Posted in Learning and teaching, Personal Lessons, School visits on Oct 14th, 2007 2 Comments »
Made it to the October break! - so I thought it might be an idea to reflect upon the school visits which are forming such an important (and enjoyable) part of my working week.
I think it’s fair to say that these visits have created something of stir in some schools, with questions being raised about whether or not they [...]
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 [...]
Posted in Health, Partnerships, Personal Lessons on Sep 2nd, 2007 4 Comments »
I cycled to work on Thusday as part of the East Lothian Council’s health week. Richard Parker and I cycled from Carfraemill to Haddington (17 miles)
On Friday evening I set off for an adventure with the Ocean Youth Trust Scotland on the Alba Explorer from Port Edgar to Eyemouth. What a fabulous experience!!!
Alba Explorer off the [...]
Posted in Culture change, Harvard, Ideas, Personal Lessons on Aug 19th, 2007 5 Comments »
It was Roland Barth who asked us to think back to an incident in our life which had been our most intense learning experience.
That’s a really interesting question to ask anyone - if you don’t believe me try it for yourself.
What emerged for me was the moment when our first child was stillborn. Gill was two weeks overdue and [...]
Posted in Personal Lessons on Aug 10th, 2007 7 Comments »
With all this talk about NEET - Not in Employment Education or Training - I thought it might be interesting to reflect upon my own recent experience as a father of two teenage boys - 17 and 19.
Our eldest collected a good set of Higher results (2 As, 2 Bs, 2 Cs) and set off for Edinburgh [...]
Posted in Inclusion, Personal Lessons, Uncategorized on Aug 1st, 2007 5 Comments »
One of the goals we often espouse in education is to help children reach their potential.
Perhaps our greatest problem is that we actually think that potential has a limit!!!
If you have 11 minutes to spare watch these videos and take some time to think about how often you have used the phrase - “I want [...]
Posted in Harvard, Personal Lessons, Self-evaluation, personal on Jul 29th, 2007 3 Comments »
I got back to Scotland on Friday.
So what did I take from the Harvard experience?
There are ten inter-related things I’d like to do as a consequence of attending the course:
Identify and remove all things which erode or prevent a sense of belonging - in schools and the authority
Reduce the variance in the quality of learning [...]
Posted in CPD, Leadership, Personal Lessons, personal on Jul 9th, 2007 1 Comment »
I fly out tomorrow to Harvard University tomorrow afternoon.
Only one more sleep!!!
I’ll be updating my Learning Log for the duration of the course and also contributing to our team blog.
Posted in Accountability, Culture, Ideas, Management, Personal Lessons, Personnel, honesty on Jun 1st, 2007 6 Comments »
Following yesterday’s post I’ve been doing a little more reading about honesty and leadership.
Honesty is seen by many as a key factor in effective leadership 1,2, 3, 4
However, the recurring definition of honesty in most texts relates to trustworthiness of the leader.
I’m convinced that trustworthiness is a key factor in effective leadership but “truth” is [...]
Posted in Personal Lessons, Positivity, SQH on Jun 1st, 2007 1 Comment »
I received the feedback from the SQH seminar today.
For all that the feedback was overwhelmingly positive I couldn’t help but focus on the comment which said “The presenter had some interesting things to say but personality got in the way”
Thought so………