Posted in Culture change, Head Teachers, Parental Involvement, Positivity, TESS on Jan 8th, 2008 1 Comment »
One of the things that schools sometimes fail to appreciate is just how intimidating they can be, especially secondary schools. We all have our memories of school, and for those of us in the teaching profession they are, for the most part, likely to be positive recollections. Yet when you speak to some parents you [...]
Posted in Children's Services, Conferences, Head Teachers, Ideas, Leadership on Nov 23rd, 2007 No Comments »
I’m just back from the Association of Directors of Education Scotland (ADES) annual conference which was held in Aviemore.
Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary with responsibility for Education and Lifelong Learning, was speaking and was stressing the importance of everyone involved in education working together, particularly in the new world of local outcome agreements.
As she was speaking [...]
Posted in Culture change, Head Teachers, Ideas, Leadership, Learning and teaching on Nov 4th, 2007 2 Comments »
During the workshop sessions I recently led at the AHDS conference I gave a presentation on The Seven Sides of Education Leadership - I’ve experimented here with Jing to try to capture the concept in a five minute video - It proved to be something of challenge to compress an hour and half into five [...]
Posted in Conferences, Consultation, Culture change, Curriculum for Excellence, Elected Members, Head Teachers, Parental Involvement on Oct 3rd, 2007 No Comments »
Our curriculum architecture conference proved to be a great success.
The evaluations from the 100 participants has been exceptional. It validated the approach we selected to involve a wide range of participants - HTs, DHTs, PTs, Primary HTs, elected members, parents, students, business people, community services and members of the department in the development of [...]
Posted in Admin, Culture change, Head Teachers, Leadership, Learning and teaching, honesty on Sep 29th, 2007 8 Comments »
I had a fascinating discussion with some headteachers recently about the time they spend on their jobs, the difficulty of their jobs and challenge that such time pressures and other demands present.
I know I’m presenting a significant challenge by asking headteachers to spend up to two days a week focusing upon the teaching process by observing [...]
Posted in CPD, Conferences, Head Teachers, Uncategorized on Sep 20th, 2007 1 Comment »
We held our first Head Teachers East Lothian Head Teachers’ Conference of the session at Musselburgh Racecourse this afternoon.
This was the first of five conferences which will take place over the session and adopted a new format following feedback from HTs last year. Each conference has a particular theme and has two distinct parts, the [...]
Posted in Accountability, Culture change, Head Teachers, Ideas, Leadership, Learning and teaching, Using data on Sep 17th, 2007 2 Comments »
The dilemma “Would you sacrifice occasionally excellent for consistently good?” has stimulated a fascinating variety of responses.
The motivation for creating this dilemma was a conversation I’d had with someone who had said that they would tolerate weak teaching as long as it was counter-balanced by excellent teaching in the same school.
I think it’s fair to say that [...]
Posted in Curriculum for Excellence, Head Teachers on Sep 12th, 2007 3 Comments »
Innerwick Primary School are leading the way in exploring alternative curriculum models.
Check out Head Teacher Angus McCrury’s blog for more information. All East Lothian schools run an asymmetric week which means that the pupils finish on Fridays at 12.30pm.
I’ll let Angus explain it further:
We have decided to abandon the traditional Friday routine which was. Finish [...]
Posted in Differentiation, HMIe, Head Teachers, Inclusion, Learning and teaching, TESS, Unconditional Positive Regard on Sep 8th, 2007 3 Comments »
I’ve been working on a draft for my next TESS article. I’d welcome comments and suggestions for improvement:
One of the best parts of my job is that I get to observe the learning and teaching process in all of our schools. One of the things that I’ve been struck by during my visits is [...]
Posted in Communication, Head Teachers, Ideas, Leadership, Personal Lessons, Words on Sep 3rd, 2007 4 Comments »
It was during a conversation this afternoon about how leaders communicate with colleagues that I used a completely throwaway remark about “pinging” and listening.
What I meant by this was that we need to engage with our colleagues if we are to really understand the impact that our strategies are having.
However, on saying the words the [...]