Barry Smith - Learning about Learning

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I have recently been trying to find more about the creative process both in education and in business.  Creativity is gold dust in the world of commerce.  New ideas and new ways of looking at old problems can mean the difference between success and failure, boom or bust.  With the generation of profit being the key driver in (most) commercial creative processes, companies are prepared to speculate to accumulate; both in terms of new ideas and the best creative brains. 

In my experience, and I hope I am wrong, creativity is not viewed in the same light in education.  New ideas are hard pressed to see the light of day and experimentation is not generally (again I emphasise this is only in my experience) seen as a sensible way to progress.  I understand that there are very good reasons for wild, untested, irresponsible experimentation being frowned upon, especially in senior years of secondary when national qualifications prescribe to an extent what must be taught and perhaps how.  However, I believe that there is much scope for advancement of teaching and learning through thinking creatively, teaching thinking skills explicitly and applying creative techniques such as the six thinking hats in primary and early secondary school.

I subcribe to an interesting blog called creativity and innovation driving business in which there is a post catchily titled Five takeaways stimulating Innovation.

They are as follows:

 1. “Give it a try–and quick!” - Essentially echoing on having a process to try out a lot of stuff, and keeping what really works. The key here is to do something. Keep on trying something new.

2. “Accept that mistakes will be made.” - Learn from the mistakes quickly, and move on. Failures are part and parcel of what creates new innovation. Don’t repeat the same mistakes.

3. “Take small steps.” - Experiment, but on a small scale. When something looks promising, go all out and seize the opportunity. This way one can do plenty of inexpensive experiments that create a funnel of would-be innovations.

4. “Give people the room they need.” - Without entrepreneurship, there is no experiment. Without experiment there is no success or failure. People need some time, incentives, job security and room to experiment.

5. “Mechanisms - build that ticking clock!” - How do you harness creativity and build innovation? It cannot happen simply by chance. Companies need to create practices and tangible mechanisms to experiment, try out new ideas and innovate.
It has just struck me as I have written this blog that Exc-el is a fine example of these principles.  The question I have is how can we transfer this to schools, if indeed we should?  I’d be interested in hearing a counter argument because what I’ve written I know is terribly simplistic, especially bearing in mind the caution which is required when we are dealing with youngsters’ futures. 

Maybe that is the answer in itself, it is such an important endeavour in which we are employed that we are, at times, paralysed by the fear of failure or at least that fear builds a great deal of inertia in to the system.  There are obvious constraints built in at Government and Local Authority level and there is rightly a high degree of accountability.  I think my real concern is that the line between being held accountable and blamed is a fine one.  I know Don has blogged at length on the subject of accountability and the model of “accountability as personal commitment/competence” he espouses is one I concur with.  I wonder how pervasive and how well understood that model of accountability is.  How much room is there in education for error/mistakes, even though some (most?) of our best/deepest learning and creativity is experienced is through making mistakes. 

I don’t know the answers as usual and I’m thinking out loud as I write and it leads me back to something my brother mentioned to me about my previous blog.   He quoted Steven Covey about security coming from a centre based on principles.  If you have clear principles, making decisions and being accountable is much ‘easier’. Clearly defining your ‘principle centre’ is a challenge which faces us all I suppose.

Met with David Gilmour today to discuss puting together a website for all things relating to the Active Learning Partnerships programme.  I think we came up with some good ideas to involve students and parents, facilitators and those interested in getting involved.  Watch this space for more information.  I’m hoping we can have a mock up available for comments and suggestions sometime soon.  David really is doing fantastic work in supporting and developing Exc-el and its users.

I’m discussing the programme with our senior management team on Monday, hopefully we’ll get the green light and the backing we’re hoping for to make this thing work.

The text below was a blog in it’s own right, but I think it is more of an exercise in personal reflection and therefore have decided that it is not worthy of being the main focus.  It’s really a bit of navel gazing by me but I think its important to include it.  I wrote it last night after coming home completely enveloped by end of term exhaustion!

I have been thinking today about my own personal ambitions and goals, I have to say as a result of some interesting conversations I’ve had recently with colleagues.  Taking on SQH is a very clear ‘marker’ about career intentions, you are stating very that you have an ambition to take your career in a particular direction.  My experience has been that people react in a whole range of different ways to making such a statement of intent.  My thoughts today have been about what this actually means in the ‘whole scheme of things’. 

Essentially what I think am getting at is whether or not it matters what the perceptions of others are (+ve or -ve) to the decision to ‘lay your cards on the table’ and commit to becoming a senior manager.  Relationships are vital, are perceptions?  This may not be an issue for someone already in a senior management position as the intention, and the position, is there already.  However, as a PT I feel I’m may be in a slightly different position, but can’t exactly put my finger on why.In recent blogs I’ve talked about the pressures of SQH and the extra time, both in and out of school that this has meant.  I also feel that inevitably my energies are being directed in a more strategic way, in essence a change of focus for me.  But strangely I have been feeling compelled to justify my motivations for doing so.  This may be because the results of my efforts are not immediately tangible to others, or it may be because there is a realisation on my part that my energies are being spread more thinly across the board because there is much more to deal with, or it could be just that change is unsettling. 

Whatever the reason, it has made me question why I want to become a senior manager.  Am I doing this for the right reasons? What are the right reasons, and are they the same for every person?  What does it mean to be ambitious?  Is it a positive attribute?  Is having the ambition to be an excellent classroom practitioner more laudible than that of becoming an excellent senior manager or headteacher?  What does leadership mean and what is the ‘best’ style?  These are all questions without straightforward answers.  I think I am ambitious in everything that I do, when I was younger it was in a competitive sense but it is now in the sense of ’personal growth’ and because I want to ‘make a difference’ in my one chance at life.  Someone, can’t remember who(!), recently blogged about being “addicted to learning” - I think I understand that feeling.

I think I’m just questioning my own position and motivations, which I see as a positive thing, but has probably not made for the most exciting blog in the world.  Navel gazing never does.  However, it was important for me to include these thoughts in my own learning diary.  They may or may not resonate with others in a similar position.  

 The Alternative Curriculum programme took a huge ’step towards the summit’(!) on Friday, we established our ‘real’ name.  The name Alternative Curriculum had sat uneasily with us since the idea was mooted and it was important that we gave the programme an identity of its own that encapsulated what we are trying to do.

On Friday morning the coffee and croissants came up trumps again.  We decided upon Active Learning Partnerships or ALPs. 

I think the name  illustrates exactly what we are about; Active Learning for our youngsters, to re-engage them with learning and their personal development, Active Learning for staff to find new ways of working, developing a model to build on for the future. 

Partnerships between youngsters and staff, again to impact upon the learning experience for all; Partnerships between organisations, we already have Active Steps, the Pennypit, the Integration Team and Telford College working together with the school to help deliver the programme. 

The acronym ALPs, I think, conjures the idea of embarking together on a journey, which has both a clear direction and a positive outcome.  We have taken a great leap forward in establishing our identity.  Names, in my opinion, are definitely significant in communicating intentions.

We talked at length about funding. We are aiming to bid for funding over a 3 year period, to build sustainability into the programme, probably through the Big Lottery fund.  We will however need to cover our costs between January and June.  An excellent point made by Angie Davie of the Pennypit was that the staffing resources that she and the Integration team are committing, free of charge to the school, equate to somewhere in the region of £1000 per term which was something I hadn’t even considered.  This idea of pulling in funding from different areas to fund a programme is pretty new to me and I’m speaking to as many people as I can to establish the best way to do it. It is a big learning curve, but thankfully the team are all working hard, doing the same, so I’m confident without being complacent, that we will succeed.  I think the fact that the programme dovetails so well with the principles of ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’ will help us take things forward.

Feels like an eternity since I’ve posted, a clear indication to me, not that I needed one, of the way things have been recently.  The ability to reflect has been hijacked by all ‘hands’ and resources directed at the firefight for control of my attention which has been underway in my brain over the past two weeks. 

SQH Unit 2 has been submitted, thankfully, although my 5 nights for editing were chopped to only half a day last Friday after the winter vomiting bug wound its merry way through the Smith household.  The result is that I have handed in the SQH Unit 2 assignment equivalent of an overfed, and probably overcooked turkey.  The meat is good, it’ll make a lovely meal and was ready in time, but is just crying out for a bit of trimming.  Well, I’ll await my comments, it’s out of my control now.

I’ve been out of school a lot recently what with ’vomit patrol’, courses and meetings and can sense that I’ve taken my eye off the ball while focussing on all the other distractions.  I’m out again this week for three days on SHARE training, the timing couldn’t have been worse but we couldn’t have known in June when we were planning ahead.  I have some major work to do to get back on top of things and get my head back around organising the next stage of the development of the Alternative Curriculum, or Developing Excellence, or Futures programme or whatever we decide to call it.  Really need to find a good name.

I’m just delighted that I have the drive back to start posting here again, it’s a great feeling to have come out the other side of what was one of the most difficult periods of my professional life so far.  I know it will be worth it because I have learned a tremendous amount throughout my short time on SQH, both about leading and managing and about myself as a person and my limits. 

I had an interesting conversation with Paul Raffaelli, headteacher at Dunbar Grammar, last week.  I was asking him how one of the Deputes, Gavin Clark, was getting on preparing his Unit 2 assignment and the feedback was that he was probably in about the same position as I was - snowed under.  Paul, who has also been through SQH, commented that perhaps the ‘overload’ is all part of the SQH experience, to help prepare you for being in the position of headteacher or senior manager and just having to ‘get on’ with things to get the job done.  I’m not sure anyone at Moray House would admit to that, but on some level it does make sense.

They say these few months are undoubtedly the hardest, so to have ‘broken the back’ of Unit 2, know what I’m doing and where I’m going with Unit 3, and have made a good start on the school improvement project I have to be happy.  Even if I get my Unit 2 assignment back for slimming down it’s not the end of the world.  My confidence is growing that I can ‘crack’ this thing!