, in schools, as macro personalisation and shown a number of ways this is realised in my blog post, Redesigning Schools: Masterchef II – Great Menus, Great Food, changes to the school day, lesson length, curriculum pathways options are all examples of personalisation but the power over which options students have sit with the school, it is not an infinite, unknown or ephemeral set of options.  This is a start and I believe that my generation of leaders will build this into a highly effective educational provision but it is Vision 2020 not Vision 2040.

Apple has taken the next step moving the market from mass customisation to mass personalisation.  On the Developer website there is information about how to prepare an app for review and also how to promote it to your potential market.  Apple has also released part of their programming codes – “the complete developer tools for building … apps. Includes the Xcode IDE, performance analysis tools, iOS Simulator and the latest OS X and iOS SDKs” – which is absolutely fantastic news as we are now able to take the lead in app production, if only I had the slightest clue what this actually meant.

The shift to mass personalisation of apps is only going to happen if enough people have the knowledge, understanding, skills and attributes required of a good programmer that enables them to take and develop an idea and deliver it to the market.  The power only shifts from Apple to the individual when all these things are in place.  The power shift, and possibly mindset shift, required in schools and teachers sits around explicitly developing learners with the knowledge, understanding, skills and attributes required.  We tend to be better at the first part rather than the latter part of the list and I fear current educational policy is doing nothing to redress this.

Mass schooling was the gift given to us by a previous generation of leaders and mass customisation must be our legacy as we ensure Vision 2020 is a reality.  It is also for the current generation of leaders to provide the bridge to mass or what I term micro personalisation which will be the mission of a new generation of leaders some of whom we may have recently appointed to our schools.  They will take us to micro personalisation – the learner as a decision-maker at the centre of a multi-faceted, distributed and personalised education – and this is the essence of Vision 2040.  The ability for the learner to make decisions, be more self-directed and follow interests and passions will be at the heart of education by 2040 because this is what the World will need and demand.  Accountability and assessment systems will need to fit around the new educational reality and qualifications like the Extended Project Qualification will take on greater and more widespread importance:

“The test of successful education is not the amount of knowledge pupils take away from schools, but their appetite to know and capacity to learn.”

Sir Richard Livingstone, Oxford University, 1942

“The skills you can learn when you’re at school will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace – except one: the skill of making the right response to situations for which you have not been specifically prepared.”

Prof Seymour Paper, MIT, 1998

There are two follow up blog posts that develop the themes from this post further, rather aptly named, Learners at the Centre II and Learners at the Centre III.

My initial blog post on Vision 2040 is titled, Reflections of an Apprentice 2040 Visioner.

Upside Down CPD: R and D Communities

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers often tends to stem from whole school priorities around raising attainment and achievement, improving teaching and learning including assessment or responding to various local, national or Ofsted agendas.  These whole school priorities tend to monopolise the resources available including funding, access to external courses and use of INSET Days.

I’ve read blogs and tweets that liken INSET days, with training on these whole school priorities from external consultant, headteachers or members of the senior leadership team, to a little bit like the proverbial being dumped on teachers from on high.  Suggestions about people leading the CPD, particularly when it is about teaching & learning, include things like mirroring the strategies (the two hour talk on actively engaging students is a classic misjudgement) are important but miss a key point.

Part of our human nature leads us to enjoy and engage with issues that we have a particular interest in or ownership of.  If we really want to personalise CPD for staff then we need to shift the power in the decision making process from school leaders and external pressures to classroom teachers.  It is not simply improving the delivery it is moving the decision making by tipping it upside down and distributing the authority to make decisions about their own professional development to teachers.  This is not an either or – too often in education in England we take an extreme position and then seek to defend it – it’s about rebalancing CPD so that teachers’ particular pedagogical and curriculum interests are afforded time and resource alongside whole school priorities.

I’ve blogged before about setting up some new Research & Development Communities in the post “Improving Teaching Not Simply Measuring It” and the proposals are now in.  The basic structure behind the R&D Communities is:

• A R&D Community can be set up to develop and embed best or emerging good practice within the College.
• A R&D Community can be used to take forward an idea, innovation or approach by a group of staff that will lead to improved standards of attainment, levels of achievement, student well-being or student personal development.  A R&D Community can be set up by any member of staff.
• Each R&D Community must have a named leader who will be responsible for the community, its outcomes and leading a group of staff between 3-8 people in size.
• Funding of £100 per person in the R&D Community will be made available to fund the community’s work, the leader will have their teaching commitment reduced by one period (periods are 100 minutes in length) per fortnight and supply vouchers for use by community members can be bid for.
• Funding will be released following the R&D Community’s idea and success criteria being accepted.
• Approximately half termly a voluntary meeting slot will appear in the calendar for R&D Companies that may be used if some/all of the company members wish to.
• Applications can be submitted in April/May each academic year, but no later than two weeks before the late Spring Bank Holiday and the funds will remain in place for the following academic year.
• Student research and developers may be useful additions to the R&D Community.

R&D Communities for Next Academic Year

What impact does using SOLO taxonomy in peer assessment have on the quality of formative feedback, and learner responses, over one academic year, on an English writing assessment at KS3 and KS4?
 
Our R&D community wishes to look at various elements of technology in teaching and map them onto the SOLO taxonomy.  Similar work has been undertaken by various teachers globally with Bloom’s taxonomy which shows which tools are most useful for developing each skill area, and we would like to do the same for SOLO, providing a pedagogically sound platform for implementing the use of various technologies/web 2.0 tools/apps across the College.
 
How can we embed SOLO success criteria into the classroom in a way that encourages pupils to take ownership for their learning?
 
How far can student attainment be improved by implementing a ‘flipped classroom’ within their daily teaching and learning environment in order to accelerate their deep learning over a one year period?
 
The group would aim to carry out action research exploring ways by which students develop their moral awareness and “proclaiming, worshipping, service and civic duty” can be developed within the college.  Initially, the group would look to identify key moral threads from the PSHE / Citizenship curriculum that could be developed and lead into delivery via the peer mentoring ‘plenary team’ introduced this year.  The main vehicle for development would be through peer mentoring across Key Stages 2, 3, 4 and 5. 

Narrowing the Gap for FSM students: Improving achievement through participation in enriching experiences.

I’m not sure what you think about the different proposals and the good news is it doesn’t matter.  They are of interest to the staff groups that devised them.  All of them could potentially “develop and embed best or emerging good practice within the College” and that was the key requirement.  CPD has been flipped and turned upside down in this particular instance.  Teachers have decided what interests them and been given the resources to pursue it.  This is part of an increasing blend of different learning opportunities including INSET days, Thursday afternoon CPD and external and internal courses that staff may choose to go on.  The R&D Communities add a dimension we have never had before and fills a gap in provision.  All proposals were accepted.  The SOLO Taxonomy features heavily and this is something that has been a consistent theme of development for the past three or four and there are a couple more posts on this blog about using the SOLO Taxonomy to increase challenge and how we have sought to spread and embed it.

The total funding for the six projects involving thirty four staff – thirty one teachers and three support staff – is £3,400 though I don’t think the actual spend will be anywhere near that.  Teachers aren’t that great at spending money at school.  In addition, one hundred and twenty three cover vouchers have been asked for.  The use of the cover vouchers will need to be monitored as we won’t be able to release a large number of teachers all at once but leaders have been very clear that a number of cover vouchers will simply be used to keep staff “free” and our cover supervisors will support the release time for staff.  I can almost hear people shouting about the missed classes but this cover equates to about one day per member of staff per year.  This is equivalent to a one day course each, which often has no impact back at school, against what may well end up being about one hundred and fifty days equivalence of collaborative planning, lesson observations and peer evaluations with this deliberate practice developing staff’s pedagogical knowledge and skills.

The six R&D Communities are being led by two teachers who are currently Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) in their first year of teaching with us, three staff who have other middle leadership responsibilities and a part time main scale teacher.  It’s a wonderful mix and I just think a fantastic opportunity to develop leadership skills.  One of the responsibilities of the R&D Communities is to capture and transfer knowledge so I will be blogging about the successes, failures and lessons learnt by each group during next year.

What would you want to research and develop with a group of colleagues if given a £100 of funding each and a bit of time?