The third teacher: a mirror and a provocation

Today I have dipped into Chapter 7 of Finding out way:  Developing a shared pedagogy.  This chapter opens by describing how the environment shapes how children feel, engage and participate in the world, and as a result teachers need to see the environment as a "living presence that either reinforces or hinders every interaction, every relationship, every idea that emerges".  In schools, environments also communicate the pedagogical identity and values through the arrangement of space and materials provided.  The environment is the entire context in which children develop knowledge, understanding, skills and dispositions, so it is not just the physical setting but also the emotional, social, cultural and intellectual climate that shapes experiences.  Spaces refer more to physical areas such as studios, reading nooks, outdoor classrooms, meeting spaces and so on.  

We need to think about more than just what furniture and materials to provide, we also need to consider how to design spaces that encourage meaningful connections, curiosity and collaboration.  The spaces need to reflect the character of the community, and to affirm belonging and identity: "materials need to be chosen for their capacity to provoke curiosity, represent diverse identities, contribute to the creative experience in different ways and inspire meaningful exploration.  Design elements such as light, colour, mobility, access, visibility - are approached with purpose, reinforcing the values and pedagogical beliefs of the team ... these choices send powerful messages about who belongs, whose voices are valued, which ideas matter and what is possible within the space .... when embraced with care and curiosity the environment becomes an active co-teacher, capable of inspiring wonder, fostering collaboration, and nurturing the evolving identity of the learning community".

In most early years classrooms I've been in I've noticed different classroom zones, often with bought materials, toys and posters, and the day is also often carved into segments where children move around from one activity to another in rotational groups.  Fiona and Anne write that this "compartmentalisation of space and time can constrain children's innate inclination to move fluidly between ideas, materials, and modes of expression, reducing the programme to a series of activities to be experienced.  In these classrooms, the children are often doing the same thing, at the same time, with the same equipment, in experiences that are designed to be measured by the same assessment tasks.  In these settings, teachers are expected to deliver pre-planned lessons, often from commercial programmes, that limit their ability to respond to children's thinking and diminish opportunities for inquiry-driven experiences rooted in children's evolving ideas".  As they point out, classrooms may be filled with natural materials and flexible furniture, yet these choices may simply be decorative rather than transformative.

Designing and organising spaces

Fiona and Anne describe how spaces can be organised to support autonomy, interaction, curiosity and communication.  This involves a move away from "surface-level spatial organisation and visually pleasing arrangements towards a more purposeful inquiry into how space can amplify the purpose of education: to sustain children's natural curiosity, sense of belonging, and capacity for complex thinking".  And getting back to the title of this blog post, they also write that environments also shape educators, so that the environment is both a mirror and a provocation, reflecting pedagogical beliefs while at the same time inviting new ways of seeing and being, provoking educators to question established routines, reimagine the flow of the day, or to experiment with new groupings or materials.

All design decisions about how to arrange furniture, which materials to use and so on send messages about what is valued, who the space belongs to, and how learning happens. The design of a space should be continually reshaped by what educators value, notice and prioritise.  Educators need to be intentional about how materials are arranged, how documentation is displayed, and how furniture supports or constrains relationships and inquiry.  For example when a teacher's desk or chair is right at the front of the room, or a whiteboard directs all children's attention towards a single space, or if tables and chairs are clustered to face the front, or if a large carpet is a placed where children are expected to site facing the teacher, or where materials are away out of sight in cupboards, messages are sent about who has the power and how students are expected to be passive recipients of knowledge rather than active participants in co-constructing learning.  A team that values children's agency creates environments with multiple focus points, flexible seating arrangements and open-ended materials accessible throughout the space.

The role of the leader

Once again, the leader's role is to ensure the team has ample time and professional learning to ensure that spaces are intentionally designed to reflect their pedagogical values, reflecting an ongoing commitment to inclusivity, responsiveness and the cultivation of rich, inquiry-based learning.  Leaders can make time for this in team meetings, in day-to-day interactions and in their presence within the different spaces of the school.  They can also invite their team members to walk through classrooms and shared spaces together to observe and discuss how the environment is supporting or limiting relationships, exploration and participation.

Image credit:  https://pixabay.com/photos/girls-nature-happiness-kids-happy-6174061/

Time: a race against the clock and the calendar?

Teachers in almost every school I've visited and worked at have told me that time is a challenge (specifically a lack of it) so I was keen to dip into Chapter 6 of Finding our way today.  Teachers are often under pressure to "cover" content, collect assessment data, keep with with the school's calendar of events and deadlines, write reports and so on, while at the same time trying to balance this with creating rich and meaningful learning experiences for their students.  It's not surprising that teachers are often feeling overwhelmed!

Fiona and Anne ask us to shift our view of time from "something to control, to something to inhabit with children".  They write that "reframing time is a deliberate choice - an act of professional agency through which teachers (re)claim their integrity".  In some schools the requirements are such that the whole year's curriculum is carved up into weeks, lessons and minutes, each of which has its own specific objectives that must be met and measured.  In these schools, the work of teaching and learning is dictated by external pressures rather than the capacities, interests and inquiries of the children, and deep exploration, curiosity and meaningful reflection can become marginalised.  All too often, time for work, play, eating and resting is something that emphasises efficiency, and when I often go into classrooms where there is a rigid schedule teaching is seen as something that has to be "done" within set times with little room for flexibility for curiosity, inquiry or agency in the learning process.

Aligning time with pedagogical values

Anne and Fiona write that teams that value inquiry and reflection "must intentionally structure time and space to allow children to explore questions without pressure, enabling children's sustained attention, revisiting of ideas, and deepening understandings ... the way a team sees the influence of time shapes everything they do".  Teachers need to slow down to engage more fully with children and their unfolding thoughts and feelings - they need to notice more, listen more deeply and engage more meaningfully. Teachers who feel rushed to get through the expectations of the day may well feel disconnected from the purpose of their work.  

Relationships, connection, meaning-making and community

Time is never neutral - it either constrains or enables the depth and quality of relationships.  Children's relationships with each other need time, and they also need time to return again to questions, thoughts, emotions and understandings.  Fiona and Anne write that if a teacher is constantly preoccupied with what comes next, then they often miss subtle cues that signal a child's readiness to connect and engage, whereas "when time is not urgent educators can dwell more fully in the moment with children, listen deeply to their play, pause for reflection about their thinking, respond to ideas with curiosity, and follow the path of inquiry".  They write about moving away from fixed routines, and focusing more on the rhythms of variation and responsiveness.  Routines can create predictable, yet flexible, patterns which offer structure and security for children, helping them to understand what to expect, and as a scaffold for inquiry, and they can also support inquiry through embedding habits of reflection and communication which build a culture of listening and noticing.  However fragmented schedules with frequent transitions "disrupt the natural rhythms of play and inquiry, limiting opportunities for sustained thinking and problem solving".  They write that "when their days are no longer predetermined by rigid schedules created by teachers and focused on output, attainment, and regurgitation of the "learned curriculum", it becomes easier for children to dig deeply into the ideas and concepts that matter most to them.  

Leadership and time

 Leaders need to take time to examine whether the daily schedules really reflect their values and to engage with their teams to explore whether these daily routines express their values or contradict them, how some habitual practices might be limiting or expanding children's agency and engagement, and also how the use of time might be fostering or hindering relationships with children, families and each other.  Leaders often take decisions about time, which shapes both the daily schedule and also the entire culture, so it is the leader's responsibility to protect time not only for children's inquiry, but also for educators' reflection and collaborative dialogue.  Leaders need to resist over-scheduling and fragmentation, and so open up the possibility for more meaningful relationships between children, between children and adults, and between adults to unfold throughout the day.  When teachers are given time and space to observe, reflect and dialogue they develop a deeper sensitivity to children's thinking and learning and they become more attuned to the unfolding curriculum that emerges through shared inquiry.  It is through removing roadblocks and standing alongside their teams that leaders make visible their deep trust in the capacity of teachers and children to co-construct the curriculum from "the dynamic interplay of children's ideas, theories, and questions, and teachers' thoughtful responses, provocations, and proposals".

Evidencing and documenting learning

This also takes time!  When teachers are given time to reflect and discuss, this shifts the task away from compliance-driven documentation towards a practice grounded in curiosity, interpretation and relational knowledge-building.  I once worked in a school where TAs played a role in documenting various milestones on a daily basis - the pressure was so intense that I heard some of them asking children to "do it again" so that they could video progress towards a particular learning standard to upload into an online platform at the end of each day.  Thankfully we moved away from this, but this does highlight the importance of teachers moving away from documentation as an end point, and helping them to understand it more as a process that drives pedagogy forward.

Image by Roberto Justo Kabana from Pixabay

Colleagial conversations

Last year I led the IB workshop Leading and Managing Teams.  In this workshop we explored professional inquiry and team learning, and considered how sustaining and growing teams requires leadership that takes account of the needs of the learning community.  We also learnt about how a dialogic team engages in discussion about pedagogy within and outside their own school.  I kept these ideas in mind as I read through Chapter 1 of Anne and Fiona's book Finding our way: Developing a shared pedagogy.  This chapter is all about discovering the power of true collaboration and how leadership "emerges between people, not above them".  Over and over the message that strong teams depend on shared values, trust, respect and mutual accountability is central to this chapter.  The role of the leader is to bring focus to this team, and to cultivate curiosity and deep listening that will ultimately result in a shared pedagogical vision:  the purpose, values and principles that guide the teaching and learning within a school community.  This vision is the team's commitment to how they see children, their beliefs about the role of educators and the education they will create together through a collective responsibility for children's learning and well-being.

The importance of dialogue

Anyone who has done a workshop with me will know that I often talk about the difference between discussion and true dialogue.  Anne and Fiona point out that dialogue welcomes the diversity of perspectives as team members listen and learn from each other.  This means that collaboration doesn't happen by chance but instead emerges from a deliberate and sustained effort to cultivate trust, to nurture relationships and to foster a shared sense of purpose.  It is the role of the leader to create the space for this dialogue which honours the individual and at the same time guides the team towards a deeper connection, a collective vision and a "shared responsibility for children's flourishing".  It is not the role of a leader to come up with a predetermined path with little space for teachers to think critically - otherwise teachers will just be passive implementers, will lack ownership and motivation and may feel a disconnection with the purpose of their work.  The goal of leadership is to "foster a culture of exploration in which educators navigate uncertainty with confidence, curiosity, and trust in one another".

Collaboration - the heart of leadership

It's quite a shift for a leader to decide to lead through collaboration rather than through control.  A courageous leader recognises that rich and lasting changes don't emerge from compliance, but instead from dialogue, inquiry and shared purpose.  It requires leaders to make space for uncertainty, difference and co-construction, a space where difficult questions can be raised, diverse experiences honoured and new understandings can emerge.  In this approach the leader is the "curator for collective thinking" who creates the conditions for dialogue and reflective practice.  In this context, educators feel hopeful, empowered to take risks and confident in sharing their insights.  Chapter 1 therefore lists a number of leadership roles:

• Fostering a culture of collaboration through regular team meetings where joint decisions are made about curriculum
• Developing a system of support and ensuring schedules, funding and infrastructure align with the team's pedagogical goals, including time for collaboration and investing in professional learning
• Clarifying vision and values, defining shared beliefs and using these as a reference point in decision-making
• Honouring perspectives and leveraging individual strengths
• Encouraging reflective practices
• Facilitating thoughtful dialogue by ensuring many perspectives are explored and common understandings are developed
• Modelling inquiry and curiosity, for example through the use of open-ended questions
• Creating space for experimentation where teachers can try new approaches, take risks and learn from both successes and challeges
• Ensuring alignment between children's rights and responsibilities, for example including children in classroom agreements
• Supporting documentation and storytelling about the children's learning process
• Building partnerships with families and communities
• Providing ongoing professional learning opportunities, which can include reading, conferences, visits and workshops.

How do leaders build a shared purpose?

Finding our way includes a number of different tools in each chapter that leaders can use with their teachers.  One of the first ones in building a shared purpose is to discuss values.  In almost every IB workshop I lead, I start the first session asking questions about values, as these are important to the learning that will take place.  We need to ask the why questions, not just discuss what and how we teach.  Therefore it's important for educators to consider what they care about and how these values are visible within their classrooms.  A good leader will have teachers explore their own experiences, passions, values, skills and talents and then will bring these together to see how each person's strengths contribute to the group's identify and capabilities.  Through listening to the voices of others on the team, teachers are given the opportunity to construct new knowledge and understandings about themselves.  Ultimately this can help them develop a sense of collective identity and belonging.  

The importance of inquiry in challenging assumptions and practices

In PYP schools we often talk about student inquiry, but it's also important that teachers are inquirers as well.  Just like the children, teachers need to ask questions, explore diverse viewpoints, challenge assumptions and construct new knowledge together.  Listening to others in the learning community also ensures that pedagogical practices reflect the identities, needs and stories of the community.

One important role of a leader in building a shared understanding is to ask teachers to examine their habitual practices such as classroom routines, and whether these reflect their values.  A good example of this that I've seen in several schools is deciding to do away with a reward system such as stickers and certificates for Learner profile attributes, as teachers decide to move away from extrinsic motivators towards more intrinsic motivation and responsibility.  Beliefs and values are made visible through the teachers' actions.  Decisions about "how space is used, how materials are chosen and how relationships are nurtured are often shaped by assumptions about how children grow, engage and make sense of the world.  Surfacing these beliefs provides a powerful stimulus for meaningful dialogue and insight, enabling teams to chart a more intentional and coherent path forward".

How teams construct pedagogy

We considered how teachers co-construct knowledge with children, in the same way pedagogical leaders need to mirror these pedagogical values and engage with teachers to foster a culture of ongoing learning where they build new understandings together.   Professional growth emerges through professional learning, dialogic inquiry, relationships and shared experiences.  And at times this can be uncomfortable!  For example when teachers believe in co-planning the curriculum with their students, this shifts teachers away from being the holders of knowledge and the deliverers of the curriculum.  Our roles and professional identities has changed to being thinkers, researchers and collaborators.

In IB schools we always talk about what we do as being values-driven.  Our experiences in these school and practices in our classrooms shape these values and what our community believes about children, learning and the role of education.  However in many schools that I visit there is also another agenda - one that is linked with standardised testing - which may get in the way of our own agency and autonomy.  In particular, in schools driven by a national curriculum, it is often politics that dictate what, when and how we should teach, and at times this may go against our own professional judgement and knowledge of child development.  School inspectors often prioritise knowledge and skills - which can be measured, and place little value on creativity, curiosity, social-emotional development and so on.  And the impact on teachers is bigger workloads, more documentation and accountability, and poorer teacher well-being as there is a lack of trust in their expertise.

One call in Finding our way is for time - time for children to wonder, express themselves, connect with others and to grow their own identity.  Later in the book there is a whole chapter about time (which might be the next one I read).  Sadly in almost every school I visit, time is always in short supply.  

Each chapter in Finding our way ends with lenses for leaders and talking points for teams.  It also contains a toolkit that leaders can use as part of their continuing professional development of teachers - in this chapter the focus being on building teams.  Here there are seven different tools:

• From me to we
• Reflections and stories that define us
• Seeking clarity - responding to ideas
• Mapping shifting perspectives over time
• Examining taking-for-granted practices
• Connecting beliefs to practices
• Values, actions, barriers and supports

More thoughts coming once I have read another chapter.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Leadership when times are difficult

Being present for all is probably the key for school leaders when their school is facing a time of crisis.  This can include a number of different challenges such as natural disasters, pandemic, political upheaval and war, which can lead to trauma throughout the community resulting from stress and a loss of security.  All these events can lead to feelings of helplessness, upsetting emotions and memories, and anxiety.  Trauma can also lead to people feeling disconnected, isolated, overwhelmed and unable to trust others.  This interferes with learning, engagement and academic performance.

Schools that offer safe and supportive environments may be able to buffer some of the negative impacts of trauma and to foster resilience.

School leaders can do the following:

• Anticipate that staff, students and parents are struggling as they deal with stress and anxiety. Be aware that this will manifest in behaviours in school.
• Ensure that the school has a process in place to support everyone impacted by the crisis.
• Be flexible in exploring individual needs and support for those who are struggling.
• Provide training to teachers on how to support students - while at the same time recognise that teachers may also have mental health issues.
• Act collaboratively will all members of the school community.

Leading well-being in difficult times requires leaders to be mindful, creative and compassionate in recognizing and serving the needs of the community.

Image by Joachim Schnürle from Pixabay. Image free for use under the Pixabay Content License

How school leaders can support student and teacher well-being

As I get ready to lead this month's online workshop for the IB, I'm reading a lot about the support that school leaders can offer to their community.  With students this falls into 4 main areas:

1. Creating a positive culture and learning environment: students most appreciate kind teachers who listen, care and respect them.  This can include a quality pastoral care system.  Basically this is all about the relationships between the teachers and the students.
2. Teaching social and emotional skills:  this can include resilience, mindfulness, promoting learner agency and helping students to become more self-directed, and a focus on restorative justice.  In IB schools much of this can come through the explicit teaching of the ATL skills (social, communication, self-management, research and thinking skills), which are seen as equally important as developing cognitive skills and content knowledge.  Reports show that student mindsets have more influence on academic achievement than home environment or demographics.  These skills help students both in and out of school.
3. The development of character strengths:  attitudes such as kindness, curiosity, fairness and so on.
4. Mindfulness:  helping students to become more aware of what they are thinking and feeling.  Mindfulness can improve well-being, as well as physical and mental health.

To support teacher well-being school leaders can focus on:

1. Systemic leadership: with clear and manageable goals for teachers.  This can include clear job descriptions, clear policies and procedures, expectations around feedback to students and setting clear limits to ensure a work-life balance.  Leaders need to be open to feedback themselves and to include teachers in important decisions.
2. Creating a positive and non-judgemental culture where all teachers feel valued.  This is especially important when designing a staff evaluation procedure, and includes supporting professional development and growth.  A good way for schools to create this culture is through coaching and mentoring programmes.
3. Peer support and collaboration.  To do this leaders need to be aware of the meeting calendar which allows all teachers to work collaboratively.  Peer support can also include coaching and the sharing of expertise so that all can learn from it, as well as celebration of successes.

As I spend a lot of time in schools leading evaluation visits, teacher support and student support are big items on our agenda that we tend to devote a whole meeting to when we discuss the school environment.  My feeling is that over the past 5 years these areas have become increasingly challenging - in particular many schools note seeing a huge increase in the number of students who need support following Covid.  As we think about how schools deal with various crises they face (conflict, illness, natural disasters and so on) leaders deal with particular challenges in supporting well-being.  I will deal with these in my next post.

Image free for use under the Pixabay Content License

Well-being in schools

Next month I'm leading an IB workshop on well-being.  It's an important issue, and as this workshop is a new one for me, I decided to write several blog posts about it.  Well-being is sometimes hard to define, but this is what I'm learning:

• well-being is about both the emotional (positive emotional states and the absence of negative emotions) and cognitive (life satisfaction).
• it's connected both with happiness and with quality of life
• it's about feeling good and also about functioning well
• it's about balancing the following:  physical well-being (lifestyle choices, what we eat, active living),  psychological well-being (how we think and feel about ourselves), social well-being (a sense of belonging, the quality of our relationships and communication), spiritual well-being (a sense of meaning and purpose in life),  cognitive well-being (the ability to expand our knowledge and skills),  and economic well-being (being able to meet our needs and to feel a sense of security).

The UN now produces a World Happiness Report and ranks countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.  According to the most recent data, Finland has been top of this ranking since 2010, and Afghanistan has been at the bottom - and is getting worse.  The OECD also publishes a Better Life Survey index which ranks countries on many scales (income, housing, health, safety, work-life balance, environmental quality and so on).  You can drag the sliders and see how the countries move relative to each other as the data is visualized.  In this index Norway rates the highest and South Africa the lowest.

Well-being has been an important element of many educational models such as Montessori and Waldorf and today about half of all international schools have well-being policies.  Well-being is also being seen now more in school mission statements, and parents as well as teachers are realizing that often too much pressure is put on children to "succeed" (get good grades) which is why in IB schools it's important to go beyond the academics in a school's mission.  And it's not just students who need more of a focus on well-being - teachers need it too!  It's important to prioritise staff well-being because it's only when teachers feel valued and cared for that they are able to flourish and give their best to their students.  And yet all too often teachers feel stressed and burnt out and this leads to high rates of sickness, turnover and low retention.  

Over the next few posts I'm going to explore what school leaders can do to foster a sense of well-being in their school community.  This will include both student and teacher well-being.

Image by John Hain on Pixabay

A Virtual Learning Action Plan for School Leaders

After months of lockdown and doing very little, I've had a busy few weeks recently. I've led 4 IB workshops at schools around Europe as well as several online on-demand workshops. These on-demands are new: as many workshops leaders cannot travel to schools to lead face to face workshops, the online platform has been adapted so that teachers from a single school can do an online workshop together. I've also been involved in virtual school visits - both to authorise and evaluate schools, and I'm soon going to leading workshops "live" using Zoom or other platforms as well. The times are changing and hopefully I'm changing with them! Recently I've also been involved in developing a new resource for Toddle. This is a virtual learning action plan aimed at school leaders that contains a downloadable review tool that leaders can use to consider an action plan that is aimed at supporting students, empowering teachers and partnering with parents during these uncertain times.

The inspiration for this came from a post on Twitter from @jaydostal who wrote:

School is important during this crisis, but not as important as the needs of our families who are experiencing anxiety and fear as we develop our new normal. Our kids and families need us more than ever to model social and emotional learning before content.

This tweet got me thinking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how it connects with the work that school leaders do.  The wonderful graphic design folk at Twitter turned my thinking into this great graphic.  In my opinion, Maslow's Hierarchy has become even more important at this time of global pandemic.

The resource considers the effective use of technology and also give some guidelines on returning to school after virtual learning.  Please click here to access the action plan.

What's new and different: Leadership in the PYP

This blog post continues with the series about what is new and different in the Enhanced PYP.  For this post I decided to look at leadership which now has a whole section dedicated to it in the learning community section of the digital resource.  The section opens with the statement "School leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influence on student learning".  For the first time in the PYP documentation the leadership capabilities have been defined.  Leaders provide direction, promote a shared vision and acknowledge the agency of all members of the community.  They work with others to create a shared purpose, rather than imposing goals on the community.  Important too is the idea that leaders need to motivate others to take on formal and informal leadership roles so that responsibilities are shared among the learning community.

Formal leadership in a school comprises of the pedagogical leadership team - this is generally the head of school along with the PYP coordinator and may also include the director and assistants heads.  This team is responsible for ensuring the Programme Standards and Practices are being implemented and is also responsible for the school's Action Plan that ensures the school is making continuous improvement.  Informal leadership refers to the role of teachers leading their classes and inquiring into their own practices.  It also involves student leadership.  Informal leadership is increasingly important because no one person can meet all the responsibilities.  Shared ownership of responsibilities in turn promotes voice, choice and agency throughout the community and stimulates innovation because all members of the community are open to new ideas as they inquire, reflect and learn.

I think one of the most important points made by the new Leadership document is the emphasis on sustainable leadership.  This is done by fostering leadership capabilities and planning for long-term succession through a distributed leadership model.

There are seven leadership capabilities defined by the IB that can be briefly described as follows:

1. Strategic - forward thinking, big picture thinking, aligning people behind a shared set of goals
2. Cultural -  creating a culture that celebrates diversity as being essential for intercultural learning
3. Pedagogical - building individual and institutional knowledge through PD
4. Entrepreneurial - anticipating change and responding in creative ways
5. Relational - understanding and supporting all stakeholders to achieve better outcomes for students
6. Reflective - using thinking strategies and placing critical reflection at the core of the organisation
7. Heuristic - insight and inference allows quick decisions to be made with the big picture in mind

This section on leadership is new and different and reflects recent research that shows that schools that emphasise continuous improvement are more likely to implement innovative practices.    To do this, all members of the learning community need to be supported in their growth.

Photo Credit: alicecahill Flickr via Compfight cc

Teams - high functioning or dysfunctioning?

At the recent NESA Conference I did 2 days of workshops with Fran Prolman and Gail Seay.  On day 2 of these workshops we talked about how vulnerable connections build team dynamics.  Fran talked about building voice and choice among adults and how team building is based on trust, which involves bonding and knowing each other before you have to have difficult conversations.  One of the things she also shared with us was the 5 dysfunctions of teams which was based on the work of Patrick Lencioni (see diagram below).

Lencioni writes that the largest team problem, invulnerability, is a sign of a lack of trust.  Without trust no team member is willing to interact with each other.  It's only when a team is willing to be vulnerable, supportive, honest and loyal to each other that real teamwork can begin.

Moving up the pyramid, the next big issue for teams is that there is often an emphasis on harmony - however this becomes artificial harmony because dysfunctional teams are afraid of conflict (in other words, when considering the team phases of forming-storming-norming-performing outlined by Bruce Tuckman, these teams get stuck on the forming stage which is superficial and non-productive.

Further up the pyramid is ambiguity, caused by a lack of commitment, clarity and focus which also impacts productiveness as team members all have different interpretations of what needs to be done.  In these dysfunctional teams the members are all going in different directions.

Another aspect of dysfunctional teams is low standards and a lack of accountability.  In these teams the members often blame each other or external factors for their lack of success.  In these teams there are low expectations and poor quality work.

Finally some team members are caught up in their own egos and are not interested in results, or in reflecting on ways to improve.  In these teams they are more concerned with perceptions than embracing reality.

Now we know that there is a direct correlation between adult interaction and student achievement and it's because of this that teamwork is crucial to the success of any school.  The effectiveness of teams, be it grade level or subject teams, have a tremendous impact on how students learn and achieve.  In high functioning teams the members are motivated as they are working towards a common goal - and this motivation leads to synergy, support and loyalty.  Efficiency improves as members volunteer to take on various roles within the team, dividing up tasks to meet the deadlines and building on everyone's strengths.  We learn more through collaboration, and so teamwork expands our intellectual capacity as we consider diverse opinions and viewpoints.  Also, as we establish norms of respectful collaboration, listing to all the voices around the table, our interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence increases, fostering the feeling of connection.

In Fran's book, Building Your Instructional Leadership, she provides a number of suggestions for improving the functioning of teams in schools.  These include:

• Creating time when teams can meet regularly
• Providing structures and protocols to help teams focus on the work
• Giving time for reflection
• Clarifying roles within the team
• Empowering each member to contribute and make decisions
• Building capabilities
• Providing recognition and reward for success
• Encouraging risk-taking and experimentation

Do these suggestions resonate with you in your context?  What does successful team work look like in your school?

Trust - the glue that holds us together

At the NESA Conference I attended several sessions with Fran Prolman about instructional leadership.  The focus of these sessions was on building relationships.  In her book, Building Your Instructional Leadership, Fran writes about trust, which is something that cannot be taught, but which is developed in response to events, behaviour and conversations:  basically trust and loyalty has to be earned by the leader and this takes time (generally 6-9 months).

So how can school leaders build trust so that teachers are working in an environment of risk-taking, mutual support, honest feedback and continuous growth.  Leaders need to know how to promote and facilitate collaboration because adult collaboration in schools has a direct impact on student achievement. Fran lists 5 important ways of building trust:

1. Model vulnerability - if you want teachers to be honest and to talk about problems of practice you have to model vulnerability first.  Are you secure enough with who you are to give up the pretence of perfection?
2. Cultivate familiarity - pop into classrooms and ask what additional support teachers want.  Familiarity leads to a raised level of caring, of comfort, of trust and of psychological safety.
3. Facilitate commonalities - heighten the awareness of similar interests and hobbies - this will build connections and trust.
4. Invite and acknowledge concerns and fears - model empathy, active listening, being non-judgemental and offering support.
5. Prove your competence - so that teachers will feel confidence in you as a leader.

What other ideas do you have?  How do you build and maintain trust in your school?

Photo Credit: jessica wilson {jek in the box} Flickr via Compfight cc

Creating a culture of wholeness in schools

In yesterday's keynote at the NESA Spring Educators' Conference Carolyn McKanders talked about creating a culture of wholeness in schools.  One of the interesting things I learned during this keynote was about ethos, pathos and logos (quite appropriate as these are Greek words, taken from the work of Aristotle, and we are in Athens for this conference).  They are important to us in education in the following ways:

Ethos is connected with character and ethics.  Teachers know that there is too much pressure on students and that this conflicts directly with their original aims of becoming educators - as such we often struggle with acting in ways that are dictated by economic and cultural pressures but that compromise our best intentions.

Pathos is concerned with experience - it's an important part of empathy and deals with emotions, feelings and sentiments.  Sadly we often shut down our students through overwork, we do little to support their imaginations and we make them competitive, inadequate, and fearful for each other's successes - and this takes a huge toll on students.  All too often in schools we offer students a set of values and goals that research shows has little to do with the things that are positive in life.

Logos is about logic and reason.  We talked about how the keys to learning are dispositional in nature and that thinking dispositions are tendencies towards particular patterns of intellectual behaviour.

We looked at an excerpt from the film Race to Nowhere (see below) and we asked the question What does it take to produce a happy, motivated, creative human being?

Research about the brain tells us that the brain develops from back to front.  First the limbic areas of emotional processing develop and then the prefrontal areas that deal with rational processing.  Teens are driven mostly by emotional processing.  We also know that the brain is very pliable (neuroplasticity) and that the environment shapes the brain.  This is really important for us as educators, as the experiences that we provide students can lead to the development of some areas and the pruning of others.  Despite this knowledge, we are still hyper-schooling and over-scheduling because of factors like competitive college admission, fears about the future economic and world uncertainties, fears of seeming to be non-competitive (wimpy) and competing commitments between the curriculum and extra-curricular activities.  According to Gleason we are facing a dilemma, to educate with rigour you have to sacrifice wholeness (and yet in fact this is a false dichotomy).

It is possible to promote wholeness in schools.  More and more schools are taking on mindfulness practices, investing in quality food and nutrition and developing a health curriculum that incorporates emotional health, and schools are also looking at different ways of scheduling, more inclusive practices and developing a sense of community.  Some schools are committing to balance and wholeness, where the head and the heart are more integrated.  It certainly is a challenge - but it is one that schools need to accept.

Psychologically safe schools

I'm at the NESA Conference in Athens and today I decided to do a workshop on leadership and relationships, led by Fran Prolman and Gail Seay.  This workshop started by looking at healthy cultures where people don't talk about mistakes as screwing up, because in healthy organisations people make mistakes all the time.  In contrast psychologically unsafe schools are ones where colleagues do not offer up ideas - they spend their time protecting themselves, which may even involve throwing other colleagues under the bus.  They withhold their thinking, which robs everyone of learning opportunities.  Such schools have shut down opportunities for innovation and creativity - and subverting collaboration and teamwork not only harms us as teachers, we know that it also impacts student achievement.  In psychologically unsafe environments your sympathetic nervous system kicks in to a "flight or fight" mode, and chronic activation of this survival mechanism is hazardous to your health.  The World Health Organization predicts that depression will become the second most debilitating condition on the planet by 2020.

However, what if schools are psychologically safe? What if school communities are ones where you are expected to voice your concerns, questions and ideas?  Such schools are true learning environments where challenges are reframed as learning problems to be approached through inquiry, where teachers learn from each other and support each other.  When considered from a leadership perspective, Brené Brown's research shows that strong leaders embrace their own imperfections as courage and strength.  They model curiosity which in turn leads to learning and growth.  Seeking answers to questions leads to schools becoming true learning organisations.

The Psychological Safety and Accountability Matrix

This matrix looks at the situation where there is high or low accountability combined with high or low safety. 

• Apathy - there is high safety and low accountability - there are no demands and in such a situation we stop studying results and reflecting on our situation and teachers can become demotivated, lack commitment and check out mentally.
• Comfort - in this situation things are just too comfortable.  Where there is high safety and low accountability people do not take risks.
• Anxiety - here there is high accountability combined with low safety.  In such a situation teachers can become fearful, overwhelmed and paralyzed with anxiety - they live their days in fear.
• Learning - Here there is the right balance between high safety and accountability.  Teachers feel supported, safe to question and take risks, but also know what the expectations are and that they are accountable.

Where is your school on this matrix?  I was with a colleague in this session and we talked about how with an R&D department in school were were definitely a learning school.  It will be interesting to see how we move forward from here.  Without a safety net where failure is welcomed as a learning opportunity, will we become apathetic, too comfortable or anxious?  Or (hopefully) will we be able to maintain the balance between risk taking, accountability and learning?

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5 traits of successful leaders

The really interesting thing to me in the PYP online workshop The Role of Technology, is that quite a lot of the resources that have been shared are not directly related to technology, but about the conditions that need to be in place before technology can be successfully introduced and integrated. I'm following the leadership path through the workshop and the good news is that we can all learn to be better leaders.  Here's a video that appears on the MindTools website, and this is followed by a set of questions and resources, skills and techniques to help you become a better leader.  First of all I decided to do the quiz.

So how did I do?  Well overall I got a score of 67/90 and I was keen to read on to find out how I could do even better.  The analysis shows that two keys areas of personal growth and development are fundamental to leadership success: self-confidence and a positive attitude.  This is because self-confident people are usually inspiring, and people like to be around individuals who believe in themselves and in what they're doing. Likewise, if you're a positive and optimistic person who tries to make the best of any situation, it's much easier to motivate people to do their best.  In both self-confidence and positive attitude and outlook I scored 7 out of 10.  The recommendation here is to become aware of all the things you have already achieved and to make the most of your strengths.  In the case of a positive mindset, it's also important to develop a strong sense of balance, and recognise that setbacks and problems happen – it's how you deal with those problems that makes the difference.
Positive people approach situations realistically, prepared to make the changes necessary to overcome a problem. Negative people, on the other hand, often give in to the stress and pressure of the situation. This can lead to fear, worry, distress, anger and failure.

The next set of questions were about emotional intelligence, where again I scored 7/10.  This is basically assessing the "soft skills" that allow you to build strong relationships.  I felt good about this and think that over the past few years I've done my best to develop and practice more empathetic listening to try to understand another person's perspective.

Other questions were to assess transformational leadership - which involves creating an inspiring vision of the future and motivating others to achieve it.  It is key to managing the implementation of new initiatives successfully as well as developing other members of the team so that they in turn become more effective in the future too.  In providing a compelling vision of the future I scored 7/10, but in motivating people to deliver the vision I scored 9/10 which I was really pleased with.  Some of this, I believe, is because I also scored highly in being a good role model.  Good leaders lead by example. They do what they say, and say what they do. These types of leaders are trustworthy, and show integrity. They get involved in daily work where needed, and they stay in touch with what's happening throughout the organisation. Great leaders don't just sit in their offices and give orders; they demonstrate the actions and values that they expect from the team.

Successful leaders also manage performance effectively by setting their expectations clearly and concisely. When everyone knows what's expected, it's much easier to get high performance.  Above all, it's important to be fair and consistent.  In the category about providing support and stimulation my score was 14/20.  This deals with providing people with challenging and interesting work, allowing them to develop their skills and to feel supported in their efforts to do a good job.

The Mind Tools website is full of free resources, for example I have also explored the decision making section of the site today as well.  There are sections on team management, problem solving, project management, time management, stress management, communication skills and creativity tools among others.  There are Bite-Size trainings that you can access with membership, however there are a huge amount of resources on the website that can be accessed completely free.  It's a great resources and one that I'm so glad was shared as part of the Role of Technology PYP workshop.

Trust in leadership

I've been thinking a lot about leadership recently.  This started with the "surprise" results of the UK general election last week, where the Prime Minister went into the election to gain more seats and actually lost a lot of seats to the opposition, whose leader was seen as being a bit of a loony leftist but also as someone with integrity.  Then this week there has been another huge backlash against the Prime Minister following the Grenfell Tower fire where she has been described as "cold as a fish" for not meeting with the victims' families.  Of course "over the pond" there are similar questions being asked of leadership in the US - along with how far can anyone trust what is being said, and how much news is "fake news"?

As I'm writing an educational blog, I don't want this to get political.  Rather I want to reflect on leadership skills and how these can be applied to education.  

A couple of years ago when I started Cognitive Coaching I learned some new things about trust, and one of the interesting things was that we expect a different sort of trust in our leaders than in our colleagues.  With leaders, be it of a country, a business or a school, we are looking for mutual respect, which involves genuinely listening to what people are saying, competence, consistency and integrity. With our colleagues the order of these is different, with competency being less important than caring, honesty, openness and reliability.  

Digging a little deeper, today I read an article from the Harvard Business Review on the skills that innovative leaders have in common.  These are different again, bearing in mind that innovation is a difficult quality to cultivate.  However a study of around 5,000 leaders showed that innovative leaders share the following competencies:

• experimenting with new approaches while at the same time managing risk
• demonstrating curiosity
• leading with confidence and authority
• being proactive and seizing opportunities
• being adept at identifying strategic opportunities and threats

Reading through this I started to think about how this could apply to schools.  For example every year there are new initiatives (curriculum, standards, etc.) and could the skills of innovative leaders be brought to bear on these so that implementation is more successful and has more buy-in?  Relevant suggestions from the article that would apply to schools include:

• creating a learning community to encourage the free flow of new knowledge and perspectives
• stimulating new thinking by examining mistakes and setbacks as opportunities to learn
• making time for developmental activities
• being prepared to deal with people's reactions
• being assertive and not aggressive - looking for win-win solutions
• recognising and appreciating leadership qualities in others and involving multiple people in the planning

For myself, though I'm not part of the Leadership Team at ASB, I'm going to be coaching the tech integration coaches throughout the school, and I'm considering which of the facets of trust are going to be the most important to pay attention to next year.  I think I'm already well known for supporting teachers, appreciating their effort and promoting positive interactions (benevolence) and feel I would also score high on integrity, honouring agreements and being authentic (honesty) as well as communicating and sharing information (openness).  But how about the other traits that are most respected in leaders - competence and consistency?  When I consider consistency I think most people would regard me as dependable and reliable.  Generally I think I'm seen as a person who works hard and sets standards.  As far as competence goes I think I could work harder on problem solving, conflict resolution and handling difficult situations:  basically what I am hoping is to develop a more solution-focused approach to the myriad of challenges we are facing in integrating technology throughout the curriculum.

Onwards and upwards!

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Leadership and teacher churn

Last year on R&D I worked on recruitment, retention and development of teachers by schools.  I did lots of reading around this, and so I'm always interested to read more studies about these issues, and to try to put them into the international context in which I'm working.  While I think that there are many reasons why internationally people choose to leave a school - such as wanting to live in a different country, hardship postings, personal issues including family, wanting to move up the career ladder and so on, I think it is also true that the culture of a school has a lot to play in these decisions.

This week I was reading a blog post entitled "Teachers Quit Principals, Not Schools".  This was based on previous posts along the theme of people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses.  I wondered how true this was in the context of international education - or even what lessons international schools could draw from the experiences of retention of teachers in school districts.  Certainly it's true in all schools that the leaders of the schools help to set the culture, which in turn helps to retain teachers. The blog post directed me to a study done by Indianapolis Public Schools who looked at the reasons why teachers voluntarily left a school.  In this study,  49% cited school leadership, 44% personal reasons and 40% school culture.  Less than 20% mentioned salary and benefits.  The blog post quoted:

The principal is the one who steers the ship and when the principal cannot steer the ship in the right direction families and teachers look for a different school environment.

The Indianapolis study refers to teacher "churn" which implies teachers moving between schools in the city.  This isn't necessarily similar to teachers choosing to move internationally between schools. Reading the article it seems that many teachers were moved between schools involuntarily and at short notice.  That doesn't negate the previous statistics though, as these were all based on voluntary movements.  The impact of the movement remains the same - both locally and internationally.  A significant movement of teachers into and out of a school does impact the learning of students.  The study states "roughly half of new teachers leave urban classrooms within 3 years, just as they are beginning to have their strongest impact on student learning."  3 years also seems to be a fairly typical time to spend in many international schools - it implies a teacher has finished his/her initial contract which is usually 2 years, and has chosen to renew for one more contract.  For many teachers, even if they want to leave, it's worth staying the extra year for a better reference, and it's actually quite hard to move every 2 years as you spend the first year settling in and if you then have to resign at the start of your second year (many international schools are asking teachers to state their intent by September or October), you spend much of the final year "checked out" or embroiled in the recruitment process searching for a new job.

Here are some of the impacts of teacher "churn" stated in the study:

• School culture - difficulties in forging trust and being invested in a school community, difficulties in building relationships with students parents and colleagues as relationships, trust and investment generally deepen with time.
• Collegial relationships - when colleagues work together over several years, advances can be made in curriculum, mentoring, teaching and learning techniques.  If teachers are continually shifting, it's difficult to do these things.
• Continuity for staff and students - a large turnover leads to school communities and culture being built on thin foundations.

This is especially important in the light of research which shows that the classroom teacher is the single most important factor in determining student success.  Improving educational outcomes depends on developing teachers - and a high turnover hampers this.

The conclusion is that schools need to invest more into developing their leaders - of course they need good teachers, yet a great teacher under a poor leader is likely to leave, and that school is then less likely to succeed.  Principals do need to be passionate about what they are doing - and they also need to build the right structures and relationships for schools to be successful.

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Leadership: a rank -v- a responsibility

Last week our Head of School, Craig Johnson, shared a video clip with us about Simon Senik's new book Leaders Eat Last.  Craig wrote:

Much of what Senik says (and much of what the book speaks to) is what we are about at ASB.

Although the clip is only 4 minutes long, there are some important points:

• Leadership is a choice - to put others before yourself.
• A leader is like a parent - we want our children/employees to achieve more than we have ourselves.
• Leaders risk their own interests so that others may advance.
• Trust and cooperation are feelings produced by the environment in which we are working - and that environment is created by the leaders.
• When we feel our leaders have our interests in mind, we look out for each other; work harder, are more innovative, and give our best talents and ideas.
• When times are tough - a great leader makes sure that each person suffers a little so that no one person has to suffer a lot.
• Great leaders put people before numbers (heart-counts not head-counts)
• The leader points to the direction in the distant future - we feel excited to participate when we are given ownership and responsibility for the mission. 

Enjoy!

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Concept-based curriculum and instruction

I'm in a 2 day workshop with Lynn Erickson on concept-based curriculum and instruction.  For our "homework" tonight we are in groups of 9, each of us reading a chapter from Lunn's book Transitioning to Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction.  I was happy that when we numbered off, I ended up with number 8, thus having to read Chapter 8 which is about what principals and coaches need to understand about implementing concept-based models in schools.

Now, I have to say that for over 20 years I've worked at schools that already have a concept-based curriculum - the PYP.  However I've also consulted with schools that are moving from a more traditional way of teaching as they have decided to take on the PYP.  As with any new curriculum, change is hard - and those leading the change need to consider up-front what they can do to both to avoid the stresses and failures that might be associated with change, and to sustain any changes that do take place.

In Chapter 8, Lynn writes about how to set the stage for curriculum implementation.  This falls into 3 main steps:

1. Examining the hidden impediments to change - for example principals who do not provide the necessary support will certainly make change less likely to succeed.  Some people embrace change (the early adopters) and others are reluctant to move out of their comfort zones. Coaches and principals need to consider the different personal characteristics of their teachers to help them to successfully implement change.
2. Setting up the learning team - some schools know they need to change because students are struggling, yet teachers in these schools may be reluctant to change because of past failures. Conversely, schools that are experiencing success may not see the need for a change towards a concept-based curriculum.   In both cases, setting up a school learning team made up of teachers and instructional coaches is important before implementation.  This team should have members that are well respected by their colleagues, have diverse perspectives and be committed to a concept-based curriculum.  It's really important that there are teachers on this team, as they are the ones dealing with the change and can help anticipate and resolve the problems, as well as help mobilise the buy-in of the rest of the teaching faculty.
3. Shaping a shared vision - it's really important to show teachers what a concept-based curriculum looks like in practice.  The teachers who are the ones implementing the changes are often not the same ones that were part of the decision making and curriculum development process.  Many teachers who are expected to change their practices experience anxiety and fear of failure, so support, modelling and coaching are vital. 

When adopting a new curriculum teachers go through fairly predictable developmental stages:

• Self-oriented - wondering what it is and how it will affect them
• Task-oriented - wondering how they do it 
• Impact - questioning how the change is working for students

Coaches need to recognise what stage their teachers are at and design differentiated job-embedded PD to address the level of concern that individual teachers have.

When adopting a concept-based curriculum it's also important to consider student assessment. Traditional assessments measure knowledge and skills, but often don't provide much data about student understanding.  Assessments will need to be redesigned in order to focus more on conceptual understanding.

I have had an absolutely brilliant time today and can't wait to get back to school tomorrow to continue the learning.

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A meeting in Bahrain

I was really excited to be invited to be part of the NESA (Near East and South Asia) Ed Tech Leadership collaborative.  This 5 person team from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Israel and India met in Bahrain last Sunday.  Our task to was to plan and lead professional learning for the NESA community.  Although this was only our first meeting I felt we got a lot done.  Below you will find our purpose statement along with the strands we identified as priorities for professional learning.  I felt a great rapport with the other members of this collaborative and look forward to working with them all again as we move forward.

Purpose Statement
The Ed Tech Leadership collaborative is designed to meet the needs of educational leaders by:

• Providing a variety of sustainable professional learning opportunities; 
• Nurturing innovative leadership; 
• Fostering collaborative partnerships; 
• Identifying and sharing best practices; 
• Aligning and contextualizing policies and procedures; 
• Defining areas and direction for professional growth;
• Inspiring purposeful pedagogical change. 
• areas of professional learning will your plan focus on?

Strands (the areas of professional learning we will focus on):
1. Technology leadership and coaching
2. Using data
3. Innovation and change
4. Personalizing learning
5. Technology and standards
6. Digital citizenship

I will be attending the NESA Spring Conference in Bangkok in March to be presenting on coaching and using data to personalize PD for self-directed learning.  I'm really looking forward to this!

Photo taken at the Bu Maher Fort, Bahrain

Rewarding the best?

In a previous school I did a workshop with John Littleford about different methods of remunerating teachers.  He gave examples of pay scales from different schools and showed us how to "read" them to know what the schools valued.  Some schools wanted to reward advanced degrees, others wanted to reward experience at different schools, others again wanted to reward experience at their own school.  I thought about this workshop again this week when I read a BBC article about how schools in the UK don't reward the best head teachers.  The interesting thing about this was the way the author divided up the head teachers based on 5 leadership types:

• The Philosophers - these are the largest group of head teachers in the UK who see themselves as senior teachers.  Their focus is pedagogy and they don't change much about the student body or the staffroom.  Generally they are seen as inspirational, though they have only a marginal impact on exam results.
• The Surgeons - these head teachers try to turn around (failing) schools by excluding students and driving resources from the youngest into the oldest students.  These head teachers make improvements by firing around 10% of their staff.  They have an immediate and dramatic impact in the short term (around a 10% improvement per year in exam results).
• The Architects - these head teachers are planners who work on improving standards of behaviour first, and then on improving teaching second.  These heads focus on improving relations with parents and the community.  They also slowly replace poorly performing staff. Architects make progress on both school finances and exam results.
• The Soldiers - these head teachers are often employed to cut costs because of budget issues.
• The Accountants - also focus on turning around finances.  They do this by increasing enrolment in order to improve the financial balance of the school.

Now this is what is interesting - those head teachers who are seen as "Surgeons" earn the most in the UK, those who are "Philosophers" earn only about 2/3rds of the salary of the "Surgeons" with "Soldiers" and "Accountants" getting slightly less.  The head teachers who earn the least in the UK are the "Architects".  Despite this, the "Surgeons" are NOT the best for the long-term growth of the school.  They invest aggressively in those students about to take exams (so scores rise rapidly in their first 2 years) and at the same time exclude the trouble makers - about 28% of those in their final year at school - which also boost the exam results of those who do survive the year and take the exams. However these results are not sustainable.  Often the "Surgeons" do a 2 year stint in a school, and in the year they leave the school's results decline rapidly because the resources have been removed from the younger children - who are now the older children and whose education was damaged by the earlier cuts when resources were diverted away from them.   Meanwhile, it is the "Architects" schools, with the slow and steady approach, who are now continuing to improve above those with the other types of leadership.  In addition the "Architects" have been attracting students whose parents want to use them - on average they only expel 1% of all pupils.  If success is measured in GCSE results - then the architects' schools are doing the best - 5 years after these head teachers are appointed these schools are still growing and delivering a good education to a higher proportion of students.

These results are interesting - since those who bring about short-term gains are rewarded much higher than those who bring about long-term ones.  In fact the "Architects" are penalised in terms of salary.  Another interesting trend is that those head teachers who exclude the most pupils are the ones who are paid the most.  Another interesting fact I gleaned from this article is the type of people who end up in these head teacher roles:  the "Philosophers" are mostly English teachers, the "Surgeons" are mostly PE teachers, and the "Architects" are mostly history and economics teachers.

What do you think of these findings?  Does anything here resonate with you?

Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon Flickr via Compfight cc  This photo is of a school playground in New York.

Sustainable Leadership

One of the new challenges of my role at ASB over the past few years is mentoring and coaching the people who report directly to me.  For example in the tech department there are two educational technology specialists, both of whom have degrees in IT or computer science, but neither of whom have ever worked in a school before.  They are young millennial women who have chosen to work in tech, and I really want to encourage them to go further in this field.

Another group that this could equally apply to is our tech integration coaches.  These are all full-time teachers who have shown an interest in taking on more of a leading role in technology.  I'm really aware that at some stage in the past I was given an amazing opportunity to leave my job as a homeroom teacher and to work alongside someone to learn to be a technology specialist.  At the end of that year, when he left, I was easily able to step into his shoes.  In the same way I really want to create a system of sustainable leadership, so that when the day comes that I leave ASB, everything keeps ticking along well.  This, to me, is a real measure of leadership - to create other leaders.  I want to get to the point where I make myself redundant and can follow other paths.

Something I've been reading recently is about situational leadership.  This looks at the relationship between leaders and followers.  In the book Triggers, Marshall Goldsmith describes it in the following way (which I see as a sort of continuum):

• Directing - this is for employees requiring a lot of specific guidance about how to complete tasks.  It involves giving step-by-step directions and is mostly a one-way conversation.
• Coaching - this is for employees who still need guidance but who want to grow and learn, but here it includes more two-way dialogue.  For example as well as giving directions, you could also ask what the person thinks about this.
• Supporting - this is for those employees who have developed the skills to complete the task but who lack confidence.  Here there is a minimum amount of direction, and more questioning of the employee about how she or he thinks the task should be done and what help s/he needs.
• Delegating - this is for employees who are motivated, skilled and confident.  They know what needs to be done, how to do it, and can do it on their own.  

As I enter my 5th year at ASB I hope that most of what I am doing is supporting and delegating. How about you?  What do you spend most of your time doing as a leader?

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