Reflecting on my deliberate acts of leadership

As the end of the year moves closer I am reflecting on my progress for my appraisal process. One aspect of this is to identify my deliberate acts of leadership this year...not the ones that align with my goals...but rather all the other day to day acts that demonstrate my progress towards the professional standards.
This is a tricky process on many levels. Firstly the word 'deliberate'! I think that often in education the world around us shifts and changes daily at such a rate that it can be hard to say that an act was totally 'deliberate'  as this implies far more time to reflect than we often have available in our leadership roles. In many cases it is more a case of making a choice based on needs that can be long term and equally can be based on a sudden need arising for my school, students or teachers. Secondly, by identifying my deliberate acts..it goes totally against the grain of my English 'stiff upper lip, no bragging' upbringing! So it is quite hard to state...yes I did this well...much easier to confidently state a list of things I need to work on!
But for the sake of building my own reflective abilities I am going to practice stating clearly and confidently ( without too much self mocking!) my deliberate acts of leadership:)
Here we go..

Developed ( in collaboration with staff)

•  Student Speak Literacy progressions for Reading and Writing and built teacher capabilities to use these in class as part of students daily reflective language of learning

• School wide Writing process which is being used currently and undergoing a process of adaptation for different year levels so the students and teachers own this. 

• MBS maths planning, teaching and learning web site to allow for clearer understanding of how maths is taught for parents, as a planning tool for overworked teachers and importantly to allow individualized education for students MBS Maths

• An agreed set of evidence that will be collected by MBS teachers in order to inform the process of making a reliable and valid Overall teacher Judgement

• A deeper understanding of Teaching as Inquiry with my teachers and a development plan for building this capability over the next year

Researched areas required for PLD and ran staff meetings in

• Moderation- what this means, why it's important and what it means for us as a school: This need arose out of the analysis of the mid year data and was identified a a need by both leadership and staff
• Moderation in the 3 standards areas, how we collect and use the evidence in order to inform us on our students progress against the standards
• Reading- the importance of modelling books as a record of learning and teaching and how these form a key part of our evidence
• ALiM and ALL- disseminating the knowledge gained from our teachers leading this and from the inquiry teams in order to support development of best practice across the school and to build the capabilities of our two lead teachers in their roles.

Built teacher capabilities and collaboration in the following school wide areas-

• Analysing the school wide data prior to presentation to our BoT in order to gain insights from our teachers on what the trends in data show. Thereby leading to a clearer understanding for all stakeholders on what the needs of our school are. This will lead to our board being able to set a realistic budget, aligned with the strategic plan and importantly the actual needs of our teachers with regard to the context of their students and their own PLD needs in order to create success for all
• Using teachers expert knowledge of their learners to inform class lists for 2015- this was done in a very long and heated ( you could clearly see how passionately teachers care about their students education) staff meeting with chart paper and all pupils names cut u ready for teachers to create classes with the best mix of learners

Liaised with our BoT in order to -

• Give them a clearer understanding of what lies behind the data they get presented. This clarity for the board will hopefully create better understanding of what is actually required in order to create the environment that will lead to the achievement of the strategic plan goals and allow more realism of expectations
• Create and continually update an action plan of what is happening within our school in order to meet our strategic goals, especially in student achievement
• Support the board to make a jump into using google in order to allow more collaboration and streamline the systems with an existing school system tool

Organised and ran school wide events -

• NZ Fact-a-thon- teachers created questions for each year level and students where sponsored to learn these. The money raised will go towards refitting our audio systems in the hall
• School Production- Our amazing dance teacher was the creative force behind this and I got the joy of the behind the scenes organisation ( staging, lighting, stands, tickets, PTA programs, timelines etc). It was hugely successful and a testimony to how well MBS values the creative arts
• Junior poetry competition and senior speech competitions

Reflected continually on challenging situations and how to best resolve these for all parties using skills that involved..

• Building my ability to use the ladder of inference in order to remove my personal gut response to situations and try to find a way to support the parties involved to come to a solution that worked for them
• Using open to learning conversations in order to coach colleagues and help them to identify how to resolve a situation or develop their ability to reflect on their practice
• Repressed personal aims and feelings in order to build stronger working relationships with colleagues
• Always try hard to reflect on how other people perceive a situation in order to support their progress and ensure I am putting in the required scaffolds of support to enable them to meet their goals

Ok that has made a start....now for the list of things I need to work on.....only joking.....there isn't enough room:)

Rethinking Pedagogies for future focused learning

Sitting today covered in mud from messing about in my garden and participating in #cenz14 Key Competencies Book group hosted by Karen Meluish Spencer.
With the authors of this fabulous book


Discussing how we only touch the tiny tip of the iceberg as far as how we utilise key competencies. We need to dig deeper down to find a way to build our students ability to become future problem solvers
Key idea #1 wicked problems for our students to solve
Wicked problems of our students futures
We need to create future schooling that will aid students to build the skills, mindsets and competencies that will equip them to collaborate globally to solve these wicked problems

By creating agency for our students to empower them with the belief that their education is their own, it is personal to them and through this their engagement lifts to increase collaboration within and beyond their personal sphere of influence into a realisation they can have a global influence.

Democratic Dialogue builds students understanding of how to engage with wicked problems
and
The shirky ladder of collaboration is a good way to use collaboration to build students agency to become change agents that can solve wicked problems

Another key idea is to build all of our abilities to transform discourses and leverage diversity
http://bit.ly/1rOOZ3m

Self revies for teachers, schools, leaders and communities can help the progress of key competencies tki self review

Forming intentions for a future focused education

Collaboration across schools and the impact of IES to NZ education

Following on from the presentation I did to our ELN cluster of schools, I have been working with year 5/ 6 teachers this week as they develop on their journey using GAFE.
It was really wonderful to get out of my school space, and see how others are using GAFE.
These teachers are just beginning on their journey and it was really nice to be able to feel that all the things we have learnt over the last few years has given us the knowledge to help others bypass some of the experimental processes we went through!
They are not yet BYOD and as yet not as far into using e-learning as we are, but they have a wonderful MLE in which to develop their pedagogy and practice...so jealous:) Also they are a group of 3 teachers who are excited, inspired and knowledgeable which was a lovely vibe to feel. The children in their group will be very lucky to have such great teachers who are so open, supportive and collaborative about working together honestly in order to focus on what we are all here for...our students and their achievement.

The whole process of giving my time ( which I struggle to find enough of as it is!) in order to support other people within education, is reinforcing my belief that for teachers often the best PD is found by being given the time to just work with other teachers within our community. To access all the knowledge we have around us and importantly the experience available that is contextualized to our group of schools. The important decsion we have coming up about our level of support for IES is both supported and negated by these experiences... on the one hand the overarching ideas of IES seem to replicate what I have said above. However the question remains...who will actually make the decisions about IES funding and who works together and when? It also matters what the hidden agenda of IES is? What are the actual political objectives? If it is for a long term- which would be best if we are aiming to allow time for the process to develop from an initiative..into an embedded pedagogical change- then politics has no 'election period' short term limits. Yet this initiative seems to have a time limit- aligned with political timelines- so I worry that really what we have is a PR stunt with a hidden agenda that will allow for an endgame that smacks of the reason I left the UK!
Here's hoping I am wrong:)

The importance of cognitive dissonance

6 weeks into being the only DP in my school I find that life is crazier than ever. The role involves supporting every aspect of the school-something that shod be easy if I don't have a class to plan for?- bit in reality not easy at all.
Every day is planned out from the priorities I have on my worryingly large list... And every day has interesting and unexpected twists that mean the list is put on hold and then increased!
Earlier this year I talked about action plans and prioritising. This is working, I have action plans... So many in fact that I am considering creating an action plan for my action plans! But is this the most logical way to work? The action plans help, but when do we reach a point at which action plans are the only thing happening! They help me to track all my roles so I can try and ensure that I am allocating equitable amounts of my time to each role. Yet they also create friction and dissonance within my head about what constitutes equitable allocation of my time.
What is most important?
Student achievement is why we are all here, yet without support for teachers so they feel empowered, we won't have student achievement. Then there is community engagement, if we don't engage our parents in an honest, open way then nothing we do will help to accelerate achievement.
It's an interesting challenge to my thinking and I think is only answered by the word 'why'?
Why am I doing this? Does it relate back to our strategic plan or our vision?
Life is so exciting and a process of continual learning:)
I hope for a simple formula. But feel that complex algebra is what I will find....(good job I'm a math nerd!)

CAAP plan and the difficulty of reliable OTJ's

Recently whilst constructing the mid-year mathematics report to the board, I discovered a blip in the data from a cohort group. It seemed fairly anomalous and investigation found that it was based on the difficulty for teachers and leaders to ensure consistency of OTJ's schoolwide.
Despite a reasonable start on how to gather evidence for making OTJ's, we still have a long way to go as a community of educators to ensure that this most abstract and tricky process can be made as authentic and valid as possible.
Our journey at MBS began with supporting teachers to understand how to analyse the schoolwide data and how this is only one part of the overall puzzle we have to put together in order to see where a students levels lie.
This year we are running both an ALiM and an ALL contract and an off shoot of these very valuable programs, has been the need for me to develop a CAAP plan ( Curriculum Action and Achievement Plan).
This is still an ongoing process of revision, feedback and more revision. However it has started to generate a document which aims to support all stakeholders within our school and wider community, see what a child achieving at a certain level, will 'look' like. Using the National Standards and also the ELLP, and numeracy progressions in order to build up a big picture of the skills and abilities a child will display. This is the start to building  a deeper understanding of what a child who isn't achieving will look like, and also the structures we have in place for the different tiers of intervention.
As a school, we have spent a lot of time looking at moderation within writing and have constructed a more shared understanding of what each level of writing will look like. We have also focused a lot on the collection and analysis of mathematical assessment in order to feed this into effective planning.
However we now need to use all these areas we have been working in and start to feed what we know around maths and reading in order to see how we can deepen our understanding of how to make valid OTJ's within these areas. In order to align our abilities as a staff so that by the end of the year we are able to make reliable OTJ's on a students work, in any of the 3 areas and for students at all levels in our school.

PLG group and the multiplier effect

Last term I joined a professional learning group facilitated by Maggie Ogram from Osprey Consulting.
The reasons for this are two fold:
First I knew that as I am relatively new to educational leadership and for that matter also to education itself- I have only been qualified as a teacher for 4 years!- that I need to ensure that I am double checking myself continually. Luckily I am an over achieving autodidact, who thrives on learning new things and I always research a concept or finding to ensure that what I am doing is pedagogically sound, and also proven to be effective. However I am keenly aware of what I don't know and so this PLG gives me an opportunity to collaborate in areas about which I may be unsure.
Secondly I knew that as my fellow DP was leaving, I would be loosing a very important professional relationship- the person whom I can bounce ideas off, have heated discussions with about practice and research ( not quite arguments as we have total respect for each other! but definitely good sound constructive conversations that lead to shared understandings) and who generally acted as a coach and mentor in one. So I knew that within the current structure of our school, I wouldn't be able to find that relationship for a while ( however approachable I ensure I am with other staff, it does seem that once one hits management level that people won't argue with you! and I need people to have a good argument/conversation with!) so the PLG has given me a forum with which to share ideas, bounce good conversations around and generally given me a group of coaches of which we are all equal and can all contribute valid points.
This last term we have looked at Certain readings in order to stimulate conversations in areas we all agreed we needed to work.
The first reading was around the kind of leader we are:



This is an excellent from a very interesting and thought provoking book

The ideas in this give a great reference point from which to set a series of leadership goals and I am finding that having these pinned to my wall above my lonely little desk in the dungeon office are helping to keep me connected with what is important to focus on

Presentation for ELN 2014

This is the second time I have presented to a group of peers through our ELN PLG group. This time my self confidence in what I was doing was much higher. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to share what we have been working towards at MBS and the huge leaps we have made over the past few years in our use of blended elearning.
Consequently I have been asked by a couple of schools to work with their staff as they build their ability to use GAFE. This kind of collaboration is hugely valuable to educators as it gives us a means to share our skills and ideas in order to improve educational outcomes for whole groups of schools. All PLD should be this collaborative.

Kicking off term two

As always a term starts and you hit the ground running. For me this has been doubly true due to working through the holidays. This had twofold reasons- to get all the new devices up and running ready for week 1 and also to build the professional relationship with our new principal and also our new office manager.
A week into the new term i would say that it was worth the effort throughout the holidays. the teachers and students are really enjoying getting to put into action all the PD we have engaged in around true e-learning and the investment both financially and time wise has been successful.
As far as professional relationships go, it has also been very valuable to have time to engage in some very constructive conversations that mean a more shared understanding of our way forward and also of how we can make these steps.
This first week has also seen me work with my outside appraiser and that has been very valuable, as a way to focus my thinking on me and my leadership values. I often spend 99 % of my time focused on other people and forget to stop and evaluate my own position and goals. Having talked to colleagues I had the notion of sharing the whole of my appraisal process with the staff and my appraiser agreed that this would be a great way to create trust, openness and an understanding of my goals. So this week I will put my reflective journal and my goals into an open Google document. shared with staff and invite their comments. It is a part of human nature to feel wary of being too open with their aims. However I believe that by doing this I am being open to input, creating collaboration and also displaying my trust in other people.

Journey to new devices for MBS

The journey we have taken as a school in order to secure new devices has been lengthy...but finally we are there.
When I took over ICT last year I rapidly discovered that 95% of all device in the school where Windows XP operating systems. From April 2014 this system would not be supported by MoE software provisioning or by Microsoft. Hence our year long journey to work out how to acquire new devices on a limited budget.
Through a process which started with setting a school vision and strategic plan specific to our schools vision for our digital citizens, I started dialogues with various parties and companies who could give us options.



Once presented to the BOT the discussions started about budgets, constraints and how this would fulfill our needs as a school/ community.
Towards the end of 2013 we had finalized budgets and quickly realized that this basic option wouldn't be viable or sustainable financially.
A change of Principal meant revisiting the whole concept of where we wanted to be as a school again at the start of 2014



The urgency of the situation started to be borne in upon the BOT and Principal, with the realisation that in two months time we would have NO computers in the school.
This along with the level of staff frustration at the lack of functioning ICT with which to put into practice the years PD on e-learning they had received meant that we put in place a quick move to BYOD in order to cover the gap.
This was already started in years 7 and 8 during 2013 and was highly successful for students, parents and teachers.
The decision was made to roll this down to year 5/6 as soon as was feasible within the structures and procedures I put in place to ensure successful BYOD




With the help of an action plan and regular contact with teachers, parents and students this has rolled out very successfully.
We still needed to fill the gap in devices which would become reality in April 2014
So I went back to the BOT and with the support of the Principal started to breakdown and evaluate all our possibilities within a given budget of 30,000



This time we came to an agreement and three weeks later we signed contracts for our new devices- 43 chrome books and 37 ipad minis. Along with 12 chromecasts to make the tv's in each room more usefull.

The outcome has been that I have learnt a huge amount about myself, my role as ICT and elearning leader, how to create visions and action plans and align them with the schools strategic plan and vision.
At times i have been frustrated with feelings that the board did not fully comprehend how frustrated our teachers where. However as the year progressed I was glad that there where people there who would ask me tough questions and make me double check myself and what I was doing. The responsibility to organise this has been mine, however the reason for all of this has been to ensure the students, teachers and community all get the best fit solution in order to create learning that can be blended to build the skills our student need to leave MBS as problem solving digital citizens. For that I thank everyone who made me stop and check my thinking and solutions:)
I have had no holiday at all over this 2 week easter break...but tired though I am, I couldn't be happier...now I can get these devices out into classrooms and the real work can begin

Building capacity

As a whole staff we engaged in many hours of work last year, in the area of analysing data. Across writing and maths especially we are seeing school wide movement that shows how well our teachers know their students and conversations with students has meant that the students also know themselves. With the advent of BYOD this year for more of the school, we are starting to build capacity for staff and students to use online assessment tools. Such as exit ticket. Nearpod , google forms, voice thread, showme, khan academy and many more. This is allowing for instant assessment , which means learning to need, and even more powerfully... Learning to need and interest. This equals total engagement.

Delegating!

This year I am encountering many challenges around what I want to be able to be involved in and what I know I actually have time for. I prime example of this is ALiM- Since I qualified I have been very passionate and involved in math education- it is one of my leadership areas. However when the chance finally came up for me to engage with ALiM finally, it has happened at the same time as becoming a DP. Initially I felt very heartbroken almost, about not being able to engage in this. However I worked through in my own head and came to the conclusion that this was an area that I have overarching responsibility for and my role now is to enable achivement for ALL students in the school and not just to focus on the few we can put through ALiM. So I have had to delegate this task down to someone else within the school and I now know that this is the best way forward...I can help build capability in our teachers and be sure that that teacher is upskilling and filling a need that is part of my overarching action plan for the math outcomes for the strategic plan.

So I am learning ....slowly to delegate!!:

School wide maths inquiry

Last year the teaches and myself noticed a trend within math data. This was low achievement in place value and basic facts.
After looking at possible reasons we concluded that this was mostly due to a lack of pedagogical knowledge for our teachers. What followed was a two term drive that up skilled our teachers and allowed them the time to focus on these areas.
Looking at the pat results school wide I have discovered a trend to support the improvement I can see in gloss and JAM- the average stanine score in PAT maths for the school has increased by two. In reflecting on why this has been so successful, I believe it was supporting the teachers to examine data and see the trends. By allowing them the time to only assess these areas and by providing them with PD and resources to target those areas in their classrooms. Allowing change to occur from the middle, not because of top down pressure.

Sent from my iPhone

Discussions with Christian long

Some excellent ideas regarding how the environment impacts on the mindset- not only of students, but also teachers. 

I felt particular resonance with his statement that ' the non negotiable values of any community, drive the solution' very relevant in our transition as a school at present

Having those difficult conversations

Communicating is a big, complicated problem! I find that I am relying more and more on keeping in my head the structure of open to learning conversations and a mental image of the ladder of inference. I worry that if I don't then I may slip into letting my personal belief system or values cloud my ability to remain impartial and focused only on the goal that the conversation is meant to resolve.
Open to Learning Conversations

Appraisal process

So my first appraisal meeting with external facilitator is set for next Thursday. I am setting up my Myportfolio to have a subset page which can be shared directly with my appraiser. As this is a tool I use anyway it makes sense to utilise it for as many purposes as possible. With that in mind I learnt a new trick today while at the ELN sessions, courtesy of @mosbourne01, which I have already utilised. It's sad how excited I get by a new trick in ICT use. But all these tricks streamline the amount of effort that is required in order to provide evidence of goals achieved.

2014 managing expectations

As the year begins I am already struggling to work out how to manage all the expectations that surround my role. These are trifold- the expectations of me as a leader, in maths, elearning, ICT and for the senior school; The expectations of me in my class, which should be my first priority, but often becomes a second! and also the expectations I put on myself to achieve in these roles. This one is I think the trickiest. As I have a terrible tendencey to become quite over achieving and will push myself to my limit in order to try and get everything done as perfectly as I can. This then impacts on my health and more importantly on the expectation I haven't even mentioned here- that my family, quite rightly should come first! 

I think some steps to work out managing these should help!

So I will try to

1, create action plans for all the different roles I manage and then priorotise these.

2, Try and organise a schedule for my week that only deals with the top of each actionplan for that week, hopefully thereby allowing more time for me and my family

3, try and let go of somethings and allow that other people can do them...it may not feel perfect, but will probably still do the job!

4, review this in 4 weeks