Yesterday I had a lunchtime meeting with the team that focussed around team building. There have been some rumblings from staff in the program that other staff are not pulling their weight and that a small number of staff are shouldering the burden of the other staff and 150 students on their own. In order to try and start building capacity in the team, I decided that we needed to get some lunchtime meetings (where lunch is provided) happening in order to get the conversation happening. We started with a Y chart on which everyone wrote their own personal ideas on what their ideal BYTES class looked like, felt like and sounded like. Once each person had done this, we combined responses on to one chart, which is now pinned up in my office as a reminder. We talked about the things that we needed to see improved and then each team member was given an individual goal setting sheet that asked them to imagine the words they would speak, the actions they would undertake etc if they were contributing to making this 'ideal' a reality. But here is the problem when you are working with staff. Of the 15 staff in the team, (and despite the three weeks notice) three couldn't come because of sporting committments, two could only come for half the meeting because of yard duty (I knew about that when I planned the meeting - it couldn't be helped) and one just forgot. Another turned up late after telling me he was definitely going to be there. What do you do about that sort of thing? It is frustrating because the meeting was organised a long time ago and these other things just "came up." It is frustrating because you put a lot of effort in (including buying food and drink) and some people don't bother to contribute. It is frustrating because one of the new staff that I was particularly trying to target because he is a classic "watcher" and not a participator was one of the ones that didn't turn up because of 'other' committments. Just like he often leaves the after school meetings early because he has family committments. It is difficult. I don't get a say in the staff who are in my team - the timetabler decides who she can fit in and people get to indicate their interest on their allottment form. This means that this year almost 1/2 the team are new, and this 1/2 of the team have been timetabled on together so they can't even learn from the experiences of others because they are all new. In the other 1/2 of the team there is not one single new person so they automatically work much better than the other team.
I guess this is one of the issues with dealing with busy people in a school environment. In an office it is expected that everyone turn up for their meetings so you can target the group as a whole. In a school, everyone has so many other committments to do with school that often they have things on that mean that they have to miss a meeting. It makes it hard to build that team spirit if there isn't a team there to build. I guess I have no choice really but to keep on plugging away. My goal is to now get them thinking about the type of skills we want to promote in our students in this program and then audit the curriculum with this is mind, improving, adding and making what we do stronger. I will continue and hopefully by the end of the year there will be an achievement to write about.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Sharing Stories
As part of this leadership course we are required to return to day three with a teaching story (two actually) that are "magical and memorable" that model our values or vision. I have been really stuck as to what to write about but I have an idea that I will develop here for now. As I was writing the post about Leadership philosophy I decided that I would attempt to use some of the techniques I had learnt in the leadership course in order to try to curb the misbehaviour of my Year 11 class. This years Year 11 class for me have been the worst behaved of the 5 classes I have ever taught. I have been at my wits end - and my main concern was not with my sanity but really with the quality of their learning. Due to the fact that they are rarely quiet whether it is me or one of their peers speaking, they learnt very little in class. Their social tendancies also meant that when given the opportunity to complete a task in class, they would rather talk. No amount of yelling, punishments or pointing out to them how insanely rude they were for talking over the top of each other seemed to make a difference and I could see them slipping behind fast. So here is what I did. Yesterday (the first day of term) we had a double. I went in there with little individual Y charts and asked them to imagine what their ideal English class would look like, feel like and sound like. We then compiled the responses onto a wall chart for display. I then asked them to come up with a list of things they could do as a class to achieve this ideal English class. From this we came to an agreement and wrote a list titled
"To create our ideal English class we must:" Once we had agreed on those, I asked them what the consequences would be if someone was acting inappropriately in class. They brainstormed a list of possible consequences and then we excluded those that were inappropriate (like public humiliation) and voted to come to an agreement on the procedure to follow if someone was behaving inappropriately. I also asked them to agree on a reward if they went a whole lesson without one person being given a warning for misbehaving. They voted for 5 minutes free time at the end of the lesson. I made a big deal of this and everyone wrote down the list, consequences and rewards on coloured paper with coloured pens and I gave them a plastic pocket to display it in the front of their folder.
The beauty of this is the EVERY student was involved and every student had their voices heard (despite the incessent chattering). They have come up with their own classroom rules and system of discipline and they are rewarded for following their own guidelines.
Now I'm certainly not suggesting that I just reinvented the wheel and that I am brilliant. However although I have used this method for Year 7s I have never used it in the senior school because I never imagined that the kids would respect the process and that it would work.
The amazing thing is that we went the whole lesson today without one person AT ALL getting a warning. For this class that is unheard of. And you know what - we actually had fun. And we had an intelligent, insightful conversation about an issue that involved the students actually learning from one another and engaging with the subject matter. Simply breaking the cycle, thinking laterally and allowing the students a say in their own management has transformed my english class. I never would have thought it was possible.
"To create our ideal English class we must:" Once we had agreed on those, I asked them what the consequences would be if someone was acting inappropriately in class. They brainstormed a list of possible consequences and then we excluded those that were inappropriate (like public humiliation) and voted to come to an agreement on the procedure to follow if someone was behaving inappropriately. I also asked them to agree on a reward if they went a whole lesson without one person being given a warning for misbehaving. They voted for 5 minutes free time at the end of the lesson. I made a big deal of this and everyone wrote down the list, consequences and rewards on coloured paper with coloured pens and I gave them a plastic pocket to display it in the front of their folder.
The beauty of this is the EVERY student was involved and every student had their voices heard (despite the incessent chattering). They have come up with their own classroom rules and system of discipline and they are rewarded for following their own guidelines.
Now I'm certainly not suggesting that I just reinvented the wheel and that I am brilliant. However although I have used this method for Year 7s I have never used it in the senior school because I never imagined that the kids would respect the process and that it would work.
The amazing thing is that we went the whole lesson today without one person AT ALL getting a warning. For this class that is unheard of. And you know what - we actually had fun. And we had an intelligent, insightful conversation about an issue that involved the students actually learning from one another and engaging with the subject matter. Simply breaking the cycle, thinking laterally and allowing the students a say in their own management has transformed my english class. I never would have thought it was possible.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Leadership Philosophy Musings Part 1 - What do people want in a leader?
As part of the leadership course I am participating in we all have to write our own Leadership Philosophy really getting clear in our heads what sort of leader we want to be and what we hope to achieve with our teams. Below is my first attempt to begin to write out that philosophy. I am going to first look at what people want from their leaders and what I think they deserve from them.
When trying to determine what it is that I value in leadership, and therefore the type of leader I wish to be, I decided to think about my first couple of years of teaching and think about the leaders I was exposed to and the sorts of impact they had on me and the lessons I learned from them.
When I had just started teaching what I needed most was feedback and an opportunity to talk to people about my teaching and get advice and honest ideas about how I could improve. Really what I needed to encourage me to grow and take risks and take on new challenges, was validation that I was doing a good job and the knowledge that I was being appreciated. It was important to me to know that what I was doing was contributing to the team and to the school vision and the team vision.
In my first years of teaching I had amazing leaders, all of whom are still with me and still leading me. My mind thinks particularly about my AP (one whom I have discussed on this blog before and who is responsible for much of my present confidence and the reason why I love my job so much). This person was always there with her door open for advice, encouragement and a friendly word. Her ability to make you feel like you were someone she respected, relied upon and valued as an integral part of her team were things that had a big impact on me and on how I view leadership.
My KLA manager has been another person I admire and who has had a big impact on the way I lead. His manner when conducting meetings is amazing. His diplomacy is something I admire immensly, as is his ability to craft his faculty meetings so that despite the fact that there are many differing personalities and differing opinions in this very large faculty, harmony is always maintained, and a resolution and productive outcome is always obtained by the end of his meetings. The focus is always on the curriculum and how to obtain an outcome, never on the attitudes and negativity of certain members of staff and this is something that I aspire to. The ability to lead your team along with you in a positive direction despite the sometimes difficult environment of school life is something that is the mark of an effective and efficient leader and is something that I try to keep in mind when planning and conducting my own meetings. This person has always maintained an open door policy, able to offer friendship, support, understanding, ideas and focus for my sometimes scattered mind. I only hope that one day I will be the calm, thoughtful, wise and considerate person he is and that I will have the same sort of intuition with people that he seems to posess to allow him to respond to people in a positive way that reaffirms them and makes them feel reassured in their purpose.
So let me try to summarise these things in a way that makes them a possible inclusion in my own leadership philosophy:
I think that a leader should lead by example and be the very best leader they can be. I think that everyone deserves to be heard, to be trusted and valued in their contribution to the team, to be shown compassion, empathy and understanding and to be listened to without judgement. I think that people deserve to have their achievements acknowledged and celebrated and that this is one of the most important elements in building the confidence and capacity of your team.
I want to be the sort of person who leads through inspiration, not domination and I want to motivate and engage my team by enabling them and entrusting them to participate and contribute fully to achieving our mutual goals. I want to build a team environment that is trusting, collegiate, repectful, innovative and dynamic and one that utilises people's abilities and strengths, giving them purpose and celebrating the achievements of the team and the individual. I want to enable my team to achieve with me and without me. I want to set up a team that has such mutual responsibility and shared vision that any one of the team members could take over from me in an instant and none of the momentum would be lost.
As I was writing this I stopped in order to write up an action plan for my BYTES team. When term 3 begins, I will begin a series of fortnightly lunches with the team (2 meetings a term is not enough to get anything done) and I have planned out the first three of these meetings. These I have set up under three headings:
I am also brainstorming ways in which a session like this might be adapted to put some of the responsibility for learning back onto my Year 11s. They are the noisiest, most disengaged bunch of Year 11s i have ever taught and I think it is important that at some point before next year they develop a responsibility for their own behaviour and their own learning - after poor Exam results that they all deserved (lack of work, excessive talking in class, no drafting, planning, revising) they wanted me to justify why they got such bad marks. I need to do something before leading them to the lions of Year 12 so perhaps this is the new start we need for Semester II. I will keep pondering.
When trying to determine what it is that I value in leadership, and therefore the type of leader I wish to be, I decided to think about my first couple of years of teaching and think about the leaders I was exposed to and the sorts of impact they had on me and the lessons I learned from them.
When I had just started teaching what I needed most was feedback and an opportunity to talk to people about my teaching and get advice and honest ideas about how I could improve. Really what I needed to encourage me to grow and take risks and take on new challenges, was validation that I was doing a good job and the knowledge that I was being appreciated. It was important to me to know that what I was doing was contributing to the team and to the school vision and the team vision.
In my first years of teaching I had amazing leaders, all of whom are still with me and still leading me. My mind thinks particularly about my AP (one whom I have discussed on this blog before and who is responsible for much of my present confidence and the reason why I love my job so much). This person was always there with her door open for advice, encouragement and a friendly word. Her ability to make you feel like you were someone she respected, relied upon and valued as an integral part of her team were things that had a big impact on me and on how I view leadership.
My KLA manager has been another person I admire and who has had a big impact on the way I lead. His manner when conducting meetings is amazing. His diplomacy is something I admire immensly, as is his ability to craft his faculty meetings so that despite the fact that there are many differing personalities and differing opinions in this very large faculty, harmony is always maintained, and a resolution and productive outcome is always obtained by the end of his meetings. The focus is always on the curriculum and how to obtain an outcome, never on the attitudes and negativity of certain members of staff and this is something that I aspire to. The ability to lead your team along with you in a positive direction despite the sometimes difficult environment of school life is something that is the mark of an effective and efficient leader and is something that I try to keep in mind when planning and conducting my own meetings. This person has always maintained an open door policy, able to offer friendship, support, understanding, ideas and focus for my sometimes scattered mind. I only hope that one day I will be the calm, thoughtful, wise and considerate person he is and that I will have the same sort of intuition with people that he seems to posess to allow him to respond to people in a positive way that reaffirms them and makes them feel reassured in their purpose.
So let me try to summarise these things in a way that makes them a possible inclusion in my own leadership philosophy:
I think that a leader should lead by example and be the very best leader they can be. I think that everyone deserves to be heard, to be trusted and valued in their contribution to the team, to be shown compassion, empathy and understanding and to be listened to without judgement. I think that people deserve to have their achievements acknowledged and celebrated and that this is one of the most important elements in building the confidence and capacity of your team.
I want to be the sort of person who leads through inspiration, not domination and I want to motivate and engage my team by enabling them and entrusting them to participate and contribute fully to achieving our mutual goals. I want to build a team environment that is trusting, collegiate, repectful, innovative and dynamic and one that utilises people's abilities and strengths, giving them purpose and celebrating the achievements of the team and the individual. I want to enable my team to achieve with me and without me. I want to set up a team that has such mutual responsibility and shared vision that any one of the team members could take over from me in an instant and none of the momentum would be lost.
As I was writing this I stopped in order to write up an action plan for my BYTES team. When term 3 begins, I will begin a series of fortnightly lunches with the team (2 meetings a term is not enough to get anything done) and I have planned out the first three of these meetings. These I have set up under three headings:
- Team (Creating a vision for the team).
- Values (What Qualities do we value in our students?)
- Action Plan (Developing an action plan to improving student learning in our program).
I am also brainstorming ways in which a session like this might be adapted to put some of the responsibility for learning back onto my Year 11s. They are the noisiest, most disengaged bunch of Year 11s i have ever taught and I think it is important that at some point before next year they develop a responsibility for their own behaviour and their own learning - after poor Exam results that they all deserved (lack of work, excessive talking in class, no drafting, planning, revising) they wanted me to justify why they got such bad marks. I need to do something before leading them to the lions of Year 12 so perhaps this is the new start we need for Semester II. I will keep pondering.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Holidays...what are they good for?
School holidays are really good for renewing your focus and energy. I have done a whole lot of nothing over these holidays - or nothing life-changing anyway and it is very nice to have the time to do nothing. So far I have: caught up with my mum on several occasions and spent time with her little family-day-care charges (very small and loving and cute); caught up with one of my university lecturers and a girl I went to uni with; purchased some beads for my jewellery making; corrected 26 SACs; written pages of ideas for the new Year 7 program; read half of Oscar & Lucinda by Peter Carey; met with the two friends I made at the Leadership course to discuss the work we have been doing as part of the course; been to the movies; done some baking (and more to come - the more I can get into the freezer before term starts again the better off I will be - so far I am at 4 meals and counting).
These are the things that I am yet to do but that need to be done: My year 9 BYTES website (my brother and I built it before the start of the year but it still has not had the finishing touches put on it and therefore still sits patiently waiting for its debut on my laptop); Read my Year 11 information and plan classes for them for Term 3; Read Richard III in preparation for the Year 12s and plan activities. If I can finish off all of these things I will feel quite pleased with the use of my time these holidays. I also need to write my leadership philosophy and some inspirational teaching story for this leadership course I am doing. I think I should probably work on that these holidays because otherwise it might get lost in the mire of term and all the things that need to be done.
One thing that plays on my mind. Sentences that begin like this: Oh, it must be so great to have a job where you get all these holidays... Anyone who is a teacher or who lives with a teacher would cringe at these words. I managed to bite my tongue before I answered (especially considering that the comment came from my housemate who does shift work, has 3 days off every week, six days off in a row every fourth week and about 6 weeks of holidays every year). The response I wish I had given is that I would greatly prefer to be in a job like his and get 18 days off every month but I'm never quick enough to be bitchy on the spot. So I just mumbled something and kept on cleaning the house before going back into the spare room to correct Year 12 SACS. Teaching is one of those jobs that is misunderstood and that everyone thinks they can have an opinion on. Unfortunately everyone has been to school at some time in their life and therefore everyone seems to think that they can have an opinion on how easy teachers get it. What upsets me about this is that I don't deign to judge other people's careers, wages, working hours and their holidays and yet it seems that everyone thinks they have the right to judge how hard teachers work. I don't go round saying "oh lawyers, they get paid so much and do nothing" or "people in retail have really got it easy - no responsibility, no one counting on them if they don't turn up to work." Think about the comments made about teachers though. Luckily my partner is great. When we're out and someone asks me what I do and then proceeds with "oh it must be so great to have all those holidays" it is James who comes to my defense, explaining the hours I work during term time, the amount of work that I bring home with me, the weekends lost to correction because there is no other time in the day to do it. At least I don't have to sound like a whinger because that is what everyone thinks that teachers are. If teachers are just whingers and they actually have it good then why is it that the retention rate for teaching is lower than in any other profession? Why is it that someone like me who is in their fifth year of teaching is a statistical anomally (generally graduates leave before they have taught 5 years).
I don't even know why I am writing about this. I guess I just hate being judged. I love my job and I hate having to defend myself to people. I guess there are teachers who are slack and who come to school at 8.45 and leave at 3.30 and who do the bare minimum. Just like there are people like this in every other walk of life. Then there are the rest of us who love what we do, work hard at it, are often at school from 7.30am to 5pm or even 7 when the school is shut by the cleaners. There are those of us who don't just do the bare minimum but who want to make a difference and what to improve outcomes for the students in their care and who join every committee they possibly can, who co-ordinate teams of staff, taking on extra responsibility, often with little financial gain. Teaching is a job that you cannot do for the love of money. There are many people I work with who are extremely talented and could get jobs out in industry that would pay them at least 20grand more than what they are getting paid teaching but they would rather have a job that they believe in that is making a difference than a job that pays well. If only there were more people who felt that way.
These are the things that I am yet to do but that need to be done: My year 9 BYTES website (my brother and I built it before the start of the year but it still has not had the finishing touches put on it and therefore still sits patiently waiting for its debut on my laptop); Read my Year 11 information and plan classes for them for Term 3; Read Richard III in preparation for the Year 12s and plan activities. If I can finish off all of these things I will feel quite pleased with the use of my time these holidays. I also need to write my leadership philosophy and some inspirational teaching story for this leadership course I am doing. I think I should probably work on that these holidays because otherwise it might get lost in the mire of term and all the things that need to be done.
One thing that plays on my mind. Sentences that begin like this: Oh, it must be so great to have a job where you get all these holidays... Anyone who is a teacher or who lives with a teacher would cringe at these words. I managed to bite my tongue before I answered (especially considering that the comment came from my housemate who does shift work, has 3 days off every week, six days off in a row every fourth week and about 6 weeks of holidays every year). The response I wish I had given is that I would greatly prefer to be in a job like his and get 18 days off every month but I'm never quick enough to be bitchy on the spot. So I just mumbled something and kept on cleaning the house before going back into the spare room to correct Year 12 SACS. Teaching is one of those jobs that is misunderstood and that everyone thinks they can have an opinion on. Unfortunately everyone has been to school at some time in their life and therefore everyone seems to think that they can have an opinion on how easy teachers get it. What upsets me about this is that I don't deign to judge other people's careers, wages, working hours and their holidays and yet it seems that everyone thinks they have the right to judge how hard teachers work. I don't go round saying "oh lawyers, they get paid so much and do nothing" or "people in retail have really got it easy - no responsibility, no one counting on them if they don't turn up to work." Think about the comments made about teachers though. Luckily my partner is great. When we're out and someone asks me what I do and then proceeds with "oh it must be so great to have all those holidays" it is James who comes to my defense, explaining the hours I work during term time, the amount of work that I bring home with me, the weekends lost to correction because there is no other time in the day to do it. At least I don't have to sound like a whinger because that is what everyone thinks that teachers are. If teachers are just whingers and they actually have it good then why is it that the retention rate for teaching is lower than in any other profession? Why is it that someone like me who is in their fifth year of teaching is a statistical anomally (generally graduates leave before they have taught 5 years).
I don't even know why I am writing about this. I guess I just hate being judged. I love my job and I hate having to defend myself to people. I guess there are teachers who are slack and who come to school at 8.45 and leave at 3.30 and who do the bare minimum. Just like there are people like this in every other walk of life. Then there are the rest of us who love what we do, work hard at it, are often at school from 7.30am to 5pm or even 7 when the school is shut by the cleaners. There are those of us who don't just do the bare minimum but who want to make a difference and what to improve outcomes for the students in their care and who join every committee they possibly can, who co-ordinate teams of staff, taking on extra responsibility, often with little financial gain. Teaching is a job that you cannot do for the love of money. There are many people I work with who are extremely talented and could get jobs out in industry that would pay them at least 20grand more than what they are getting paid teaching but they would rather have a job that they believe in that is making a difference than a job that pays well. If only there were more people who felt that way.
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