During my visit to Preston Lodge this morning I asked a class why they throught they were able to produce such outstanding work in the Art Department - and believe me it is outstanding.
The answer blew me away!!
“They take what we know and help us learn more” Natalie
Jim Cram, the Principal Teacher, explained that the [...]
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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 [...]
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There are three points of focus that I’m taking during my school visit programme:
Self-evaluation;
Distributive Leadership; and
Learning tasks.
I’m going out to Kingsmeadow Primary School tomorrow. HT Donald McGillivray sent me a paper which outlines how they know their school and how leadership is distributed right across the school.
It’s really helpful to get this kind of detail.
Self Evaluation [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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I met Bill Stephen and Ollie Bray on Friday to explore how we might build upon some of the experiences I had at the Project Adventure programme in the summer.
We started off exploring how we might use some of these ideas at one of our Head Teacher conferences in the coming session but quickly extended [...]
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I’ve just finished reading and can recommend Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.
The strapline for the book reads: “How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”
The dustcover describes the book as follows :
In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superceded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.
Today, [...]
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In their recent review of ”Leadership for Learning” the HMie point out that the report:
“……adopts a cross-sectoral approach which asserts that the principles of effective leadership are common to all sectors although the challenges and methods of approach may well vary depending on context”.. pg 2
I found this very interesting, particularly as I’ve just returned from America [...]
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I’m putting three half days aside each week next session to visit schools. I intend to make my visits much more focused than last year - where it was just a general review of learning and teaching.
I’ve recently written out to all Head teachers with the following letter. It will be interesting to reflect upon [...]
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I’ve been thinking a great deal about Norman Kunc’s presentation on belonging within an inclusive culture.
One of his key assertions is that we often develop a sense of allegiance in the “void of belonging”. His point was that by creating a common enemy we are provided with a sense of belonging to something. It’s this notion [...]
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